What do we want? Dunno! When do we want it? Er…

The minute the Green Party entered government with Fianna Fáil in 2007 it was accused of selling out. Understandably the accusations were loudest from those the Greens had partially shared a platform with in opposing Fianna Fáil and fighting for a progressive alternative: environmentalists, socialists, Labour, even Sinn Féin. The complaint is simple enough: the Green Party had abandoned much of its policy agenda in return for a programme for government that was relatively light on Green policy, they were accused of dispensing with their principles in return for political power.

Personally I am too young to remember, but I would be willing to wager that all small, progressive, idealistic parties that have entered coalition government faced similar accusations. While the big labour and social democratic parties in Europe drifted so far from their core principles that they embraced the deregulation mantra that led to the banking crisis, others – I’ll call them them the protest left – completely avoid engaging with realpolitik. Instead they prefer to stand on the moral high ground shouting down at anyone who engages in compromise, keeping their principles intact, to be sure, but achieving little.

The fact is that the view that says the Greens betrayed their principles has common currency because it does ring true – after all, overnight the party went from opposing Fianna Fáil on a huge range of issues to supporting them, slavishly following on many. Many who supported the Greens’ vision must have been severely disappointed, even outraged, but to respond in this way is to confuse moralising with politics. Stable coalition government requires parties to largely maintain the same face; to pretend to agree about issues they don’t and to tow the government line. A party with six seats can only ever hope to achieve a limited amount in government and the price for influence on core areas of policy is having to support your partners on a range of issues you’d rather not.

Had the Green Party remained in opposition, it would have achieved nothing. Entering into coalition with Fianna Fáil was always going to result in compromises, some perhaps distasteful, but the more represented the primacy of politics over pontification. Some have argued that the party should make more of an effort to distance itself from its coalition partner, effectively becoming a kind of internal opposition. This is not the ‘middle path’ it may initially sound like. Rather, it is a plan for failure: if the Green Party continually voiced its opposition to Fianna Fáil policies the government would simply collapse.