Only real discourse will restore politics to what it ought to be

YOU may have heard that I’m in the process of changing my day job. I don’t suppose my politics have been a secret to too many people up to now, but I’m now being asked to put them into practice again.

And if I have one ambition for the next few years, it's this I'd love to contribute, in whatever way I can, to a higher and more open and inclusive level of political discourse in Ireland.

Let me explain what I mean.

The Labour Party has just had an election. Pat Rabbitte won it. But what shouldn't be lost sight of are two facts that (I think) ought to have a relevance far beyond the Labour Party.

The first is that nearly 90% of the party membership voted in the election, and a great many of them turned up at the meetings that were held all around the country.

The second is that it was an election based on a high degree of mutual respect, and a broadly shared analysis among the candidates. That didn't stop it being a vigorous campaign that engaged and involved its electorate.

The outcome was a unique sort of mandate for the new party leader. But principally it was about a high level of political discourse within one political party. And I'd be ready to bet that if the other political parties opened up their elections to the membership, exactly the same sort of thing would happen.

All of the political parties (including mine) and all the political apparatchiks (including me) fought shy for years of involving party members in making such fundamental decisions. It would lead to instability and chaos, it would involve the leader always looking over his or her shoulder, it would open the door for demagoguery. They were the arguments, and already I think the Labour experiment has proved them wrong.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are parties with a membership that has been loyal for generations, always willing to do the work, seldom consulted on the things that really matter. It would revolutionise the politics of those parties if they took their courage in their hands and allowed the party membership to choose a leader, after a thorough and open campaign.

For most of us who voted in the Labour election, it was the most exciting thing our party had ever asked us to do, after years of attending meetings, shinning up lampposts, discussing the same old agendas again and again. For Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael members, it would be exactly the same, and the turnout would be just as high.

A real leadership election forces you to look hard at the candidates. It forces you to acknowledge their similarities as well as their differences.

It forces you to think about ideas or the lack of them. And it forces the candidates to relate to you in a real way.

The last time I saw that happen was during the presidential election of 1990, or at least during the early part of it, when Mary Robinson was traipsing her way around the country, attending meetings, taking part in phone-ins, and generally seeking to make direct contact with people. Later it became harder, as the media took over, but the months of campaigning had a profound influence on her, just as they had an influence on voters all around the country.

But hang on, I hear you say. We have general elections, don't we, when the party leaders are in direct touch, when the people get an opportunity to get up close and make careful judgments?

No, we don't. We have carefully stage-managed campaigns now, where the events are designed for the media, where the messages are filtered through the media, where every day each of the party leaders has to stretch himself or herself into whatever contortions the media photographers expect. The day of direct contact is almost over.

This may come as a shock to those of you who remember reports from the last election of Bertie plunging into crowds, of Bertie being surrounded by well-wishers, of Bertie being invited to snog young and old alike in the street. Of course, the arrival of the party bus and banners is going to generate some excitement, but if you think all that hoopla was totally spontaneous, you're more naïve than I think you are.

But it could be I'm convinced of that. I passionately believe that it is possible to restore politics to what it ought to be an ongoing debate between the people and their representatives, conducted on a basis of respect. And mediated only to the extent necessary by the media.

We had a healthy debate recently about Nice. There was a palpable sense that the stakes were high, that people were discussing the issues, that everyone was involved. And the numbers who voted, though still not high, were well up on the previous referendum.

But when we think of day to day politics, we think of broken promises, brown paper bags, feather bedding. We don't associate politics with peace in Northern Ireland, or with economic growth. The truth, of course, is that peace or economic progress wouldn't have happened without politics but neither, probably, would we have had the corruption of recent years.

Who is to blame for this state of affairs? Those of us in politics tend to blame the media, or the public. When we want to sound a bit more inclusive, we talk about the failure of politics to get its message across. The truth we have to face is that politics has put itself in a position where it doesn't matter. Those of us who work in politics have failed not to get a message across, but to deal in messages that mean something. We have allowed the stakes to become trivial.

The purpose of political discourse is to raise the stakes. It has never been more important. To take just one example, we live in a rich country that is experiencing sluggish growth, but we are told day after day that we live in a poor country.

The reason we are being told that is because there is an exercise of conditioning going on. It is aimed at persuading us to accept that there are things we can't afford and all of them affect people who depend on public spending and public services. We are supposed to believe that in this genuinely rich country, there are no choices.

But real discourse, real debate, and real honesty would lead us to real choices. All of us have a stake in the development of our economy in the next few years it isn't the private property of a few. But we are being shut out of the debate, and drowned in propaganda instead.

It's time to call a halt to that. No political party has a monopoly of wisdom, and no politician has all the answers. I suspect, however, that the new leader of the Labour Party is going to spend a lot of his time in the months ahead taking clear positions, and encouraging open and honest debate while refusing to be sucked in to the propaganda. That'll be a good start.