We know we live in the real world, but politicians need a dose of reality
The latest government representative to bark this tired rebuke was Housing Minister Jan O’Sullivan who, not once but twice, during an episode of the Vincent Browne show on Wednesday, sought to shout down opponents by sneeringly implying that they inhabit some sort of bizarre alternate universe. While the charge that one does not live in the real world is an apt one for philosophers engaged in a metaphysical debate, it holds rather less weight in a discussion about economic policy decisions.
In truth, it’s the debating equivalent of petulantly throwing dust in your opponent’s eye and only serves to highlight the alarming fact that the government has run out of straws at which to clutch.
The obvious suggestion, of course, is that those opposed to the fiscal measures adopted by the Government are hawking patently delusory arguments, which have absolutely no basis in fact, in support of their thesis that there are other, better, options than the ones currently being pursued.
We are right and you are wrong, is the abortive message from government representatives who think that bald statement alone, without any explicit supporting evidence, is enough to justify their policy decisions. This is despite the fact that the very same amnesiac ministers now preaching austerity were, less than 12 months ago while in opposition, among the chorus loudly protesting the cuts. So, according to its proselytising proponents, the real world is one where emigrants are leaving the country in their droves because of a bourgeois lifestyle choice; where the unemployed would prefer to languish on the Live Register, instead of going back to work, because of yet another lifestyle choice; where highly skilled young graduates are expected to gratefully enthuse about the prospect of interning in a supermarket, stacking shelves for nine months, for an extra €50 a week; and one in which austerity measures are said to be demonstrably working even though the economy shrank by 2% in the last quarter of 2011 — its biggest contraction in two years.
Living in the real world means that today we must stump up €1.25bn to unsecured bondholders, in a defunct bank, to whom, legally, we don’t owe a penny — a figure that amounts to eight times the total sum that will this year be raised by the household charge and twice the projected amount which will be raised by the VAT increase. The penalty if we don’t, according to Minister for Understatement Leo Varadkar, the one who promised Fine Gael in government wouldn’t give “another red cent” to the banks, would be a “financial bomb” going off in Dublin.
The real world is one in which politicians tell us payments to the extraordinarily lucky Anglo bondholders are not coming from the Irish taxpayer but, rather, from the bank itself — a rather strange, and decidedly subtle, distinction considering the bank is bust and its only assets constitute those monies committed to it by the State via a bailout and over €30bn in promissory notes.
“I have just purchased a Mars bar using coins from a pocket. But it did not cost me a penny. It was paid for by my trousers,” was how economist Colm McCarthy memorably explained this strangled logic on the Irish Economy blog.
The real world is one in which Finance Minister Michael Noonan agrees that Ireland simply “cannot pay” its legacy of private debt and assures the Dáil the government is doing everything in its power to reduce the debt burden but then, the following day, gives an interview to a German newspaper in which he says that asking private creditors to take a write down is a “fatal” mistake. This previously unexpressed sentiment explains the government’s reluctance in asking Anglo’s bondholders to share the pain along with the Irish people but also suggests the minister lied when he said the Government was willing to do everything in its power to reduce the State’s debt burden. Living in the real world means taking all of these counterintuitive economic measures because, according to our political masters, they are the only way to restore our credibility to the financial markets — the collective term for those coked-up idiots whose reckless gambling caused the financial crisis in the first instance.
Meanwhile, anyone who dares disagree with this cosy consensus is labelled some kind of naïve crackpot who, according to the Tánaiste, isn’t willing to “pull on the green jersey” by slavishly endorsing every single inane decision rubberstamped at the cabinet table.
Politics is supposed to be about the art of the possible but, instead, in Ireland we now have the politics of intimidation, of blackmail and of fear as our servile elected representatives grovel and scrape and meekly acquiesce to whatever our friends in Europe demand. Even though the troika will come here and pat a proud Enda Kenny on the head, for implementing Fianna Fáil’s four-year plan without quibble, there is no quid pro quo — not even the slightest indication that it is willing to throw the Government a bone by softening its patently unjust demand that the insolvent Irish state picks up the multi-billion euro tab for bank debts that have nothing to do with it.
Worse, our government seems perfectly happy with the continual humiliation meted out to it by European partners who clearly don’t give a toss about the fact that Ireland has been sinking deeper into the mire since 2008.
While the Government is content to contort itself into whatever straightjacket will preserve its continued residence in the real world, where Ireland gets kicked around by bigger countries determined to drown it in a sea of debt, perhaps the rest of us should remember that reality is entirely subjective and ask if it’s now time for a change of scenery. Following the fall of communism, and the end of the cold war in the early 1990s, political scientists wrote at length about the possibility of regime change acting as a catalyst for the creation of a new world order.
Today, as the occupy movement spreads across the globe, with millions of protestors decrying financial and social injustice, someone who knows a thing or two about regime change, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, has likened the popular uprising to the unrest he witnessed before the dissolution of the USSR.
“People are asking, ‘why do our leaders want to decide everything at the expense of the people? We cannot leave things as they were before … the people want change. As we are addressing these challenges, these problems raised by these protest movements, we will gradually find our way towards a new world order,” he said, proposing a 21st century perestroika.
European politicians, who surpassed even the direst predictions of the most pessimistic doom-mongers by allowing financial contagion to spread throughout the eurozone, have clearly lost touch with anything remotely resembling the reality being experienced by their long-suffering constituents. The real world is no longer fit for purpose. It’s time for a new orthodoxy.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
