Shredded by the Greens and stripped of powers: it’s nothing personal Brian
That’s the blunt reality facing the minority government now in what we’ll laughingly call “power”.
In the immediate aftermath of the Green press conference, what didn’t seem clear to what’s left of the Government is that Fine Gael, Labour and the other opposition parties now have the numbers to effectively dictate what happens during the coming week — and to decide what happens at the end of the coming week. They have Fianna Fáil by the short and curlies, and one must hope that they control the triumphalism that must bubble within each opposition chest.
The opposition have the numbers to put through the truncated version of the Finance Bill if it’s legally possible to do so. Fianna Fáil, on the other hand, do not have the majority anymore to dictate any Dáil business. The Taoiseach has called a meeting of all finance spokespeople this morning to discuss the passing of the Bill. He will find the opposition hyper-acutely wary of any attempt to drag it out for the benefit of Fianna Fáil. They will undoubtedly object to his time-scale. The Labour Party and Fine Gael may be willing to abandon their respective votes of no confidence, because, while kicking a dead horse may provide perverse pleasure based on hating the horse when it was alive, it is clearly now redundant.
What they will want is to ensure their amendments are accepted. Thereafter, it is up to each party to decide to accept or reject the amended bill. If a majority vote against it, which is possible even if the Greens support it, the bill will fail. That does not imply immediate chaos. Much of the budget is already happening, as the employed have already found to their considerable cost. Just as the abandonment of the Climate Change Bill — to the delight of environmental Neanderthals within Fianna Fáil — has no immediate, measurable, tangible consequences, neither would failure to pass the Finance Bill. All such failure would do would be to add to the national sense of chaos and, as soon as the European spotlight turns back to Ireland, to overseas perception of Ireland as a banana republic sans banana.
One way or the other, the overwhelming likelihood is that the Finance Bill will be done and dusted by this coming Friday. And the overwhelming likelihood is that, on Friday, the Taoiseach will have to visit President McAleese in Áras an Uachtaráin and ask her to dissolve the Dáil.
The Green Party has delivered the final blow to Brian Cowen’s sad period in the office of Taoiseach. The man who believed it was his prerogative to appoint new ministers to his dying Government was forced to abandon his intention by the Green Party.
The man who believed it was his prerogative to decide the date of the next general election has now had that last right taken from him. All of the procedural certainties on which Mr Cowen relied have been swept away. He could, of course, decide to call the election immediately. But in real terms, his own party has taken that possibility away from him, because of the leadership contest. Never in the history of the state has a Taoiseach been stripped of so many possible actions while still, ostensibly, in power.
One of Brian Cowen’s recurring statements, often made to colleagues outraged at some media, opposition or Green action, is “This is politics. It’s not personal.” It is doubtful that he can find much consolation in that belief today. The Green Party has destroyed any possibility of a dignified end to his time at the top. They have shredded him. Intellectually, he may believe it’s not personal. Emotionally, he cannot.
The new leader of Fianna Fáil will have no prerogatives, no entitlements. He or she faces the grim task of taking a humiliated party into a battle they cannot win, at a time not of their choosing. If Micheál Martin’s statements about the party having no coherent election plan are accurate, then the new leader has only one advantage, and even that is a double-edged sword. When the votes are counted, they will be able to say: “Sure, how could we have done any better?”
THE Greens, meanwhile, will spend the last days of this Dáil on the opposition benches, where, despite the crowds now occupying the tiered rows of blue seats, they will find almost everybody else on those seats edging away from them (although, having said that, the fact is that except when instructed by their respective whips, no backbenchers will be present in Leinster House in the coming days. Canvassing will be the imperative). As far as the opposition is concerned, the Green Party should have struggled with their consciences months, if not years ago, and demonstrated the strength of those consciences by walking.
They regard them as complicit with Fianna Fáil in everything that has happened during the last two fraught years and they see their move of yesterday as pointless puerile opportunism, designed to give their candidates the illusion of distance, but unlikely to serve that purpose.
The Greens themselves genuinely believe it was their duty to continue in Government as long as they could. Some of them felt that they had a unique opportunity to contribute to mitigating the results of the economic meltdown, and they worked long committed hours to do just that. The problem they now face on the doorsteps is that the public regarded the day Brian Cowen spent with Sean FitzPatrick and Fintan Drury on the golf course as the last straw.
If the Greens were going to go at a time when departure gave them any credibility, then the general public would have wanted them to take off right there and then, not to wait for a couple of weeks, a ton of media coverage and a leadership challenge within Fianna Fáil. To talk of the “leadership saga” as a justification was a mistake on their part. To talk of a breakdown in trust and failures of communication was an even greater mistake.
It suggested a pettish regard for their own public perception, rather than a concern for the good of the country.
The coming week will serve as a weird, confused fanfare for the general election.
Despite their glee over the chaos on the Government side, the opposition parties must keep their eye on the most threatening reality, which is that their candidates are not meeting uncomplicated warmth as they knock on constituents’ doors. Voters, in many cases, are too furious to distinguish between political parties at this stage. Opposition words and actions will need to be carefully measured in order to prevent an impression of irresponsible crowing taking hold.
Fianna Fáil always believe they will do better than opinion polls predict. If they don’t, they could find themselves, post- election, with a tiny number of TDs doubling up as spokespeople, Brian Cowen among them.
But, for this one week, the opposition is in charge.
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