Irish election - a shift to the right? |
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Joe Craig |
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Ireland’s Green Party has gone into government with Bertie Ahern’s corrupt Fianna Fail. They have been bought off with two government jobs. Their new Minister for the Environment John Gormley will, among other things, be responsible for the water supply in Galway. The city’s residents and visitors aren’t able to drink the water because the aquifers have been contaminated precisely because of Fianna Fail’s corruption and refusal to invest in infrastructure. The 2007 election has been described as a “vote to stand still”, opening the door to a third consecutive term for a Fianna Fail led government - against almost all predictions. The party saw its seats in the 30th Dáil fall by only two to 78 and its first preference vote actually rise fractionally by 0.1% to 41.6%. Fine Gael enjoyed the biggest increase in both vote and seats, the former rising by 4.8% to 27.3% and the latter by 20 to 51. The Labour Party did badly losing one seat and 0.7% of its vote to finish on 20 seats with 10.1% of the vote. This is a very bad result reflecting an inability to recover from the disastrous 1997 election when the party was punished for its coalitions with Fianna Fail (and then Fine Gael) following its “Spring tide” when it won 33 seats. The Greens may have increased their vote by 0.9% to 4.7% but they did not achieve the 6 to 8 per cent of the opinion polls. Sinn Fein also did badly, actually losing a seat, almost losing another, and only increasing their vote by 0.4% through standing more candidates in more constituencies. Considering they had confidently expected to win at least 10 seats this is a major set back that has delivered a critical blow to their entire strategy of being in office North and South and having some clout when being there. Prominent among the casualties were Seamus Healy and the Socialist Party’s Joe Higgins. The SP also failed to get Clare Daly elected in North Dublin. Generally the left might console itself with the thought that it generally held its vote, with a good result for the SWP front in Dún Laoghaire. But others did not do so well and the failure of Joe Higgins will reflect general disappointment, this also reflecting an electoralist fixation on seats as opposed to the quality and quantity of the vote. How can such a conclusion be drawn? A rightwards drift can be seen in the evolution of those parties that many still judge to belong to the left. The Labour Party’s platform endorsed tax cuts for the middle class and the current low tax on capital. The Greens also accepted the latter and Sinn Fein kicked off its campaign by dropping its marginally progressive tax increase proposals on corporations and those earning in excess of 100,000 euro a year. The latter party’s rush to the right has been the greatest of any party over the last number of years and thus arguably done more to shift general politics to the right than any other. All these parties signalled their compatibility with the reactionary policies of the two main parties by touting themselves as coalition partners, something Sinn Fein for example had not done in previous Southern elections. In general terms even the manifestos of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael were noted as promising less on poverty reduction and on health provision than those of 2002. The Irish economic boom is ending and further attacks on workers’ interests will be accelerated by this election result. But its end will also begin to end illusions that property will make everyone rich or that some redistribution by taxes will cure structural inequality and the mass of social problems that exist. Workers, at different times and in different places, will fight back. The task of socialists will not simply be to support their demands or generalise their struggle. It will be to give them some political leadership and a political alternative. The truth is that this election recorded a shift to the right. The shift is neither decisive nor catastrophic. |
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