It’s housing all the way in the next election. Isn’t it?
Housing, housing, housing – that’s what the next election will be about. Right across the political spectrum in a striking unanimity among politicians, observers and commentators, the analysis is the same: it’s the housing issue that will decide the next election. Surely such a consensus could not be misplaced. Er, could it?
Well. Let’s look at it from a few different angles. There is certainly extensive polling evidence that housing is right up there at the top of voters’ concerns, for sure. In repeated polls for The Irish Times, and for other media outlets, housing is at or near the top of people’s concerns when they are asked about their voting intentions. So it must be housing that will decide it.
Beware long-term predictions about election campaigns bathed in the warm balm of their own certainty, though; look at the last two decades.
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The 2007 general election was supposed to be about holding Bertie Ahern to account in the age of the tribunals; it turned out to be about economic issues, with voters deciding that they were rather more concerned about the country’s finances than they were about Bertie’s (as it turned out, Bertie’s were in better long-term shape).
The 2011 election was supposed to be about punishing Fianna Fáil for the crash and finding a way forward, and it was: no argument there. But six months before the election it was the Labour Party that was supposed to be doing much of the punishing – Gilmore for Taoiseach, anyone? In the event it was Enda Kenny, and his 76 seats who replaced Fianna Fáil.
Five years later, the 2016 election was supposed to be about the economy; it turned out to be about punishing Fine Gael and Labour for the years of austerity. Kenny promised to “keep the recovery going”; instead people fled from Fine Gael and Labour because they weren’t feeling the benefit of the recovery in their daily lives. It was about the economy all right, just not in the way Fine Gael thought it would be.
The 2020 election was supposed to be about Brexit; it turned out to be about housing and – people forget this – the pension age.
But these sketches are all gross oversimplifications. With millions of voters, a general election is never about one thing – even housing. What the repeated confounding of expectations does demonstrate, however, is that our politics is increasingly unpredictable, and election campaigns matter enormously. A quick reread of the last few editions of How Ireland Voted, the indispensable account and analysis of every Irish election, underlines this.
“Elections in Ireland,” write editors Michael Gallagher, Michael Marsh and Theresa Reidy in their introduction to the 2020 edition, “used to be rather predictable affairs”. They are certainly not anymore.
So what can we know about the next election now, maybe 10 months, maybe 14 away from it? Well, it is certain that housing will be a big issue. But it will not be the only issue. And something that is so consistently prominent for such a long time – it just seems to me that most people will have made up their minds about housing. It’s unlikely to explode in the campaign in the way that pensions did at the last election.
There’s also another aspect to the way the housing issues interacts with electoral politics, I think. We know that lots of people think housing is a huge issue, and want to see the housing crisis solved. But we also know that when new housing developments are proposed, there is often significant objections in the relevant locality (often championed by politicians who regularly demand action on housing). There is inevitably a difference between voters in different situations – those trying to get on the housing ladder, and those on various stages of it. It is reasonable to assume that their own economic interest will figure in their political decision-making of many voters. Because it nearly always does. Expect warnings from Sinn Féin’s opponents about the party’s desire to bring down house prices to continue – every Government TD and Minister now mentions it in every Dáil speech, every media interview.
What other issues could take off in a general election campaign? The economy, for sure. Like it did in 2007 in favour of the then government, and it did in 2016 against the incumbents. The tug of war between the reassurance of stability and the promise of change; or the failures of the status quo and the dangers of experimentation; characterise it as you will.
Or healthcare. Or pensions, maybe. Or childcare, or nursing homes. All have the potential to ignite in the white heat of a general election campaign.
Or immigration. The local opposition to putting asylum seeker or refugee centres in some places – not all, by any means, but some – is an electoral tinderbox, as I suspect we will see at the local elections in June.
To say the Government is floundering on the issue is an understatement. But governments everywhere are, caught between the unease – and in some places, fierce opposition – of communities to the arrival of refugees and the State’s legal (and moral) obligations to accept them, at least initially.
Right now the best thing the Government has going for it – apart from more or less unlimited financial resources to throw at the problem – is the willingness of its own backbenchers to stoutly hold the line under fierce pressure. Tipperary Fianna Fáil TD Jackie Cahill demonstrated commendable backbone when questioned about Roscrea on Morning Ireland on Wednesday. There are many others like him. Unlike Ministers, Cahill and his colleagues are unprotected from the political heat generated by the issue; their superiors should not take this practical political leadership for granted.
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