- Opinion
- 23 May 16
In Ireland, on both sides of the border there is change in the air. And in London too, the people have had enough of boorish toffs…
Despite what some might have you believe, the Irish rather like their democracy and its workings. Among other things, very many are intrigued by the way the multi-seat proportional representation electoral system unfolds. It follows that the election of a Taoiseach and a Government is usually a pretty significant moment, an occasion even.
For that reason alone, though there are many others, the recent wrangling and tangling has left most of us weary, to say the least. It should have ended in celebration rather than relief. In Irish country lore, a tangler – it is a word – is a cute hoor, who inveigles himself into fairday transactions for his own benefit, a person who brings nothing to the fair, but leaves with a profit.
Here’s how it works. You go to the fair with a cow. The tangler meets you and asks your price. You tell him. For the sake of argument, let’s say €1,000. Ohono, he says, ye’ll not get more than €800. But leave it with me. He goes off and finds a person looking for a cow. What would you pay he asks. €1,000, he’s told. Ohojasusno, he says, ye’ll not get ‘em for less than €1,200… but leave it with me.
You know the rest. He tells the seller he has a buyer for €900, the buyer he has a seller for €1,100, he handles the transaction and walks away with €200 – and buyer and seller feel relieved.
Christy Moore was once asked by BP Fallon about angst-ridden songs and famously replied “Jeez Beep, I’ve never been ridden by an angst in my life.” Well, Irish voters have been ridden by tanglers just about forever. And it’s getting worse. Look at the present Dáil and the new Seanad. If ever there was a case for reform…
We’ve a fair few of what US politicos call wing nuts in the new Dáil, including climate change deniers, clerical apologists and, er, clumsy tweeters.
The result is change but not as we know it. It’ll be different, that’s for sure. Maybe it’ll be great, maybe not. Either way, there is a grim entertainment to be had, from the furious fulminations of contrarian commentators at the outcome. They firmly believed that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil would form a coalition Government and that this would liberate opposition forces and create a right v. left political discourse.
Most people hope that we get some form of stable and functional Government to start, and maybe some genuinely new directions from the more collegial approach now in place. Not so the aging, raging radicals of the meeja. Nope, like furious old-time schoolmasters, they’re hopping mad and you’re going to hear all about it. Repeatedly.
Meanwhile, and by contrast, all is much as was in Northern Ireland after the elections. Yeah, there are wing nuts there too. But it’s all pretty predictable. The DUP and Sinn Féin are the biggest parties by a long shot.
Yet, the election of two candidates under the People Before Profit banner, one of them Hot Press columnist Eamon McCann, marks an interesting development. Congratulations are in order. A lot of hard grinding at the coal face went into this success.
Perhaps electorates are warming to radical left wing solutions to the manifold crises we face. But let’s not get carried away: after all, Kerry is driving in the opposite direction and at some pace too. Heading south, as it were.
No, in the very long run the significance of the PBP candidates may well be as pioneers of a different kind of politics in Northern Ireland, one long championed by the left, involving a political discourse that’s neither unionist nor nationalist – neither orange or green.
Two developments in the UK might bring some comfort too. The first is the inquest into the deaths of Liverpool football fans at Hillsborough in 1989. The outcome was described by The Guardian as “a startling indictment of South Yorkshire police, their chain of command and conduct – a relentlessly detailed evisceration of a British police force.”
It took a generation of grief, but it shows that dogged pursuit sometimes wins.
The second is the election of Labour’s Sadiq Khan as mayor of London. Khan is the son of Pakistani immigrants and grew up on a council estate. He defeated Zac Goldsmith, son of a billionaire, a man who has had a golden spoon in his mouth from infancy.
What’s good about Khan’s victory is that it shows that the electorate, in London at least, saw through the bullying, scaremongering and thinly veiled racism and xenophobia from the ruling class (in Britain) and (especially) the largely Tory media. It may also slow, or even interdict, the further rise of that pompous overbearing oaf Boris Johnson – and that would be a very good thing indeed, for the UK, for Ireland and for Europe.
Johnson is a Tory toff who has a way of putting a populist veneer on very Tory views. Donald Trump isn’t a Tory toff, he’s a billionaire buffoon – but he’s the same, only worse.
We’ll return to Trump later in the year. He’s now the Republican Party’s crown prince, its nominee presumptive. He has treated the whole process of selection like some huge, deranged reality TV competition, one where you can say anything you please to win, whether rational or consistent or even sane, or not.
In many ways, he’s more frightening than any Islamist terrorist and scarier even than Kim Jong-Un. That’s because if he were elected he’d have a far bigger arsenal at his disposal. And he seems no more balanced …
But Khan’s election in London suggests that there are limits to how far an electorate can be tangled and spooked, even in a binary system like the UK or the US – and even in this era of rage and offence and troll terrorisation. Maybe even here!
It’s a cold comfort but we must take our comforts where we can.