Every general election changes the political landscape to a greater or lesser extent, sometimes in ways that are not immediately obvious as the heat of the campaign still smoulders. This election was no exception, surprising participants and pundits by the resilience of Fianna Fáil, the failure of the smaller parties, and by the restoration of Fine Gael to its traditional status as the unchallenged second-largest party.
The favourite explanation of parties which did not do as well as anticipated in elections used to be that they had failed to get their message across. This cannot be claimed this time. There was a high turn-out and an even higher engagement by the electorate. Instead, the disappointed parties seem to have taken to blaming the voters who, in their view, were too conservative, fearful, even cowardly, to vote for them. They merely voted for selfish reasons to hold on to what they have. They wanted a change of government but no change in their personal circumstances.
The people have the final say in a democracy. By their own light, they did right for themselves on this occasion. They have a right to disappoint some parties and they may do so for a wide variety of reasons. They have indeed been conservative in a non-ideological sense and afraid of the change offered by Fine Gael, Labour and possibly the Green Party. Or they may be dubious about the competencies of those parties and the viability of their policies in less-good times. But they have had their say.
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It will be 25 years this winter since the electorate last voted in a Fine Gael/Labour coalition government. That is an eon in politics, where the cliched week is a long time. But, perhaps, it is not a long time in the collective memory of most of the electorate. The 1980s were a bad time in Ireland, with homeless young Irish people a conspicuous presence on London's streets and thousands of illegal Irish emigrants marooned in the United States unable to return for family visits. There was an air of depression overhanging the country. Mythical reconstructions of the past do not change the realities of those times, in which so many of us lived. Ireland was not a more caring, open, transparent, considerate place in earlier decades, as a succession of tribunal reports dealing with tax evasion and tainted blood products have demonstrated.
Fine Gael and Labour, in the alliance for change, failed to persuade the electorate that they would do a better job in government than the outgoing administration. Blaming the electorate for that fact is glib and self-serving. It will not help them get elected the next time either because their political diagnosis, as Pat Rabbitte admitted, was wrong. All of the smaller parties, from left to right, who were squeezed in the election need to do some soul-searching about their future. This would probably be helped if they stopped talking to themselves and like-minded people.
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Meanwhile, in its collective wisdom, the electorate may have handed Fianna Fáil something of a poisoned chalice. The incoming government seems certain to face tougher times than those of the last administration. The free lunch of exceptionally benign interest rates is over as the main euro-zone economies of Germany and France come out of their prolonged hibernation and rates may rise to greater heights than current forecasts predict. Allied to concerns about competitiveness and footloose international investment, these changes will transform the economic landscape.
In addition, the issues which prompted the most debate during the election campaign have not gone away either. Health is among the most prominent as well as being the most emotive and, for many people, a touchstone for society at large. Considerable advances have been made in areas like waiting lists and treatments for heart conditions. These facts should not be lost sight of in the constant ideological and other arguments about the areas where progress is badly needed now. Charlie McCreevy left an indelible mark on the voters' memory when he increased the health budget by 50 per cent and the service deteriorated. The health problem for the past 20 years has centred around structural change, like the consultants' contract. Mary Harney is the only politician who has begun to see, and address, the real issue.
A decade of unsurpassed economic growth has transformed the lives of very many people in this country, giving them lifestyle choices that were only available through emigration to wealthier places in earlier times. How some people exercised those choices - like the manner in which they vote - is their business. The important thing is that more of them engaged in the political process this time.
One of the paradoxes of economic progress, not just in Ireland, is that it is frequently accompanied by a general unhappiness and a consequent nostalgia for a fantasy past that we like to believe existed but are unlikely to have experienced. Nevertheless, many serious problems remain of providing adequate public services and, notably, of improving the lot of that 7 per cent of the population whom the ESRI reported last week were at risk of experiencing severe deprivation.
As we face into a new political and economic landscape, it would not do any harm for all of the political parties, winners and losers, to step back from the arguments, debates and personality clashes of the campaign and take a little time off to look to the future. This point should have particular application to the formation of the next government.