Fianna Fáil: Fighting Fit or an Empty Suit?
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. That is C Northcote Parkinson’s most famous “law”, indeed often shorthanded to the only one: “Parkinson’s law”. But he articulated other “laws” in the articles on organisations and administration he wrote during the 1950s, combining wisdom with wit.
One is his law of triviality which states that the time spent on any item of an organisation’s meeting agenda will be in inverse proportion to its importance. Mr. Parkinson describes an imaginary Board meeting of an established business. A proposal to construct a nuclear reactor at an estimated cost of £10,000,000 (remember this was the 1950s when a Pound was worth a Pound) goes through on the nod, to be followed by a discussion about the construction of a bicycle shed for clerical staff costing £350 which gives rise to lengthy debate, exceeded in duration only by the deliberations on the suggested budget of 35 shillings (£1.75) for refreshments at staff committee meetings.
A variation of this law of triviality is Sayre’s “law”, named in honour of its author; political scientist, Wallace Stanley Sayre. This states that the intensity of feeling in any dispute is inversely proportionate to its importance, to which Sayre added the rider: “That is why academic politics are so bitter.”
Taken together, the two laws can help us to understand media treatment of politics in Ireland.
On the evening of 14 July, Newstalk’s Shane Beatty tweeted the following: “So tomorrow we have the Barry Cowen fallout, the Apple tax ruling, and a Cabinet decision on pubs reopening. Strap in folks.” As it happened, none of Mr. Beatty’s events lived up to the billing.
Although the prospect of and post-mortem on a senior political decapitation is normally box office material, Mr. Cowen’s comparatively quiet departure accompanied by only a single swiping tweet neutralised that issue. Ireland “won” the Apple case depriving the media of the “controversy” they had generally expected. And the Government postponed the green light to reopen for those pubs still closed since lockdown, smothering scope for lurid stories about thousands of revellers packed into pubs like sardines spreading the virus like wildfire across rural Ireland, scandalised mutterings about the power of the vintners, the prioritisation of pubs over schools and so on.
Mr. Beatty’s tweet last week did not mention another news event due the following day which affects most of us very directly and significantly — the Fiscal Advisory Report on the (un)sustainability of our public pensions system. Stories that encompass numerical complexity — requiring journalists to do a bit of homework, rather than just dialling “rent a quote”; are harder to play. This one sank with barely a ripple.
As I write, the media is mining, as best they can, the so-called “green list” of countries deemed safe for travel with “normal precautions”, an issue of as much relevance and significance to most of us as the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but about which we are all supposed to be convulsed by fear and confusion because of government indecision and ineptitude.
The media are like the famous tricoteuses of the French Revolution, arriving early to secure their regular spot in the Place de la Guillotine from which to view the procession of victims submitting to the blade, their knitting needles pausing only long enough for them to applaud each execution. Those who can, play on the pitch. Those who can’t, chirp from the ditch.
On Saturday last, The Irish Times was still poking around the ashes of the Cowen story for lingering reasons to be cheerless. Political Correspondent, Harry McGee, managed to pump up lots of swirling, speculative gloom and doom:
Cowen himself now looks he could join Martin’s growing number of adversaries. According to another of their number, as many as a third of the TDs would not support the Taoiseach. A boil has appeared that will not be easily lanced.
A significant minority now favour an alternative path, and with it, an alternative leader. Not quite yet, but certainly within the lifetime of the Government — perhaps at the moment when Martin steps down as Taoiseach at the end of 2022.
His colleague, Pat Leahy, poured cold water on this perspective:
While there are people in Fianna Fáil who are actively hostile to their leader and would knife him given the opportunity, I do not think the party has completely taken leave of its senses. Can you imagine the public reaction to Fianna Fáil if Martin was to face a challenge? Fianna Fáil is no longer the unassailable juggernaut of Irish politics, but it is not ready to consign itself to the political scrap heap just yet.
Still, there is no doubt that Fianna Fáil is mired in trouble. The Mail on Sunday poll, also last week-end, placed their support at 12%, behind Fine Gael on 38% and Sinn Féin on 26%, consistent with the trend of such polls since the pandemic took over our lives in mid-March. Paddy Power is offering 4/1 against Fianna Fáil winning the most seats at the next election, whenever that might be. Fine Gael are at 6/4, Sinn Féin at evens — which suggests that the bookie considers Fine Gael’s current poll numbers are frothy. But that’s little consolation to Fianna Fáil.
Whether there is any difference at all between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and, if so, what might that difference be, is an enduring staple for armchair political discussion. For me, once the mists of their civil war origins and antagonisms faded, the key difference until recently is that one of them has always been “in” government and the other has been “out” of it. Every government since independence was led by either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael and every election revolved to some extent around which it would be. That difference was eroded by the confidence and supply arrangement of 2016 and has gone altogether now with the formation of the present government containing both.
Of the two, Fianna Fáil has been by far the more dominant. It entered government for the first time in 1932. From then until 1989, admittedly in a narrower, less fragmented political spectrum than today, electoral politics in Ireland comprised Fianna Fáil against everybody else. The party fought every election on the platform of being able to offer united, single-party government and governed alone for 42 of those 57 years.
1989 was the first election following which it was obliged to coalesce with another party to form a government but it continued to be the dominant party within government for 19 of the 22 years until its spectacular collapse at the election of 2011.
Fianna Fáil’s enduring political hegemony was less a matter of ideology than of success breeding success. Like the Tories in Britain or the Christian Democrats in Germany, its appearance of being a “natural” party of government was self-sustaining until the great recession burst the bubble. Being in government, if not today then tomorrow, was its franchise.
There is room for argument about whether Fianna Fáil should have entered into the confidence and supply arrangement after the 2016 election but any misgivings were eased by the fact that Michael Martin had more than doubled their seat tally compared to 2011 from 20 to 44 and their vote from 17.4% to 24.3%.
But Mr. Martin is more obviously open to criticism for his tactics ahead of the last election. He seemed to have no ambition or expectation of doing anything other than replacing Fine Gael at the head of something similar to the previous confidence and supply arrangement. More important, ruling out the possibility of even discussing with Sinn Féin the possibility of sharing government proved a liability rather than an asset, for two reasons.
First, it was overly rigid. Whatever one’s perceptions of the whiff of sulphur surrounding Sinn Féin, it is over two decades since the Good Friday Agreement and they have bedded down in government in the North. Even in our noisy jungle of media tricoteuses, a thoughtful operator like Michael Martin should have been able to trace a distinct bright line between being open to discussions without commitment and projecting an unseemly and unprincipled desire for power. Mr. Martin’s cordial, official interaction last week with Michelle O’Neill sits uneasily with the notion that one risks the political equivalent of viral infection simply by talking to Sinn Féin.
Second, the possible taint from any engagement with Sinn Féin was substituted for by the actual taint of being lumped together with Fine Gael as a single cabal of “establishment” parties, amplifying the perception of Sinn Féin as the default non-establishment counterpoint.
But all of that is spilt milk. Looking forward, does participation in government offer hope for Fianna Fáil or is it simply the stoical fulfilment of the duty of decent elected politicians to deliver some kind of stable government? The jury is out, but the context is not overly encouraging.
First, given the current challenges, government is likely to be more a case of steering clear of the rocks than navigating a clear channel — and it will be hard for any party within government (apart possibly from the Greens) to appropriate any of the sparse kudos that might be going for itself without risking destabilising the government as a whole. As the largest but the most electorally vulnerable party, Fianna Fáil might hope the other parties share the view that it is better to hang tightly together for fear of hanging separately, Fine Gael might believe they have some optionality to play both sides of the street.
Second, for reasons best known to itself, Fianna Fáil has taken charge of three especially tricky domestic operational areas in housing, health and, because of the pandemic, education. The last presents the immediate test of achieving a smooth, sustainable and broadly complete re-opening of schools in September.
The other two will be a slog. Results will take thought, time, money, obsessive determination and immense powers of communication and persuasion. The “bar” of what would count as success is almost immeasurably high. Just as the poor are always with us, so too are problems in housing and crises in health. If there were radical improvements achievable simply by the stroke of a pen, one has to imagine they would already have been long since sniffed out and hunted down. Have all recent Ministers for Health and Housing been exceptionally dull or might the issues just be especially knotty? Have Fianna Fáil succumbed to complacent overconfidence in their superior abilities to buck the trend or do they have a genuine plan of action for these sectors? Time will tell.
And Fianna Fáil’s fourth operational ministry, Agriculture, doesn’t look likely to offer a steady stream of political success either, given the hefty government commitments on emissions reductions.
Third, there are the circumstances of Michael Martin himself. What stamp or signature can he leave within just two years where the three-party configuration and the balance of numbers leave him more in office than in power? He will not lead the party into the next election, probably won’t even stand for the Dáil. That will ease some of the normal pressures, but will it improve the performance? Will he step down from leadership co-incident with his resignation as Taoiseach? He should. Or will he expect to remain as leader a bit longer and hold another senior ministry? That would be hubris. Who will succeed him and when?
The last seems to me the most relevant question, because this government seems much more like Michael Martin’s last concert than the party unveiling a new playlist. After the decimation of 2011 and nine years since out of government, previous “senior” figures in the party like Willie O’Dea and Eamon O’Cuiv are past the point of no return, and those with reasonable aspirations to lead (there are some) have yet to build a strong nationwide profile.
Like post-war Britain, Fianna Fáil has lost an empire and is yet to find a role or a standout candidate to articulate a credible vision of the promised land to which (s)he will lead them — and us. It is certainly in the intensive care ward. Will its next destination be convalescence or the mortuary of the political scrap heap, as Pat Leahy described it?
Three pieces of advice to nudge it in the direction of the former.
First, the chorus of public moaning by those spurned for office is not helpful. Likewise Mr. Cowen himself. Did he really expect to be able to remain a Minister but also to be able to hide behind the alibi of “legal advice” to avoid saying anything more about his brush with the law — like John Delaney stonewalling an Oireachtais Committee? Self-serving whinging projects an image of Fianna Fáil as a rump of malcontents rather than a party of intent.
Second, one “alternative path” that will surely hasten the call to the undertakers will be to cast itself as the sole vocal defenders of rural Ireland generally, small farmers, country & western music and family values, against the advances of modern urbanistas. Or if Fianna Fáil grandees look in their mirrors and see Barry Cowen as their terrestrial Messiah, then they should join the queue of lemmings heading for the cliffs.
Fianna Fáil has got to be a catch-all, middle of the road party or it is nothing. The Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael axis may no longer be the fulcrum of Irish politics, but Fianna Fáil’s “base camp” objective must be to get its nose firmly in front of its ancient enemy.
Third, above all, it has got to project straightforward competence which places a heavy weight on the shoulders of Ministers Donnelly, Foley and O’Brien. The lesson of the past four months is that voters do not demand brilliance of their government. A reasonable plan supported by evidence; frequent, consistent, honest and open communication and steady, focused implementation delivering measurable progress, go a long way to earning respect and tolerance of inevitable imperfection.
