Friday, December 12, 2008
FIANNA FÁIL has enough problems facing it without the distraction of fighting a byelection in Dublin South to retain the seat made vacant by the untimely and premature death of the excellent Seamus Brennan.
The seat appears not merely impossible to win but would allow the opposition another high-profile opportunity to focus public attention on the many failings of the Government.
Although the protest vote would be split between various opposition parties it seems that whoever FF runs would be unable to gain enough votes to win the seat, especially once transfers between opposing candidates come into play.
But FF has someone who could win the seat. He is also enough of a gambler to take his chances with the electorate if he feels the odds could be somehow shifted in his favour.
That someone is Charlie McCreevy. The serving European commissioner is the only man who could pull it off, even if it’s unlikely he would ever promise to live in the constituency and would continue to live in Kildare if elected. Imagine the boost to FF and the Government if it could retain this seat against all the odds.
To many people Charlie McCreevy was the architect of the economic boom. Things started going wrong when he was exiled to Brussels. His return from exile could be portrayed as messianic.
FF could sell him to the electorate on the basis that his return to Dáil Eireann would lead to an automatic return to the cabinet, where his experience could prove invaluable at this time of economic crisis. The largely middle-class constituency of Dublin South might love that idea and its large working class pockets might not be disapproving either.
The truth about McCreevy’s qualities is somewhat more prosaic of course. He is no genius, even if some would like to portray him that way. The economic boom had started under the Rainbow coalition of 1994-’97, although many might like to portray McCreevy as its creator.
Ruairi Quinn had a fine track record when he held the ministry of finance being the first minister in the modern era to report a budget surplus and overseeing an average growth higher than McCreevy subsequently achieved (albeit over a shorter period).
Not all of McCreevy’s economic policies were fair or successful: in particular his tax policies disproportionately favoured the rich and powerful. He made the state overly dependent on the revenues from consumption taxes — especially VAT — leaving it ill-placed to raise cash from other sources when spending slowed. That might not have been so important had he not also failed to curb the excesses of public spending, although that is more the fault of his taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, who curtailed his minister’s efforts to do the right thing for political reasons.
But McCreevy was finance minister during the most productive phase of the boom. He was innovative, imaginative and stimulating, exactly the qualities that are needed now, particularly in encouraging investment and effort. He rewarded those who risked capital and who were prepared to work hard. He also pulled some useful stunts.
His special savings investment accounts, for example, were politically motivated — to put cash in the pockets of a grateful electorate at just the right time before the 2007 election — and most unfair in the way they rewarded only those who could afford to join.
But they turned out to be a blessing: many people seem not to have spent their savings and associated windfall when it became available and instead kept it in the bank or paid down all or part of their borrowings. We should be most grateful for this.
McCreevy also brings energy and something of a devil-may-care attitude. That may be as much an act as a reality but it appeals to at least as many people as it repels.
Of course he is not popular with everyone, but then who is? He may not get everything right, but who does? He innovates, he rails against the obvious, he encourages others by his own actions to get up and do something. He provides a few of things that are badly missing from the current cabinet make-up: leadership, ambition and reassurance that he will at least try to do something.
Of course McCreevy would want to have to do it. He consistently says his time in Irish politics is done and he may well believe that. He may be in demand in the private sector, although that arena may not be as lucrative as he would have expected a year ago.
Brian Cowen might not want him at the cabinet table either. He would be prominent, so much so that many might want McCreevy to be leader. Indeed he might want to be so himself.
That would not endear him to other FF ministers who might fancy having a crack at the leadership should Cowen, already stumbling, fall. But Cowen is in such a bad place that he should be prepared to gamble (and it is possible that things are so bad that handing over to McCreevy would be a relief). FF backbenchers would love the return of such a strong, feisty figure (What the Greens would make of his bluntness is another issue although Mary Harney, if not sent to Brussels to replace him, would love to have her closest political friend back by her side). Whatever Cowen’s personal concerns or prejudices — there has never been a sign of closeness between the two — McCreevy should be called upon to serve the national interest. He is already talking correctly about what the country needs.
He told the Association of European Journalists in Dublin on Monday that Government day-to-day (current) spending will have to be cut back sharply with immediate effect because the country does not have the tax revenues to support it. He made the perfectly valid, but rarely made, point that the assumption the Government can borrow easily is wrong. Money is hard to come by on international markets, even for governments, and it is far more expensive to obtain than it was, even though interest rates are falling. He warned that failure to address current spending adequately now will lead only to far more savage cuts in a few years.
McCreevy’s worthwhile speech was curtailed to the inside pages of the newspapers. Had he made it as a government minister of senior rank, then I reckon that it would have been on the front pages.
Maybe McCreevy and FF cannot take the risk of his running in a byelection and then losing. It would be potentially humiliating for both, although easily explained and soon forgotten.
There is an alternative way to get him into cabinet. Some duffer could be persuaded to resign from the Seanad and McCreevy could be appointed to his place. From there he could be appointed to cabinet, although not to his old role as minister for finance. It would be better though to give him a platform from the Dáil.
McCreevy on his own of course is not the answer to all of our Government’s current problems. No one man or woman could be. He would make mistakes in the job, especially in saying things he shouldn’t. But the people who yearn for the return of Bertie are looking for the wrong man. It’s McCreevy we need back.
When somebody like me — who spent years writing critically about him — has come to that conclusion, it is a sign of how desperate things have become.
* The Last Word with Matt Cooper is broadcast on 100-102 Today FM, Monday to Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm.
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