From burning bondholders to leather, goods, it’s all laid bare in manifestos

YOU thought Fianna Fáil weren’t listening. You were wrong. Back in 2007 — two weeks before the last general election — I wrote, “Charles Haughey was on to something when he claimed election manifestos had a ‘Marxian ring about them’.

Thirty years on from the first (disastrous) Fianna Fáil manifesto, the 2007 edition stretches to 153 pages. There are policies on this and policies on that, all in the most mind-numbing detail — for a country of only four million people.”

Fast forward to 2011 and … honey, they shrunk the manifesto. It’s just 34 pages in three sections — the public finances, a jobs strategy and political reform. You couldn’t even light a fire with it. There are no pretty pictures — just a mug-shot of a rather pained-looking Michéal Martin. As for the cover, it’s a study in minimalism, albeit in a suspiciously Fine Gael shade of blue. Perhaps it’s Freudian.

But there is something refreshing about FF’s approach: these are the main issues facing Ireland and this is where we stand. No lavish promises, no New Agey, transcendental blah about imagined Irelands of the future — it’s just a crisp argument about short-term pain for long-term gain and not taxing your way to recovery. Or am I giving the Soldiers too much credit? Maybe they just couldn’t be arsed. You ain’t voting for us so we ain’t writing for you. Fine.

Yes, by now you’ve guessed. I couldn’t sleep the other night so I took to reading all the manifestos, except FG’s which is apparently a secret. I do it every election. It gives me some perverse pleasure.

On a serious level, themes do emerge. No one cares very much about climate change any more, the politicians have decided. All those pages droning on about it back in 2007 have been dropped. It was an environmental measure, honest it was, we’re saving the forests you know. The other consensus is that pretty much everyone thinks something has to be done about mental health.

The amusement factor about manifestos, however, stems from those personal hobby horses which somehow creep into the text without anyone really noticing. Take the Greens. They’re a bit of a funny lot. Who else would start off on the topic of food tourism policy before getting on to the serious subject of taxation? And is there some subliminal message being sent to south Dublin with that pink colour scheme?

No, what really made me smirk was the commitment some wonk slipped in between mouthfuls of muesli making it compulsory for shops to identify which of their goods contain leather. They’ll love that at Brown Thomas — this beautiful Hermes bag was once a pig; no these exquisite moccasins are not made of some by-product of the petrochemical industry. You get the idea.

On the subject of which, the Greens take this year’s prize for the most pie-in-the-sky promise. Vote for them, they say, and they’ll make Ireland an oil-free economy by 2030. Yeah, right you will. Nice idea but would someone just tell John Gormley? It. Isn’t. Going. To. Happen. And Santa Claus doesn’t exist either.

On that jolly note, what impresses most about the Labour manifesto is the defiantly upbeat tone from the very start: “We can and we will get through this recession: We can, and we will, get our country on the road to recovery, creating jobs and forging opportunities for our future. We can, and we will, change the way this country is run and fix the system that is broken. Our country’s best days are still to come.”

Rhetoric? Perhaps. Or maybe they really believe it. And the manifesto ends with some stern words about paramilitaries not being allowed to screw people’s lives — always a point worth making. But perhaps there are just a few too many points? Do we really need to know the party’s line on greyhound racing and Islamic banking? And what’s so wrong with the Irish Red Cross that it needs urgent reform? On second thoughts, spare me the details.

I guess Labour’s response to the charge of long-windedness is that no one can say they weren’t told should they do something a bit left field in government. This is the manifesto as a political contract between the governors and the governed. Marxian? A touch — but none the worse for that.

Sinn Féin, on the other hand, have gone for the full-on Kim Jong-Il approach. If it weren’t scary, it would be funny.

Or perhaps Sinn Féin is just some vast bad joke being played on the Irish people? How does an apparently serious political party in Ireland open its manifesto with that most appalling of clichés: “Ireland is at a crossroads”?

It wouldn’t be so bad but they don’t tell us if there are comely maidens dancing there. Or having failed in their decades long political project, perhaps the Shinners have taken to self-parody to give us some light relief? The document has to be seen to be appreciated in all its national socialist glory. There’s a section on economic recovery with points from 1 to 13. Then public services from 1 to 15. A new republic 1-17; the economy (again) from A to K; jobs, A to R; wages, A to N; taxation, A-N; taxation (part 2) from A-T — yes, there’s going to be a lot of that; public services (in case you didn’t get it the first time) from A to Y; education, A to M; the wrongs of the Celtic Tiger, A to J; the rural way of life, A-K (47 perhaps?); farming and fishing, A to O; political reform, A to R; equality, A to O; An Ghaeilge, A to I; and last, but not least, all they really care about: a United Ireland from Alpha to Omega (Actually, it’s from A to I).

Oh, and the whole routemap to Ireland’s place in the sun is in two languages. Yeah, it is a practical joke, isn’t it? Tell me it is. It must be a joke because SF promise to be nice to unionists — just a few lines after a coded commitment to stop funding schools catering to remote Protestants.

And if their manifesto isn’t a joke, someone might need to call the gardaí. Not once but six times (that’s 12 times in both languages), we read the same promise to “burn the banking bondholders”. Now this could be some technical term but Sinn Féin is a party with form. Will these poor free-wheeling miscreants be tarred and feathered first? Will they be burned alive like those other scourges of Irish society, dog fanciers, one wonders? Gerry, we have a right to know.

We also have a right to know how it is that, “The people of a unified Ireland would benefit from having ... Universal access to quality public services and public ownership of infrastructure, run efficiently in the public interest.” How so? If unity happened, wouldn’t the Irish people get a say in how the economy is run? Or in this united 32-county democratic socialist republic, do we just leave it to the ard chomhairle or the army council to decide because they know best?

Yes, it is worth reading the manifestos. You were indeed warned. It’s there in black and white.