It becomes clearer that the next general election will be won by the platform of parties best able to present itself as left leaning. Like all elections, it will be decided by the sentiment of what is called the "urban middle class", the only segment of the electorate to vote consistently in its own interest, writes John Waters.
(Other categories of voter - rural, urban poor - tend to follow tribal allegiance or class politics, and change with reluctance.) The most important criterion for the urban middle-class constituency is the state of the economy, which by all accounts will still be thriving when the election comes around in about two years.
This explains most of what is currently going down on the political scene: why Fianna Fáil is developing eight-year-itch and lurching to the left, why Fine Gael has an identity crisis, why Labour is following Fine Gael's lead in, for example, backing Michael McDowell's reactionary Asbos (antisocial behaviour orders) scheme, why the Greens have discovered political chastity, why only Sinn Féin and the PDs seem not to seek some kind of ideological makeover.
To couch the issue in a rather outmoded parlance: most of the parties, especially the larger ones, are trying right now to decide whether they should present themselves as broadly left or broadly right, to make a pitch to the urban middle class.
The terms are, of course, somewhat unhelpful. To the extent they have any meaning, "right" signifies competence on the economy, "tough" on law and order, and, optionally, moralistic about personal values. "Left" means favouring higher social welfare (higher taxes, too, though this is not so frequently emphasised), and broadly "liberal" on issues like public order and personal values.
One reason these terms are politically meaningless is that the urban class vote is neither "left" nor "right", but interchangeably both. In periods of boom and bloom, the middle classes, feeling at ease with the world, tend to lean leftwards - rhetorically at least - and adopt a kind of noblesse oblige towards the "less well-off". This involves favouring increased social welfare and other socially directed measures, as long as this does not involve more taxes. In times of prosperity, also, the natural predilections of the middle classes for environmentalism, pacifism and social libertarianism come to the fore. When recession threatens, they tend to abandon any leftist pretensions in favour of recognisably "right-wing" agendas: lower taxes, workfare (remember that?), and "clampdowns" on immigration, hooliganism and so on.
This is why, right now, all parties apart from Sinn Féin and the PDs appear to be engaged in a process of ideological redefinition. Sinn Féin doesn't need to enter this ideological beauty contest because its unique selling point resides in its appeal to urban working-class voters (it has an altogether different kind of appeal for some middle-class voters). The PDs, meanwhile, know there's no point in trying to persuade anyone that they are anything but hard-hearted, and now seem happy to get by on the support of a small but mobilised element of middle-class voters who, somewhat to their credit, refuse to be mealy-mouthed about their self-interest.
Fianna Fáil nailed its colours to the mast with Bertie's "red interview" in this newspaper last year. It is clear the Taoiseach, with one eye on growth projections and maturing SSIAs, expects to find the urban middle classes in a benevolent mood as the summer of 2007 approaches. Hence Fianna Fáil's rewriting of its CV as it emerges from its decade of pragmatic attachment to the PDs. Fine Gael, forced to adapt, seeks to sell itself as the "rational", "tough" etc alternative. If Bertie had played to the right, FG, condemned to the ideological leftovers after FF has blitzed the buffet, would have moved left.
Labour is the saddest case of all. FF stole its clothes just as they were coming back into fashion. And, lumbered with a leader who has consistently repudiated FF, it can only claim them back by standing aloof. Otherwise, it must follow Fine Gael up the right flank, which would turn off the urban middle classes in their current mood. Moreover, with the Greens rejecting suitors in advance of the election, Labour is committed to a relationship that will seem arithmetically incapable of consummation.
Eight years ago, Fianna Fáil, conscious of a deficit in its appeal to the middle classes, embraced the PDs as a way of reassuring those with something to lose that it could be trusted with the family silver. Such guarantees are no longer demanded, so the next election will be the first for a long time when FF will face the electorate on petty much its own terms. The arithmetic likely to flow from that election will probably indicate a FF/Labour coalition. At that point, the "national interest" will kick in. Roll over Dick Spring and tell Pat Rabbitte the news.
We occasionally recall those words of Charles Haughey's about Bertie being "the most cunning", but mostly seem not really to believe it. It is time we started to give the Taoiseach more credit for deviousness.