The campaign has been precisely the kind you’d expect in a context where the most fundamental decision facing the country is avoided, and where the real decision-makers don’t run for election. Informed opinion from left to right suggests that some form of default is inevitable. The broad strokes of the ‘austerity’ policies trumpeted by Fine Gael, and bashfully coded by Labour, are dictated by the terms of the IMF-EU agreement. So despite the fact that the political landscape will be changed significantly by this election, there is more than a hint of The Apprentice about it all. The candidates can swear all they like about their commitment and liathróidí, but Bill isn’t going to let them do any real business.
And we all know what happens when the apprentices get smacked around the head with penny apple wisdom. They turn on each other. That is our social future.
We have heard endlessly from the big parties and their media cheerleaders about a turn away from ‘auction politics’. No such turn away has happened; the nature of the auction has changed. In this auction, you’re not told what precisely you are buying. We are all promised pain, but nobody admits that the scale of the ‘pain’ required by the austerity lockdown, and the unjust impact on the poor, will rip the social fabric apart.
Labour may well give a Pat Rabbitte sigh and participate in this historical re-shaping of the state. For Fine Gael, that’s all part of the fun.
Gavan is Lecturer in Media in NUI Maynooth, and a contributor to Crisisjam on Politico.ie.
