Is the Party Over?
Green Party TD Ciaran Cuffe was in Dun Laoghaire on Monday morning, I saw him walking to his Fiat
Cinquecento (one of the flashy, new ones) having made a deposit at the recycling centre in Glasthule. Always an amiable character, he stopped to chat with a local before getting in his car and pootling off, assumedly to his constituency office over the pet shop on Patrick St. I couldn’t hear the conversation (sitting guiltily behind 3.2 litres of grumbling Mitsubishi Pajero engine at the time), but despite the time that is in it for his party, Ciaran ended the chat with a smile on his face.
I voted for Ciaran last time I was able, and was happy to see the Greens get in, feeling that they were better inside the tent pissing out than the alternative. But as the party slowly swallows and chokes on its high-fibre morals, I find myself torn. If the general election was tomorrow, could I go Green again?
I voted Green last time I could (I can’t even remember if I posted second choice) because they were the only party that matched my outlook, and were the only dogma-free, human politicians I had dealt with while writing for Metro. You would ring up Ciaran Cuffe or Eamonn Ryan (Damien’s fave) for a quote and hear kids screaming in the background and dinner being cooked. There were no minders or bullshit. The conversations never happened in the back of a moving Mercedes, and never involved shouted figures or pointed rants.
But now? The Greens seem like a wart on a hand you wouldn’t dare shake. At a time when voter activism is at an all-time high and apathy has been banished, their dilution as a principled entity means I can’t see a single palatable option in the Irish political spectrum. Back in ’07, Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein were never getting my vote, despite some frank and interesting exchanges with local FF nominee Barry Andrews. Fiona O’Malley, the PD candidate, needn’t have bothered asking, and flavourless Fine Gael the same, particularly with that hapless goon Enda Kenny at the helm. Eamon Gilmore’s canvassers successfully put me off ever voting for Labour again. And aside from the eternally hopeful, personally impressive but fatally misguided Richard Boyd-Barrett (Socialist), it was Greens or bust. Since then, Labour and Fine Gael have had umpteen chances to stick the knife into Fianna Fail, and dropped the blade every time. Kenny can take a lot of the blame for that, an orator in love with his own voice, who places more emphasis on showmanship than substance, and constantly misses the point because he’s concentrating on fancy alliteration.
The Greens were always going to have to temper their socialist tendencies and grow up economically, and it seemed like they had done that, to some extent, when they joined hands with Bertie and skipped into the cabinet to make a deal. But it was always going to be tricky – ‘A Deal With the Devil‘, as Ciaran Cuffe famously said.
To use the words of another aptly-named band of eccentrics, They Might Be Giants, you can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only kidding, which the Greens are learning now, potentially at huge cost. I could see them suffering a PD-style loss next time around.
Ciaran, who’s been remarkably quiet of late, presciently remarked at the time of his ‘deal with the devil’ slip: ‘We would be spat out after five years, and decimated as a Party. But, … would it be worth it? Power is a many faceted thing.’
He was right on the money there, going by recent events, but if you choose to believe Eamon Gilmore, only it only took a year.
Said Gilmore today: ‘The Green Party is dead; the Green Party is beaten, and this is a sad day for this country’.
Last week Ciaran Cuffe hinted we could see the Greens walk out of government within four weeks, which would make it a very short turn at the reins of power. Was it all worth it?
3 comments
[...] Gilmore yesterday said the Green Party are dead. Markham used to vote for them and pretty much agrees with current sentiment about them. (Two links in one week Markham, fiver please) Meanwhile former TD Dan Boyle tells [...]
It is too simplistic to say “Coalition with FF killed the PDs, therefore coalition with FF will kill the Greens”.
The problems with the PDs went far deeper than coalescing with Fianna Fail. For example, they had a structural problems which meant the leadership was completely out of communication with the ordinary membership.
You’re right that the Greens will lose some of the “anybody-but-FF” vote. But they will pick up votes from other floating voters who considered them not ready for government before.
Will it have been worth it?
So far, ministers Gormley and Ryan have achieved tons in their departments, such as the massively increased funding for water services, higher insulation levels in the building regs, new insulation grants, the speeding up of civil partnerships legislation, etc.
It likely won’t kill the Greens, but it’s not always true that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Next time it comes to election, I’d be surprised to see the Greens as strong in terms of seats, and even more surprised to see them in power, particularly given the perceived strength of Fine Gael (shudder, Enda Kenny as Tee-Shock?)
Their accomplishments, seen through the grubby optic of a recession, might seem less frugal to the out-of-pocket worker who can’t afford the initial spend on some of their proposals. Their shortcomings will come back to haunt them.
There was plenty of squawking, too, that their civil partnership legislation didn’t go far enough for those to whom it mattered most.
They have snuk some good stuff in but have seemed worse than weak when it mattered, they have seemed fearful and more intent on hanging on to the reins for as long as possible. That’s what’s going to hurt them.
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