Usually, a new government is a process of subtraction. Take all the good stuff in the programme for government, subtract the large amount of it that just won’t happen, and what remains is the reality. But this time, it’s about addition, or even multiplication. The new administration will be far more radical than it consciously intends to be. The Greens probably have some grasp of this truth. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael almost certainly don’t. The success or failure of the Government will be determined by how quickly they realise just how bold they will be forced to be.
The word “historic” has been showered like confetti on the marriage of the two Civil War parties. To which the sensible response is “Yes, but so what?” The history in question already seems ancient. Vladimir Lenin said: “There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen”. In terms of the fundamental structure of Irish politics, we have had decade after decade where nothing happened. But in the 20 weeks between the general election of February 8th and the formation of the government on June 27th, decades have happened.
The opposition parties like to say that a government dominated by the same old parties does not represent the change the people voted for in February. This is fair enough – though of course “the people” voted many different ways. There was undoubtedly a sense, in that election, of patience with the old order snapping.
But change, in this tumultuous time, is not contained in political party manifestos or programmes for government. The world has changed all by itself. Coronavirus has upended society and altered assumptions in ways that usually come about only through wars and revolutions. It is not the alteration any of us wanted, but it is undeniable.
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It makes little sense, therefore, to talk about whether this will be a government of change. No other kind of government is possible or even imaginable. There is no “usual” in which business as usual is conceivable. Continuity has left the building. The question is not whether the new administration will be transformative. It is whether it will be capable of understanding and responding to the transformations that are already under way.
Three transformations
Any one of those transformations would be more than enough to be going on with, but we have three to deal with: the economic devastation caused by the pandemic; the climate crisis; and the looming consequences of a very hard Brexit. All of this is on top of a profound deficit in housing, healthcare, public services and infrastructure. Put this together and you face a stark truth: this Government has to do more than any of its predecessors since the 1920s. The task it faces is, in its scale, something like the nation-building of a century ago.
What the coronavirus has wrought, in Ireland as in almost every country, is a huge expansion of the state. Outside of the giant multinationals, there is not much of a private economy left. It is the State that is paying wages and directly or indirectly underwriting businesses. That support will have to continue for a long time, in one form or another. And in addition, the State will have to embark on a huge programme of infrastructural investment, job creation and direct funding of everything from universities to theatres. It will find itself, whether it likes it or not, essentially providing some kind of universal basic income guarantee.
We’re not in February any more. Much of what the State has taken on was not in anyone’s manifesto for the general election. The programme for government, stitched together from three of those manifestos, is a map of a country we no longer inhabit. It has lots of fine things in it, but the context in which they fit together is radically altered. The problem, of course, is that asking Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar to embody that radicalism is a bit like sending a soccer team out to play a hurling match or an atheist to say Mass. They haven’t trained for it and they don’t believe in it.
Changed world
Old habits of governance will not cut it in this changed world. We can’t afford either Fianna Fáil’s traditional cronyism or Fine Gael’s ideological lassitude in which, for example, the housing problem is left to the market to solve. The lack of accountability that has protected bad practice can’t go on. But at the same time, the urgency that the virus generated in the system has to be sustained. The pandemic made the impossible possible – the Government will have to be driven in every area by that same fierce sense of exigency.
Yet there is also opportunity. This Government will have to spend more money, but will also have more money to spend, than any administration has ever had in the history of the State. The European Central Bank and the European Investment Bank will make sure of that. That money is power. Deployed rigorously, fairly and sustainably, it will not unleash a wave of change. It will, rather, ensure that Ireland does not drown in the wave of change that has already been unleashed.