John McGuirk

There is nothing the Green Party loves more than banning things or raising taxes. Indeed, I challenge anybody to name three Green initiatives in Government that do not directly involve banning something or increasing taxes on something. The latest – and by far the one with the greatest long-term potential damage to our democracy – is the proposed ban on corporate donations to political parties.

The arguments against the ban are legion, but have not been aired with any conviction by a political class terrified of a media environment which has turned “corporate donations” into a synonym for “the Galway tent”.

Hostility to corporate donations and hostility to business go hand in hand. The basic premise of the ban is that corporate donations are immoral because they may lead to corporate influence, and that corporate influence is completely undesirable. Corporate influence is seen as undesirable because corporations pursue profit, and – here’s the kicker – profit is not in the public interest, but in the private interest. As such, corporate donations represent influence by individuals and entities trying to sway politics and public policy towards their private economic interests.

This is the logic of the Green party – that profit is not in the public interest and that profit-making entities are not to be trusted. Banning corporate donations is an attempt to “purify” the political system.

The ban raises several important questions, though – questions that proponents of the ban don’t want to answer. First, if not corporations, who will fund our political system? You and me? Is the taxpayer to be expected to fund political entities and ideas that he or she finds anathema? Is a liberal lesbian Labour-supporting woman from Killiney expected to pay taxes that go to fund Cóir, should they ever find themselves in elected office? Is a pro-life Protestant expected to subsidise Ivana Bacik’s campaigns?

Second, is it fair that rich environmentalists like (to take a hypothetical example) Duncan Stewart should be able to give thousands to the Green Party, while Corporations who pay their fair share in taxation are forbidden from donating to a pro-business party? The Government has no right or moral authority to deem some political convictions more moral than others. Going down this road is to essentially say that in this country we regard all business as intrinsically immoral, and all corporate donations as an exercise in moral corruption.

Third, what is a corporate donation, anyway? If Michael O’Leary gives money to a political entity that supports transport deregulation, how is that any less “suspect” than Ryanair doing the same? Or are we to extend the ban to business people as private citizens, too?

Fourth, what does this do to our political system? Is it not an act of gross protectionism? If a new party wishes to form from outside the system and make an impact, how does this help them do that? Suppose we ever reach a point where we’re losing jobs and investment because of an anti-business consensus in the political system – how does a new party that seeks to correct that consensus have a chance if business is forbidden from supporting it?

Fifth, what about Labour? This ban prohibits donations from trades unions. If business deserves a voice, does not the worker, too? I might not like trades unions, but giving them a strong political voice is good for the many people they represent, and good for those of us who instinctively lean the other way. We should have to take their concerns into account, and their financial power ensures that we must.

Sixth, what does this say about our politicians? The logic of this ban is not only that business is corrupt, but that our politicians are equally, if not more corrupt. We’re essentially saying that we cannot trust pro-business politicians because they must have been bought; that we cannot trust Labour politicians because they must be owned by the Unions, and that we cannot trust basically any politician because they may have taken money from a builder once.

This is the Green Party telling us that we’re all of us immoral, and that any interaction we have with the political system must therefore also be immoral. It sends a signal to job creators that politicians are forbidden from accepting their support. It says that the same people who the Government not one year ago during the Lisbon referendum touted as guardians of our economic well-being (Intel, Ryanair, etc) are now untrustworthy and must be kept away from politicians lest they corrupt them with the same agenda that they’ve just finished touting.

It says to investors that the country is ant-business. It says to business that the country is a political closed shop. It says to voters that politicians are corrupt, yet tells voters that these corrupt politicians won’t be able to find a way around the new law. It treats us all like fools.

This is the Green Party in Government. Pick something you don’t like, and ban it. Pick something you don’t know about and tax it. Pick some boondoggle that will never work and subsidise it. It’s the politics of treating us like children, and it’s the politics of people who haven’t a clue about anything beyond the dogmatic rites of their hokey, quasi-religious, creed.

One can easily understand – and empathise – with Lucinda Creighton’s frustration.  Irish politics is not – to put it mildly – overburdened with either vision or talent, two things which even her harshest critics would have to concede she possesses.

That Fine Gael have allowed this degree of alienation to exist between the leadership and their Deputy from Dublin South East is a problem for the party, one which calls into question Enda Kenny’s once-vaunted man-management skills and one which threatens to blow up in the party’s face at any time, as was demonstrated this week.

To be fair, Lucinda cannot claim to have been overlooked by her leader after her election. She was handed the job of European Affairs spokesperson – a job which played to her career-long obsession with all things European, and gave her the chance to establish a major profile for herself in the Lisbon referendum which at that stage still lay ahead. Lucinda could and should have taken advantage of that job and used it to build an image of competence and political skill. She did not, however, emerge as a major player in either of the two campaigns that proved neccessary to get the treaty over the line. Whether that is symptomatic of somebody who didn’t seize the moment or somebody who was stifled by her leadership is something that could be debated.

I know Lucinda quite well. It’s no secret that I worked quite hard to get her elected. She possesses many qualities I admire – passion, conviction, and a coherent and ordered view of how society should be run.

(Having a coherent view of how society should be run is something too often derided as “ideology” in Irish discourse, as if having a set of guiding principles is a bad thing. It’s one of the most dysfunctional traits of our polity that such people are regarded as outside the mainstream, while those who adopt any principle, so long as it is popular, are regarded as sensible and moderate.)

However, that conviction too often expresses itself as stubbornness, the passion is too often turned to visceral loathing of opponents, and the worldview is, from time to time, corrupted by blind adoration of all things European. Those are faults, to be sure. Yet those people who regard Lucinda as immature or naive are the ones making the error – for she is neither. She is first and foremost a conviction politician, who (rarely for an elected official) genuinely doesn’t care all that much about being “liked”. She is secondly absolutely fearless – she doesn’t get hurt by criticism in the way most of us do. And finally, she is relentless. If she decides that she wants something, she will concentrate on achieving it 24/7.

All of which is to say the following: Lucinda has, I suspect, crossed a rubicon in her own mind. She has realised, possibly belatedly, that she cannot expect a great deal of national party support for her own re-election campaign, and that she can probably forget about advancement within the party under the current regime. Whether this is because of her own lack of loyalty or Enda Kenny’s incompetence is largely irrelevant. She’s decided that she’s going to look after herself, because nobody else is going to do that. She’s decided that she’s going to say the things that she needs to say to get re-elected in her own constituency. And she’s decided that she’s going to say what she thinks is best for the country, regardless of what position her party holds.

As somebody who’s fought Lucinda, and fought alongside her, I suspect that the lady is not for turning. And in many ways, it’s refreshing to have somebody like that in national politics. In another way, you have to hope she’s not headed for the cliffs.

You know, this is actually quite catchy.

“All it takes is a rake and a hoe”. Take it away, Trevor:

I’ve never understood why people do these big studies of 136,000 odd people in 80 countries. Well, I do, if it’s to research things like how to combat hereditary illnesses and the like, but not studies that tell us things that most people with an ounce of common sense could figure out for themselves. Still, sometimes the most pointless studies contain absolute gold, my friends.

Take this one. The University of Leicester have studied 136,000 people across 80 countries, and have discovered the shocking information that many people who consider themselves to be “left-wing” or “liberal” are, in fact, conservative or right of centre. This is not news to most of us, but one would hope that a study like this one might shed some light on the reasons why. Alas, we get only this:

“The most startling result is that the more educated tend to believe that they are more left-wing than they are measured as being,” said Dr Rockey. “That is, well-educated individuals are more likely to think that they are quite left-wing but actually believe things that compared to the rest of the population would make them comparatively right-wing…..

…..Dr Rockey said one speculative explanation is that people may hold on to their perception that they have left-wing views, but that over time as their circumstances and social network changes their actual political opinions drift rightwards.”

Sure. Except that this misses the point entirely. What this study is really telling us is that political labels carry much more to them than a simple collection of policy choices. They also carry all kinds of socio-cultural baggage. So, if you’re somebody brought up in a society where “conservatives” are stupid, and “right wing” is a dirty word, you’re more likely to identify as a fluffy “caring” liberal, even though you’re nothing of the sort. The lesson here? There are bucketloads of you out there, identifying yourselves as intellectually and morally superior liberals, even as you’re pining away for tax cuts. Which, if true, I think is kind of funny.