Dr Martin Mansergh
Martin Mansergh, The View
The next 14 months in these islands will be dominated by two general elections. Some already claim that these elections are the most important ever. Looking back, most voters would find it hard to pinpoint particular ground-breaking elections. Probably, the two most important of the last 100 years were, in Ireland’s case, the 1918 General Election, which provided a democratic mandate for Irish independence, certainly outside North-East Ulster, and, in Britain’s case, the 1945 General Election, which ushered in the welfare state and the National Health Service.
While rosy prospectuses for ‘radical’ change and easing public pain figure large in election campaigns, the reality afterwards rarely matches the promise. The expectations created by the soaring rhetoric of Barack Obama as US Presidential candidate in 2008 have been only imperfectly fulfilled. The ‘democratic revolution’ that Taoiseach Enda Kenny proclaimed in 2011 referred to the changed make-up of the Dáil, not to a major change of programme.
Barring unexpected crises, there is usually more continuity than change between different administrations. The civil service, which advises on detailed practicalities, remains in place. Campaign promises do not mean that treaty and contractual obligations, however onerous, can be unilaterally repudiated except at ruinous cost. As the experience so far of Syriza in Greece shows, even a government elected on a radical left-wing platform faces serious constraints because of needing to retain the co-operation of partners and market confidence. Gains to be made from reconfiguring obligations, while worthwhile, tend to be modest, as Ireland’s experience shows. Game-changers seldom materialise.
Agenda
Generally, the ongoing agenda will accommodate some new policy initiatives for which an electoral mandate has been won, assuming they still make sense in Government. Coalition negotiations are an opportunity to dump awkward electoral baggage by the simple device of not including it in the agreed Government programme.
Caveat emptor, let the voter beware. But the electorate are not always innocent victims. Voters in effect invite competing bids for their support. Lobby groups see elections as golden opportunities to extract political commitments, the sincerity of which may not always be trusted, but which will cost serious support if reneged upon. Prior to elections, parties constantly carry out private opinion research, to tell them what voters want to hear. Unfortunately, the sum total of public expectations of what politics can deliver greatly exceeds available resources. Parties tend to claim too much credit, or receive too much blame, for developments that they are only partially responsible for. The most obvious example is the economic cycle with its upturns and downturns.
In the British General Election in May, no one is predicting the outcome with confidence. The days when the first-past-the-post system delivered a majority to the Conservatives or to Labour seem to have gone. In the past, British Governments have briefly depended on the votes of Northern Ireland MPs, Unionist ones in the case of the John Major government in 1995-7, Nationalist ones in the case of Jim Callaghan’s administration in 1979. Unlike then, because of abstentionism, less than a full NI complement will be taking their seats and exercising their votes. One difference that the SDLP makes is to represent the Nationalist community in the Westminster Parliament, continuing on a much reduced scale a long and honourable tradition going back to O’Connell, Parnell, Redmond and Devlin, including more recently Hume and Mallon.
One lesson from Eamon Phoenix’s masterly survey Northern Nationalism 1890-1940 is how the northern minority lost out during the passage of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, alias the Partition Act, because a sizeable Nationalist Party which might have influenced the shape of Northern Ireland was gone. This was the cost of withdrawing from Westminster and establishing Dáil Éireann in 1919, as part of an otherwise successful independence strategy for a 26-county Ireland. Sinn Féin’s abstention from Westminster today has no comparable rationale. Despite Republican difficulties about taking up Westminster seats, balanced community representation and leverage is needed there, particularly when majorities are tight, and welfare is to be protected.
The main consequence of a Conservative-led Coalition, apart from a potential dependence on DUP votes, is the uncertainty associated with a referendum by 2017, on Britain’s membership of the European Union. A ‘No’ vote would create unwelcome problems for Ireland, vis-à-vis its nearest trading partner, and for the common travel area. It would also remove one of the pillars of the Good Friday Agreement, shared membership of the EU, instead creating increased cross-border complications.
The position of Norway, Switzerland or Iceland outside the EU may not be suitable models for a heavily populated country like Britain with a wide range of interests. Churchill’s vision of a union of the English-speaking peoples may not attract the United States. UKIP is deluded, if it thinks that today’s Commonwealth could substitute for the EU.
Ireland needs to play its part in persuading Britain to stay at the European table, making it clear that Ireland will not be following, if Britain leaves. The type of pressures brought to bear on Scottish voters in the closing stages of the independence referendum will presumably resurface, if there is serious likelihood of a British exit.
A Labour-led Government dependent on SNP support would present an interesting scenario, with former Scottish leader Alex Salmond potentially a latter-day Parnell. Whatever the electoral outcome, it is premature to assume that the question of Scottish independence is settled.
For the Republic, it would be good if important national decisions were not viewed exclusively through the prismof next year’s election. Notwithstanding opinion polls, it will be surprising, now that the rewards of an unpleasant, prolonged and involuntary sacrifice are slowly coming through and austerity is easing, if the people decide to abandon stability altogether. Flamboyant independents (most are not) might not underpin much stability. Suggestions that they may be needed for government formation will simply increase their number. Voters will expect the new Dáil to make the best of whatever is the result, and necessity may make some previously declared preferences and exclusions non-operative.
