John McGuirk

Earlier this week, Stephen Spillane blogged about the potential for a new political party to emerge in the early part of this year, formed from the remnants of my old foes in Ireland for Europe. This new movement would be led by Pat Cox. Stephen acknowleges the obvious when he says that Cox didn’t invest his time, energy, money, and efforts in Lisbon 2 for the good of his heart, and I suspect that privately, the appointment of somebody else as Ireland’s EU commissioner will have wrankled.

That said, any political party led by Cox is doomed to failure. For one thing, it would be overly reliant on Cox himself, and that makes him as much of a liability as an asset. For another, Pat Cox’s political views are at almost the exact polar opposite of where most of the voters he needs are. He is a social liberal – but the voters who he would need to sustain a movement are socially conservative. He is a free-marketeer, and while this may attract the last dregs of the Progressive Democrats and a few disgruntled Fine Gaelers, he cannot build a movement that can sustain 10-12% of the vote without the support of the very people he has spent a lifetime railing against: the forces of conservatism, catholicism, and nationalism.

At the other end of the spectrum, Cóir are marching ahead with their plan to build a party capable of fighting the next election. Aside from the institutional problems involved (Cóir is ruled essentially by a politburo) which make it difficult to attract quality candidates; the economic message of Coir is and will be incoherent and nebulous. They are good at one thing only – speaking to people who already agree with them – and that makes success improbable, at best.

Elsewhere, I understand that several interconnected groups are trying to find a way to bridge the divide between the two extremes. I’m not confident. The right in Ireland is divided almost perfectly. Europe is a massive issue, and the unwillingness of economic conservatives to welcome social conservatives into the tent is another. The fact is that for any coherent alternative to emerge, Dana and Pat Cox and Marian Harkin and Declan Ganley would have to be happy together in the same party. If that happened, I think 20% and more of the electorate is there for the taking.

You know what sucks about this? The amount of talent that is there. There’s more intellect, talent, diversity, and ability on the Irish right than there ever has been or will be on the left. If these people could ever get together, they could be an incredible force.

Alas, they won’t. Snobbishness amongst one group, paranoia amongst another. I had high hopes that my old boss could bridge the divide – but Europe is just too visceral an issue for both him and the others for them to ever work together. Someday. Maybe. A boy can dream.