All this spin is making us dizzy, so give it to us straight before we’re sick

Stinker opinion polls about any government that is well into its period in office create a ritual dance between commentators on the one side, and, on the other, the lads and lassies in power.

As well as analysis of recent face-in-mud episodes, the commentators inevitably announce that the Government, three years into office, is arrogant, out of touch, listening to nobody and living in a bubble. In response, some Government spokespeople shake their tawny locks, scattering the usual hail of virtuous claims that because they’ve been working like dogs, so they have, they haven’t had the time for ‘spin’. They modestly accept that the Government party or parties have ‘failed to get the message out’. It’s all, in short, down to communications. Get those PR guys in here and tell them what’s what.

Of course, it’s not all down to communications. People didn’t fail to vote for Coalition candidates in the recent local elections because of maggotty press releases. Labour voters went over the wall to Sinn Féin because — rightly or wrongly — they believed their guys had been subsumed by Fine Gael. The voters who last time around plumped for Fine Gael because they believed that party would take a bad situation by the scruff of the neck and shake sense into it, failed to vote FG this time around because they were getting tired of the party catching them, the voters, by the scruff of the neck and shaking money out of them.

Theoretical enthusiasm for fiscal rigour is always predicated on an inchoate hope that it will be applied to someone else who richly deserve it. When fiscal rigour gets applied repeatedly and painfully to you personally, then it’s a very different kettle of austerity altogether. It’s remarkably difficult to communicate well enough to make people enjoy the experience of getting poorer and feel affectionate towards the people they perceive to be making that happen.

Better Coalition communication, therefore, will not radically improve public perception of the Government. On the other hand, taking the following eight actions might help:

- Shut up about getting the message out.

We accept messages from a wide range of people, starting with friends, Amazon, and advertising agencies. Messages from friends are welcome because they tend to be part of an ongoing conversation. If Amazon sends us a message, it’s because we told them to do so and sent money to incentivise them. We accept messages from advertising agencies because they’re about things we want to buy and sometimes the ads are funny or evocative or both.

In sharp contrast, none of us wakes up in the morning wanting to receive a political message, and planning to lash them out at us, willy-nilly, is to assume a docile passivity on our part unsupported by recent election results. Note to Government parties: Whenever you hear talk of ‘messages’ or ‘narrative’, run back to reality.

- Quit asking us to admire you for doing what you told us you were going to do.

And belt up, seriously, with claiming to have made tough decisions. Easy for you to take “tough decisions”. It’s us at the receiving end of those tough decisions who are doing the suffering.

- Stop communicating with us as if making Moody’s happy is our shared goal.

It’s not just Moody’s. It’s the sense that we live in a process that’s going to last forever and make somebody other than us happy. It’s neither good politics nor good communication to keep referring to something the voter briefly cared about but no longer does.

We briefly cared about the IMF, the Troika (who at least had faces and anoraks), and the bond holders. We cared about the IMF and the Troika because they could stop lending us money to pay our bills. Now they’re gone and have stopped being the villains of the piece.

Into the villain slot has stepped the Government, which keeps hitting us a good whack with a new tax or levy and down we go again. In the beginning, we took it on the chin and even had moments of heroic self-regard when one of those external monitors patted us on the head and said we were making progress. Now, there’s no pleasure in being top of the class in terms of international approbation and bottom of our personal pile. We fear that making those external monitors feel good is turning into a permanent objective and their approval warms us not.

- Give over making Sinn Féin more interesting than Sinn Féin make Sinn Féin.

- Talk like we talk.

“The people of Ireland are entitled to transparency and accountability in relation to any infrastructural development, with assurances that the governance is in compliance with best-in-class procedures in the sector delivered by an appropriate oversight body which is fit for purpose.”

They are. Of course they are. If your next-door-neighbour is taking the big financial risk and extending the back of the house, it helps to know what it’s going to cost. It’s also good to know that the builder actually has a company plus a bank account and that if the Health and Safety folk wander by, they won’t witness one of the lads losing a leg, exploding his head or setting fire to his overalls.

And — because the above sentence was written in Government-speak, none of it was clear or interesting.

The minute you start making with the ‘transparency and accountability’ buzzwords, those listening start making with the Zzzzzzz of inattention. Although to call them buzzwords is a misnomer. It’s a long time since there was buzz in them, if ever there was. They are like underwear worn so often and washed so frequently that it hangs in greyed fronds. If we could eliminate most of the words in the quoted sentence from daily use, the national mood would lift several notches. The use of just one of them, ‘fit for purpose’, is pushing me over the edge.

- Don’t believe it when members of the public say: “Keep it up, Minister, you’re doing a great job.”

It’s the best thing they can come up with when they realise their first instinct won’t serve. Their first instinct being to tell you how much shorter, fatter, older, tireder, and redder in the face you look in real life.

- Government spokespeople should stop shouting abuse at journalists.

Its only function is to make the shouter and the shouter’s boss feel macho.

- Fear telling us not to get complacent.

It happens all the time. Government speeches that praise our progress on whatever front the minister is responsible for, followed by the pious hope that we’ll not get complacent. I’m going after the next minister who does this. To render him or her severely unfit for purpose.

Any purpose.