Mick Clifford: Are Sinn Féin, the Soc Dems and PBP turning left or just being left behind?
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Wherefore the left? On Thursday, People Before Profit launched its plan for a broad, left-wing government designed to take the reins of power after the next election.
As of today, it is unclear whether People Before Profit will still be People Before Profit at the next election. Another known unknown is whether the people who front People Before Profit will have left to form another entity, such as the Non-Profit People’s Front, by the time of the election.
The smart money says People Before Profit will, at some point in the future, implode over passionate disagreements on the minutiae of policy, simply because they’ve been down that road so many times before. And therein lies one of the big problems with the left in Irish politics.
Right now, this country has never been more receptive to the idea of a left-wing government that doesn’t include Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. The polls say so, and the trends are in that direction.
UCD political scientists Aidan Regan and Stefan Muller argued cogently in a 2021 academic paper that “the average Irish voter increasingly self-identifies on the centre-left…we think that this trend is a significant structural shift that reflects a growing left-right ideological split among the electorate and a trend that will increasingly impact on Irish politics.”
That sounds about right. But are we there yet? Hardly.
A confluence of events and the overriding trend has ensured that the main party now identified on the left in Irish politics is Sinn Féin. Some posit the suggestion that party is nationalist rather than left wing, but the polls suggest that such a distinction does not bother large sections of the electorate.
Political academic and pollster Kevin Cunningham has pointed out that the Shinners' growing popularity is based on opposition to Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil rather than any specific attraction to the party itself.
With a proper strategy, and with a fair wind behind it, there is the possibility that the numbers could add up for an anybody-but-the-civil-war- parties shot at the big time. So what about the parties Sinn Féin would have to gather round to form this left-wing government?
Two of them had big days out this week. The launch of the People Before Profit blueprint took place in an appropriately tiny room in Buswell’s Hotel, opposite the entrance to Leinster House.
Press Conference: The Case for a Left Government https://t.co/J6mwgpks2v
— People Before Profit (@pb4p) March 2, 2023
The curtain looking out on the street was pulled, one couldn’t help thinking, to better keep the real world at bay.
Inside, the temperature was hotter than hell.
Here’s a conclusion about what would befall this benighted isle in the event of a “left-wing government” taking the reins.
“We know from other countries that as capitalism decays, the wealthy will use far-right and fascist gangs who use spurious radical rhetoric to divert anger onto social scapegoats such as migrants, gay, or trans people. In the very final analysis, they will deploy the police and the army to move against elected left-wing governments, as they did in Chile when the first self-proclaimed Marxist president, Salvador Allende, was elected.”
All that one can say at the end of that is "God save Ireland".
But what about the mundane yet far more relevant stuff that is supposed to form the core of a left-wing agenda? One might have expected the blueprint to hone in on the main planks of economic inequalities that exist in our society, namely property and inheritance.
Well, no, it didn’t. They want to radically overhaul what is, by the standards of any western country, a property tax. This radical overhaul consists not of increasing the tariff, but abolishing it, just to widen the gap between homeowners and a younger generation who must rent at exorbitant prices or live with their parents.
As for inheritance, the People have no plans to touch a system in which up to €355,000 can be inherited tax-free. Presumably, there would be riots among the young in working-class communities if the better-off, who receive a big windfall in middle age, had to forego a little in tax. The only hope is that when, as they inevitably will, the Non-Profit People’s Front break away from People Before Profit, they might look at genuine left-wing policies which add up to common sense.
The other event on the left this week was the appointment of Holly Cairns as the new leader of the Social Democrats.
On the face of it, this is highly progressive. Ms Cairns has shown herself to be competent and a solid communicator. Her age makes her the only party leader drawn from, as she put it herself, “the first generation to be worse off than our parents”. This can serve to widen the appeal of politics and engage younger potential voters.
At her inaugural press conference on Wednesday, Ms Cairns was asked about any possibility of a merger with the Labour Party. Reportedly, the question drew boos and jeers from the assembled party faithful, as if some of them thought they were at the Chrismas panto.
“It’s a categoric no,” Ms Cairns responded. “Trust has been broken between people and the Labour Party.”
Back at the People Before Profit launch, Richard Boyd Barrett said something similar, and added that the same applied to the Green Party, which had gone into Government “not once but twice”.
There is no doubt but that Labour made mistakes around the 2011 general election, particularly promising what it couldn’t deliver. The Greens, it could well be argued, are actually punching well above their weight in the current Government, even if their kindred spirits on the left consider that coalescing with FF and FG amounts to treason.
By contrast, the Soc Dems, after the last election, could have gone into government and attempted to effect change, but obviously didn’t like the lie of the land at the time, what with a pandemic and the prospect of serious headaches in attempting to govern. Better to remain ideologically pure on the Opposition benches than attempt to implement policies which are supposed to define the party.
There is certainly room for improvement there under Ms Cairns’ stewardship.
So there stands the left at the moment — divided, imbued with an element of conspiracy theory silliness at one end and pettiness at the other.
There may well be an appetite for a left-wing government, but as things stand, the politicians who claim to want one would do well to get over themselves and focus on the task.