They choose the words but we are the losers in their zero-sum game

SOMETIME soon we’re going to witness one of the great ironies of the politics of the modern era.

A statement from the IRA will mark a defining moment in Ireland's peace process. We don't yet know the exact content, but I expect it to be made clear that paramilitary activity is over. With the end of paramilitary activity comes the beginning of a civil society governed solely by the rule of law.

Why will this be ironic, as well as being historic? In two ways, really. First of all, how extraordinary is it that in one small corner of the world politicians are working around the clock to manufacture a breakthrough in a process that is completely stalled? In the interests of peace they have isolated a range of issues, of which the issue of paramilitary activity is the most important, and are working their way through them to find ways of satisfying each other.

This is a peace process that was once deemed impossible because of what used to be called the 'zero-sum' game. Zero-sum means simply that I can only make a gain if you make an equivalent loss. I can only be happy if you feel miserable. I can only feel more Irish if you feel less British.

The great success of the Irish peace process, from the Downing Street Declaration onwards, is that it has replaced zero-sum with a new principle, what might be called the principle of mutuality. This principle tacitly asserts that the principles of both sides must be respected, while the interests of both sides must be reconciled. The application of the principle on the ground has often been grudging. As a result we have seen a one-step-forward-two-steps- -backward sort of progress. But the underpinning value of the principle has kept the process alive, and now hopefully we are on the brink of the most important breakthrough.

And this is happening while at the same time a potentially devastating war is brewing in the middle east. By now, the credibility of the head of the free world is riding on a short, sharp victory over the vicious dictator of an impoverished and broken country.

Bush can only win if Saddam Hussein loses. The people who will pay the price of this zero-sum game are the people of Iraq, who have already been paying for years. Now tens of thousands of them may die so they can be 'liberated'. Talk about zero-sum! There's a second irony, as I said. The politics of peace is highly sophisticated much more so than the politics of war. Peacemaking, and the development of a process like the Anglo-Irish relationship, is almost an art form.

You should compare the sophisticated politics being employed in the development of the peace process with the crudity of government politics down here. You'd see a lot of ironies.

You know what is beginning to dawn on me about our Government? They have started to believe their own spin. That way lies madness. Of course, there's another possibility. They may be involved in conditioning us, encouraging us to believe ever more preposterous propaganda, persuading us that we're in the midst of some economic battle that requires us to follow docilely wherever they lead.

I'll give you a few examples arising from the past week's events, and you can decide whether it's self-delusion or conditioning.

Take Michael McDowell (please, anyone). Now, I know I ruffled a few feathers last week among the friends of the Minister for Justice, and I hadn't intended to come back to him again this week.

But then I heard him on the radio on Saturday attacking the Freedom of Information Act as something that had corroded the practice of good government, and prevented open, honest and intellectual discourse. To anyone with the temerity to disagree, he suggested that the logic of support for FOI, as it's called, would be to let a camera film in the Cabinet room, and sure isn't that a daft proposition altogether.

It's this practice of painting everything in black-and-white, of presenting crude argumentation in the manner of one who believes that only a simpleton could disagree, that I'm on about. The Freedom of Information Act was a successful attempt to legislate for an issue that is at heart about degree and balance. In regard to the issue of secret government, the Act sets out carefully the degree of privacy to which the government process ought to be entitled, and balances it with the degree of access to which the citizen is entitled.

The Freedom of Information Act was an important milestone of reform in the era when accountability began to matter. Rolling it back is regressive and backward, and needs strongly to be opposed. But pretending that it is necessary to roll it back because it was corroding the democratic process is shamefully untrue.

McDowell treats us all like fools. Charlie McCreevy, on the other hand, doesn't mince words. He just tells us we're fools. Fools, that is, if we don't accept his every assertion on the public finances. We might see doctors on television telling us that people will die because of cutbacks. We might read the memos outlining the cutbacks in detail. We might see the television reports of the people waiting in hospital corridors because of the cutbacks. We might have all sorts of direct personal experience to convince us that cutbacks in public spending are a central part of Government policy.

But if we believe it, we're innumerate idiots. Charlie has told us there are no cutbacks, and that's the end of that. In fact, all Charlie is doing is seeking to realign our unreasonable expectations to the realities of the times we live in.

What does that mean? What does it matter? To Charlie, and the rest of the Government, words mean whatever they say they mean, and nothing else. Wasn't it the Queen of Hearts, or the Mad Hatter, or some other Alice in Wonderland character who said that first? While McDowell treats us like idiots, and McCreevy calls us idiots, the rest of the Government carries on like idiots. This Government jet nonsense, for instance. A case can be made for a Government jet of modest size and range (and a case can be made against, too). But no case whatever can be made for two or three jets.

The very fact that the Government has been highlighting the instances of previous breakdown of the existing jet to persuade the media that it really is past its sell-by date, proves that they believe in the power of their own spin. And some of the media, it has to be said, have fallen for it.

For most people, though, it only proves that when a government gets above itself, they start believing their own propaganda.

We're now in one of those political eras when we are being told to tighten our belts on a daily basis by Government ministers whose idea of hardship is having to wait a half-hour in a foreign airport.

The last time that happened was 1989, and the last political leader who tried to get away with it was Charles J Haughey. What does that tell us?