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.

It seems to me that this is what so many on the left can’t seem to handle – the need to stand by your partners on a range of issues you’d rather not in order to achieve what you can.

The next two years will be crucial for the Greens. They present the opportunity to achieve fundamental and lasting reform on planning, political financing, civil service reform, public transport and Ireland’s carbon footprint.

Of course if the government collapsed tomorrow, the Greens would have been achieved little, at least in relation to the political price paid for entering coalition. I have no wish to dismiss legitimate public anger about Nama, spending cuts or a host of other issues but the Greens joined the government in order to pursue a green agenda – and this is what the party is attempting to do. But many on the left would hold the Greens – or any other small idealistic party – to a ridiculous standard: that a party in coalition with just a few seats should fundamentally change the political direction of the country. Or else not bother.

The reality is that the people of Ireland choose to elect governments led by either Fianna Fail or, less frequently, Fine Gael. Would it not be better for the left to acknowledge and engage that reality than agitate for a political revolution that will probably never happen?