Real challenge facing the PDs

NOW that the PDs have chosen a new leader, I’d like to offer them some dispassionate advice on their options.

They exist to bring the Thatcherite/Reaganite neo-liberal revolution to this country. In a nutshell, this means increasing the share of wealth derived from profits and decreasing the share paid out in wages.

The tricky bit is that you have to combine this attack on wages with puritanical guff about rewarding hard work instead of rewarding idleness, which is of course the exact opposite of what neo-liberal policies actually do.

Since there are far more voters dependent on wages than on share dividends, how do you gather mass support for such policies in a democracy?

How can you make the turkeys vote for Christmas?

The US Republican party has attempted to square this circle by picking intellectually modest (stupid, if you like) leaders like Reagan or Bush jnr.

They find it better to send out a likeable fool who has no understanding at all than someone who recognises the contradiction at the centre of the party’s appeal for the votes of working people.

If you don’t pick a fool, you have two options: you can pick a slippery, duplicitous type who can pretend he or she has a ‘greenish’ or compassionate side while actually pedalling the same old class war from above (David Cameron?).

The other option is to pick an intellectual. This can be fatal. If you pick an arrogant intellectual type, he will certainly let the cat out of the bag, and maybe even tell the great unwashed it is a good thing that the gap between them and their masters is constantly widened (John Redwood?).

I hope I have been of some help to PD members in clarifying how similar parties approach their central problem.

Tim O’Halloran

Ferndale Road

Dublin 11.