Kenny must ensure Government speaks with one voice in future

SCORING spectacularly against the last government was about as challenging as hitting the broad side of a barn at point blank range.

It didn’t take a lot of skill or finesse. As the former opposition are learning, governing is more complicated. Opposition is about finding fault, bottling anger and persuading the electorate of an as yet untried alternative. The grind of government requires more, a lot more than the hit and run of opposition.

Good government to be effective requires good policies, coordinated people and smart politics to be in lock-step over time. It requires not only knowing what the right thing to do is; it requires the political courage to do it. It takes a range of talents and capacities that far outstrip verbal bomb throwing.

One of the critically important parts of smart politics is having a shared understanding across government on what is imperative and what is merely very important. It must be a given that the government, all of it, understand that the forthcoming constitutional referendum on the Fiscal Compact is the overriding political imperative.

What is lacking, however, is the coordination of ministers, their messages and their messengers. The sharp retort and the smart answer might be prizewinning on the opposition benches. In Government, that rapidly begins to look like the smartest lad or lassie in the class being too clever by half.

Spats between ministers, a lack of clear communication about important issues and a series of unforced errors raise questions about the Government’s political capacity. If that lack of capacity feeds into the loss of the referendum, they and we will rue the day. One immediate step that needs to be taken now is a clearing of the decks across Government until the referendum campaign is successfully won. There is no room for unforced errors. There is no room for complacency. Time is now running tight and people remain to be informed and to be persuaded of what the referendum is about and why it is necessary.

Michael Martin argued earlier this week that time is already too tight. I hope he is wrong. But there are worrying signs that the lessons of last October’s defeated referendum on greater powers for Oireachtas committees have not been learnt. Again, the Referendum Commission is on the back foot trying to do its job in the allotted time. There is as a yet no sign of a broadly based civil society campaign coming together.

To win, and winning is imperative, the range of voices must be far wider than the voices of Government ministers. Farmers, women’s groups and business leaders, have to persuade and fire up their respective constituencies that the euro is critical for Europe and that Europe is critical for Ireland.

It would be a fool who would predict that they can see a way clearly through the eurozone crisis. It would be a greater fool who would give up on the euro project. In truth the mere survival of the currency is its greatest measure of success to date. But a real crisis continues. It continues in countries like Ireland, Greece and Spain where there are concerns in the international money markets that our debt is eventually unsustainable. There is an overarching concern that a flawed Euro structure is incapable of credible reorganisation in the medium and long term. Putting things to rights, putting Ireland on a sound fiscal footing and strengthening the structures of the eurozone is a programme of interlinked steps of which the Fiscal Compact is a critical part.

Some of those steps are required at home. Year in and year out we have ambitious budgetary targets to reach. They require hard decisions. Being almost alone in Europe without a water charge or a property tax is utterly unsustainable. It is not just that we need more money in taxes to pay for the services we enjoy. It is that in the future it is imperative that our taxes are collected across a broader base to ensure they are sustainable. To its credit the Government is right on many of the big issues. Its heart is in the right place, it has its head focused on what needs to be done. The pity is that its mouth is not connected.

And it’s not that a disproportionate number of ministers haven’t kissed the Blarney stone. The Government has no shortage of masters of the acerbic one liner. When formerly in opposition there was a demand for it, passionate protest was on tap. Is seems now though that there are days when some, having been so long in opposition, have not made the psychological change to government and to responsibility.

It is no longer about landing a punch, even if it is on your coalition partner; it is about persuading the people who will not abide being talked at. Citizens are not an audience in the gallery. In politics they are your interlocutors and your equals.

Politicians are a funny breed. Generally more colourful than the run of the mill, they are expansive, ambitious personalities. They have lives that few would envy and that fewer still have any appreciation for. They are masters of a largely oral culture, where the spoken word is ultimately supreme. Their ultimate calling is to understand the human condition in its frailty and to improve it none the less. The insecurity of their career is extraordinary. Most disappear before they are noticed. A few, very few, eventually get a chance to leave a mark.

The veteran of the longest march is the Taoiseach Enda Kenny. Father of the House and a TD since 1975, he endured a long road. Unexpected to rise to the greatest height, he was for years the object of snobbery in his own party and doubt among the electorate. But what he had more than any of his competitors was perseverance. He also had an underappreciated capacity for the personal indifference required to swing the trap door open on others when required. Now he has his date with destiny. And to date he has managed himself very well. He has ably exploited his office to project himself as a happy warrior, an optimist in hard times.

If sentiment is as valuable in politics as it is in the international money markets, reality ultimately underpins it. The reality of government, a Swiss cheese of bureaucratic and political interests, is that only the Taoiseach and the Department of the Taoiseach can hold the political periphery to account for the agenda formed at the centre.

If cohesion is to be achieved, if an almighty and all out effort is to be made for a Yes vote over the next six weeks, then the Taoiseach must make this his personal project. Different, diffuse and engaging voices will be required to join-up. But what he must ensure by persuasion and with menace is that there is no repeat of the water charge debacle of last weekend. Government must be of one voice. It must be focused on one issue. Mr Kenny must rise to this challenge or become haunted by it.