New party or alliance on the cards for the next general election

I’M TOTALLY flummoxed. I keep meeting people who are utterly fed up with the government, and determined never to vote for them again.

But the very same people, when pressed a little bit, will tell you that the single most important thing is that nothing should happen to undermine the economic recovery that seems to be happening.

The trouble is, it’s the carbon monoxide recovery. You know that ad that warns you to install a detector in your home, because you can’t see carbon monoxide or smell it or hear it. It could still be all around you, doing terrible damage. The recovery is like that. It’s odourless, invisible, inaudible. And we’re waiting for the damage. We don’t trust the recovery, and we certainly don’t trust the people who have, somehow or other, engineered it.

The Central Statistics Office publishes figures every now and again that suggest we’re not just in recovery, but the strongest by far in Europe. The unemployment figures tell the same story. In any other time, in any other place, the electorate would be promising to re-elect the government for a thousand years or so.

We’re not, though. We’re all demanding something new instead.

But what? There was a discussion on the Marian Finucane show on Sunday about the possibility of a new party emerging. Will it be of the right or the left? Who will lead and who will follow? One of the panellists kept repeating a mantra, as if he had thought of it for the first time. Social justice and economic sustainability — that’s what he said people would vote for, and that’s what any new party must stand for.

Well, no disrespect, but I wondered had he ever heard of Fine Gael? Or Fianna Fáil? Or Labour? Or anyone else who already claims to represent the people in an organised way? Because at the core of what they all stand for — irrespective of nuances and policy differences — is the same thing. Economic sustainability and social justice.

The truth is that no new party is going to emerge in Ireland that won’t be promising those two things. Nobody is going to say we’ll deliver social justice to everyone and to hell with the economic consequences, just as nobody is going to say we’ll put the needs of the economy first and the poor, the marginalised and the alienated can wait.

We could — I’m beginning to think we will — face into the next election with the existing mainstream political parties (for the purposes of this discussion I’m including Sinn Féin in that definition) challenged by two new groupings, one on its left and one on its right. That would mean there will be, in effect, six parties fighting the election.

That depends, of course, on a couple of things. Lucinda Creighton’s career trajectory will cease to have any meaning, if between now and February she hasn’t announced the formation of a new party. She is the natural leader of that party (let’s call it the economic sustainability wing), and it remains to be seen who will follow her. But one could see Shane Ross as Deputy Leader, Stephen Donnelly as Finance Spokesperson. They might even — and wouldn’t this be a coup? — be able to attract someone like John McGuinness from Fianna Fáil.

They keep saying that because the rules have changed, it’s really difficult to form a new party. Nobody is allowed to pour money into them, like in the good old days of the Progressive Democrats when rich people queued up for hours to make their donations. It’s nonsense. The absence of a sugar daddy or two never stopped people with idealism and commitment from organising.

Sure, it might mean the posters aren’t quite of the same glitzy quality as others, and there mightn’t be as many of them. But if the people and the ideas inspire, all sorts of support will follow. Just imagine the excitement in gentlemen’s clubs and all the other places where the well-heeled hang out at such a development.

And then there’s the other wing, the social justice wing. There is a large group of people on the “left” right now. They may not fit into the classic definition of a left-wing grouping (they’re opposed to the taxation of property, for instance) but they’re definitely right-on when it comes to being up for everything we all want to see.

The big issue is who will lead that group and who will follow. Sinn Féin won’t join it unless they’re the recognised leaders of it, and they won’t allow a name change to accommodate, say, Joe Higgins or Mick Wallace (assuming they could stay in the same room). It’s more likely, isn’t it, that what will emerge on the left will be an alliance rather than a party. But even an alliance can put together the kind of manifesto that would enable people to rally to its flag.

None of this is impossible. In fact it could well happen that in the next election, we will be confronted with political failure on the one hand (the present government parties and Fianna Fáil), and something bright, new(ish) and alternative on the other, with the added excitement of a choice between left and right.

It all springs from disillusion. The last time we were this disillusioned was in the dying days of the last government. But there was a difference then — there was an alternative. That government was a complete and total failure. We all knew it — they even knew it themselves. Remember the long-term Ministers who walked off the pitch and collected their pensions rather than face the electorate?

Now there is a functioning government, a government that by any objective measure has been successful. It is impossible to forgive them for the things they said before the election, and impossible to give them any credit for the tough things they did to save the economy. We call them cack-handed and brutal when they impose hard decisions, and weak and vacillating when they admit they’ve got things wrong. At this stage, it seems we can’t wait to get rid of them.

It’s a failure of leadership, of course. We’ve been bullied and harassed through austerity into what we hoped would be a better place. And the minute we got there, they threw another tax at us — a badly designed and organised tax at that.

It may not be too late for leadership to assert itself. That requires, in the short term, a believable narrative, based on a real and sustainable vision — a story of how social justice can really live side by side with economic sustainability. Not a mantra, but a programme.

Real leadership would be spending its Christmas not just developing that narrative, but internalising it and preparing for a relaunch in the new year. A united and purposeful government, with a strong sense of where it wants to go and an honest appraisal of its past failings, can still offer some hope.

Otherwise, the field is wide open. I don’t believe we’re desperate for something new and shiny just for its own sake, but we’re hungry for leadership we can trust. There’s very little time left