An electorate spurned both in Ireland and UK

IN the aftermath of the Liberal Democrats’ annihilation in last week’s local and regional elections in Britain, many questions have been asked as to why it happened. In Scotland, the nationalists romped to the first overall majority in the history of the devolved parliament in Edinburgh. They did this in spite of the fact that when Blair’s Labour set it up in 1999, they made voting proportional in order to prevent such a thing ever happening. Here, as in the rest of Britain, the Lib Dems lie in a crumpled heap following the ballot. Their attempts to introduce a form of proportional voting, the alternative vote, are similarly smouldering.
They have been punished for betraying their voters. In Ireland, Fianna Fáil were royally spanked by the electorate at the last General Election because they had been in charge, and largely responsible for, the biggest economic crisis since the foundation of the state. The Liberal Democrats simply went into coalition with the Tories under the guise of national interest and promptly compromised on most of their main political beliefs and values. Most notable among these was the question of introducing tuition fees for third-level education.
Mocked as the earnest, sandal-wearing set in British politics, the Lib Dem supporter and the party that represents them is generally ridiculed for not being able to take up a set position on an issue. They are a broad church, generally espousing liberal democracy and civil liberties; drawing from both centre left and right depending on the issue. For this reason, the party never really had any expectation of power. They were destined to remain on the sidelines unable to accomplish much but still with their principles intact. After the last election, this all changed. Nick Clegg and his MPs found themselves in the role of kingmakers all of a sudden with the smug, ever-smirking David Cameron offering them a deal from hell. Pass up the offer of getting down and dirty with the real politics of government and possibly bring about watered-down change in the name of their principles, or stand on the sidelines and wreck the party for everything by standing by their principles and refusing to form a coalition for the national good. We all know what happened next.
Having already addressed the British public’s inability to fathom coalition government in these pages, there is no need to do so again, what I am interested in is the reaction to this election result among British politicians.
Even from the ranks of the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats are being defended because, to paraphrase, there is no other way to go in these troubled times. This sounds very similar to what we have been hearing from Irish politicians in recent months and years. I am starting to wonder if a politics of policy and belief really exists anymore.
This is perhaps wrongly phrased. I am wondering if there is any politics in existence in Ireland or Britain, which strives to abide by principle rather than strive to adhere to the neo-liberal capitalist consensuses?
Deputy Joe Higgins has long been a poster boy for opposition to this consensus in Ireland. Following the last election, he was joined in the Dáil by a few other dissenting voices but their clamour is drowned out by the louder din of adherence and complacency.
Just as the Green Party in Ireland were punished last time around for their collaboration with the wrong crowd, so it seems the British Lib Dems have been taught a lesson in modern political reality. Like the Greens, they may find that the stains of bad association take many years to wash away, if they do at all.
In Ireland and Britain, the politicians of consensus tell those who elected them they must grin and bear the terrible austerity measures unjustly unleashed upon them by the very system that is now punishing them. Times will be hard for perhaps a decade to come, at the very least, and in the years that follow, the organs of state help for those on the margins will dwindle and eventually perish.
In a form of shock doctrine politics, the ruling politicians of Ireland and Britain are deconstructing the state and farming the future of the nation and population out to the private sector; the highest bidder.
We are told these things must happen if we are to survive. We are terrified by the potential alternative. We are ordered at the point of a financial gun to the head to seek solace and safety in the arms of the EU and the IMF who embrace us and rob our wallet all at once.
As the experience of the Greens and the Liberal Democrats has taught us all, there is a desperate thirst among voters for politicians and political parties who are willing to stand by their principles, their ideals and the policies for which people voted. When a party abandons these simply to gain a foothold in the halls of power, their betrayal will be acknowledged at the ballot box by those they sold out.
So what hope for change? Unfortunately, the opportunity for this has passed in Ireland. When offered the opportunity to bring it about through the ballot box, the population voted for the same old politics with a different coloured rosette on its packaging.
As the post-election period has shown, the new coalition is not very different from the old one. They slavishly follow the same path leading inevitably to the same results. It is indicative of how jaded the system is that so few candidates of genuine opposition stood for election at all.
When slight change or difference is chosen by people in the form of mild swings to unusual parties, the self-compromising actions of those parties send the voters rushing back into the arms of the establishment. As it has always been, those who constitute the establishment will happily further their own self-interest at the expense of the voters.