Notes On The Front

The Anti-Politics

The worrying thing about Peter Casey’s campaign was that it was unplanned.  Having spent weeks hovering around two percent, he stumbled into his controversy on the Travelling community.  Such was the outcry he temporarily withdrew from the contest.  However, he apparently received enough that he came out of isolation to talk about the hard-working Irish, paying for everything and getting nothing in return, the alarm-clock people, the culture of entitlement and welfare-dependency – all in the last few days.  He ended up with over 23 percent.

Now imagine if all this was planned from the very beginning, that his starting platform encompassed these issues and more.  Imagine if went on about how we were forced to pay for banks, how we had to ‘control’ immigration, how the EU is taking power from the people (insert your favourite complaint here).  What might his support have been?

There’s been a lot of commentary deconstructing this vote – what it represents (racism?), who it represents, its long-term political impact.  There’s been exaggeration and dismissal.  One Minister called Casey voters moaners.  However, with nearly one-in-four voters supporting Casey, dismissal and name-calling doesn’t help us understand.

We can describe Casey’s vote as anti-politics – the rejection of traditional politics, institutions and discourse.  Hence, the epigrammatic ‘he speaks the language of the people’; ‘he connects with ordinary folk’, ‘he’s not afraid to say what people think.’

This rejection emerges out of the de-politicisation of public space:

‘The New Right Project of the last few decades – neoliberalism – has attacked the public domain in the name of free markets and market discipline.  Public choice theorists have positioned politicians and civil servants as self-interested rent-seekers.  Deregulation, privatisation, and audit have removed power and responsibility from public actors.  Why should people engage with formal politics when those involved are not to be trusted and no longer powerful?’

Therefore, in a contest for a ceremonial office in which the winner was already known, people could vote with few consequences.  And many used it to express a frustration at a stifling political consensus, crystallised in a supply-and-confidence agreement between the two largest parties playing out a mock battle of Government and Opposition. 

Anti-politics defies neat ideological categorisation.  Casey can go on RTE radio and attack the greed of the one percent and even describe himself as a socialist-capitalist symbiosis.  We can call it a right-wing vote, even a far-right vote, but there were not insignificant strands of anti-politics in the anti-austerity demonstrations a few years ago.  What ties all this together is an inchoate ‘anti-establishmentism’:  the juxtaposition of a corrupt elite (liberal establishment, the rich, cosmopolitans) who exploit a ‘pure’ people.  Ironically, Casey victimised the Travelling community but many people who voted for Casey see themselves as victims. 

It’s not that Casey’s vote will result in a new party or movement – though Gemma O’Doherty is already calling on people to organise ‘anti-corruption’ candidates for the next locals and Europeans. It’s that it may infect political culture in subtle, indirect and subterranean ways, awaiting a clever, opportunistic leader to exploit people’s legitimate concerns.  And that’s when the danger would become real.

Currently, the Left is incapable of meeting this challenge – whether to channel people’s understandable frustrations into a more positive politics or to challenge the more reactionary elements it contains.  The Presidential campaign was one more example of that.

Michael D. Higgins showed that a life-long politician of the Left, a principled proponent of progressive causes, thoughtful, intelligent and capable of reaching a broad range of the population in all social constituencies, can win national office not just once, but twice - the latter in handsome fashion. 

What does that say for the fragmented Left, stagnating in the polls?  Some supported the President, some opposed him and others abstained.   President Higgins is holding up a mirror to us:  what is it that he can do that we seemingly can’t?  What is it that he is saying that we’re not?  More importantly, how is it that he instils confidence in the majority of people and we don’t?

Hopefully the Presidential election will force progressives and the broad Left to seriously reflect on the nature of anti-politics – both its symbols and its underlying narrative.  But just as importantly, we need to begin constructing a politics that can convince people, inspire their confidence, and seriously challenge for power – to persuade them that politics itself has the power to resolve problems collectively, and reverse the marketisation of people’s economic and social relationships.

A big ask but at least we have one important asset – for the next seven years we have a President who understands these issues.

Why I am Supporting President Michael D. Higgins

Many people will have many reasons for supporting President Higgins.  I would like to highlight one small example which, for me, encapsulates the President’s service to the country – a service that stretches back decades.

At Concern’s Worldwide 50^th Anniversary Conference in Dublin in September of this year, the President addressed the issue of the arms trade.  And without equivocation he identified the drivers of this immoral activity.

 ‘ . . . Permanent Members of the Security Council [have embarked] on a new arms race, and the arms industry now exports weapons of death and destruction for use in Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Yemen . . . the five Permanent Members of the Security Council, entrusted with the maintenance of international peace and security, today account for three-quarters of the worlds arms exports.

‘ . . . 22 million Yemenis are now in desperate need of humanitarian aid and protection. Yet even as the United Nations seeks a peaceful political solution, the conflict in Yemen is actively sustained by the sale of arms and by the support of some members of the Security Council. It is a stark example of the triumph of the diplomacy of transaction, and of narrow national interest, over the diplomacy of the common good embodied by the Charter of the United Nations.’

It is not so much what he said, which every right-thinking inhabitant of this planet would applaud loudly.  Nor is it that he could have played it safe in front of the audience he was addressing – focusing on the work of Concern.  There is a more provocative context.

The Irish government launched its campaign for one of the revolving seats on the UN Security Council in the summer – only a few weeks before the President’s comments above.  It is difficult to know what the substance of that campaign is, what platform the Government is putting forward, how it will work for a peaceful and democratic world.  The Irish Times was a bit dubious:

'What [the Government] should not do is fall back on style over substance. With that in mind, the decision to launch the bid in New York this week by inviting every ambassador at the UN to a free U2 gig will raise some eyebrows.'

Regardless, the President did not tailor his comments to fit in with a nebulous government campaign.  He was direct and unequivocal – it is the UN Security Council’s Permanent Members themselves that are spreading war and devastation despite the Charter they are nominally committed to upholding.  I wonder what the reaction in Government circles was. 

And this leads to another interesting issue.  The Presidency is highly circumscribed and not only in its constitutional powers.  The Taoiseach’s department must approve the President’s every speech; he or she is accompanied on every trip by a governmental official.  So how did President Higgins get away with his condemnation of the UN Security Council members at the very same time that the Government is trying to win the support of those same members for a seat?  Here are two theories:

• First, the Government minders don’t quite get it.  Just as dissident writers resorted to code-words, metaphors, and allusions to get their works past the censors in authoritarian countries, it may be that some people in Government circles don’t get what the President is saying (maybe they don’t quite get the powerful juxtaposition  of ‘diplomacy of transaction’ and ‘diplomacy of the common good’). 
• Or, second, they dare not attempt to thwart a popular and highly-respected President.

Whatever the reason, President Higgins was attacking austerity and neo-liberal policies even as the Government was pursuing these same policies; he has brought attention to the ecological peril the planet faces even as the Government is failing to meet its climate change targets (failing badly); the President has championed the homeless even as homelessness rises under the Government’s ill-conceived Rebuilding Ireland programme.

Whatever the reason, the public get the President and it is clear they want more.

The President’s comment about the arms trade occurred only a few weeks ago.  If I were to go back through all the similar initiatives he has undertaken over his first term I’d have to write 24/7 up to polling day and beyond.  This is just one example of a President that shows no sign of slowing down.

That is why President Michael D. Higgins deserves to be re-elected on October 26^th.

The Budget in Three Charts

After all the post-budget commentary – the articles, interviews, studio debates – I’ll attempt to summarise the broad direction of the budget with three charts based on the detailed tables at the end of the budget’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook.  These are the Government spending projections.  I have used the GDP deflator for inflation and the IMF’s population projections.

Capital Investment

After the slashing and burning of public investment during the austerity years the projected increase in capital spending is welcome.

Investment is projected to increase by nearly 50 percent in real (i.e. after inflation) terms per capita out to 2023.  Of course, we still need a debate over the best use of that money but the large envelope is certainly what the economy needs.

Public Services

Projected spending on public services (Government consumption), however, tells a far different story.

The Government’s projection will result in a real cut of nearly 8 percent in spending on public services per capita.  This will occur at a time when a rising age demographic will require even more age-related expenditure.

Social Protection

Social protection payments will experience a similar trend as spending on public services.

Like public services, the Government’s projection will see total social protection payments cut in real terms per capita.  This includes both cash transfers and benefits-in-kind.  Again, this is taking place against rising pension payments.

* * *

The story is simple.  The increase in capital spending is being funded by real cuts in public services and social protection.  We should note, however, that the Government has given itself some wriggle room.  They have pencilled in €3.6 billion in ‘unallocated’ spending in 2023.  But even if this were to be divided between public services and social protection, they would still experience real cuts.

And the Government still has fiscal space that it doesn’t intend to use.  But dipping into that could undermine their plans to run strong surpluses.

So these are just projections.  And there is always the danger of external shocks.  Even a ‘soft-Brexit’ could see revenue decline and spending rise (through business closures and job losses).  In the event of a ‘hard’ or ‘no-deal’ Brexit, all bets are off.

The point here is that the Government’s starting point is to squeeze public services and social protection to pay for increases in public investment.  That’s their strategy.  It may not finally come to that. 

But it won’t be for want of planning for it.