In 2011, Enda Kenny declared “a democratic revolution”. Five years on, how’s that working out? Let’s ask the Taoiseach and the Táinaiste. Two weeks ago, they awarded their government a success rate of 93%.
That’s impressive, don’t you think?
Tonight sees Enda’s big speech to #Blueshirtpalooza16, er, sorry, the Fine Gael Árd Fheis. Weeks from the 2016 general election, he has a very real chance of being the very first Fine Gael leader to be elected Taoiseach for two consecutive terms. The Journal Politics noted that his opening remarks at the start of the gathering managed to include the words “keep the recovery going” ten times in under fifteen minutes.
So I wonder what tonight’s speech will be about.
The smart money would be on distilled versions of Enda’s standard Dáil deflections (“I don’t propose to take any lectures from you, Deputy Martin…” “So I say to you, Deputy Adams, that you have some cheek coming in here…) and a healthy airing of our old friend, TINA (There Is No Alternative).
Fianna Fáil wrecked the country… Sinn Féin is still being run out of the back room of a pub in West Belfast… the rest of them are typified by that Ming Wallace fella… Irish families made too many sacrifices to throw it all away now… Difficult decisions… Jobs… Fine Gael will always make sure work pays more than welfare (by cutting the bollocks out of welfare). Let’s keep the Tory pauper-cull going.
You know yourself.
Meanwhile, what about Labour, the junior coalition party currently in the end stages of what Noel Whelan so vividly described as Fine Gael’s “Black Widow embrace”?
Much has been made lately of Labour’s deputy leader canvassing with the Chief Executive of the Football Association of Ireland. Personally, I can’t decide whether it would be more damaging to be seen with Alan Kelly or with John Delaney, but I think Joan Burton’s appointment of retired union boss David Begg as Chair of the Pensions Authority is a far greater own-goal for Labour.
Although Begg’s appointment was entirely legal, the Tánaiste’s decision to bypass the Public Appointments Service and directly appoint a supporter – however “imminently qualified” – to a State job left her open to entirely-avoidable accusations of cronyism and a motion of no confidence. Anyway, as Labour TD Ciara Conway put it, “Why have the rules in place if you’re not going to abide by them?”
It’s clear David Begg didn’t even particularly want the job, calling its €20,500 remuneration “not lavishly paid”. It’s worth noting that 30% of Irish workers earn less than €20,000. As unforced errors go, this is a beauty.
At this stage, Labour looks increasingly like it knows the jig is up and just wishes the ordeal of the election were over. It can’t be long now before Joan piles the entire party into a bendy bus and drives out into the desert to meet the mothership.
I laughed when the Taoiseach and Tánaiste, our democratic revolutionaries, awarded their government a success rate of 93%. President Bartlet wouldn’t score 93% and he had the advantage of being twinkly Martin Sheen, surrounded by like-minded fast-talking, fast-walking living saints. Mind you, Jed Bartlet was a fictional character, so I suppose he had to be at least slightly believable.
Still, though, Enda and Joan are 93% happy with the state of the country after their five years in power. 93% doesn’t leave a lot of room for the 138,000 – one in eight – Irish children living in consistent, abject poverty.
93% doesn’t leave a lot of room for homeless families wedged into hotel rooms, or Traveller families living in “temporary” tinder-box halting sites or refugee families penned like cattle into damp, miserable Direct Provision centres.
93% doesn’t leave a lot of room for desperately ill and vulnerable people who depend on funds raised by volunteers standing in the rain because the State continues to outsource essential services to charities, many of which are headed by ridiculously-pensioned executives on telephone-number salaries.
93% doesn’t leave a lot of room for the Irish women (twelve every day) forced to travel abroad for medical procedures because thirty-three years ago we let religious fundamentalists hijack our Constitution.
93% doesn’t leave a lot of room for patients on trolleys in draughty hospital corridors, or the 9% of workers living in actual, consistent poverty (according to the Taoiseach himself) and it certainly doesn’t leave a lot of room for those of us utterly aghast at the idea that agents of our State can routinely monitor our private correspondence without so much as a judicial by-your-leave.
So our democratic revolutionaries think we have 93% of (to use a phrase Enda doesn’t seem to anymore) The Best Small Country In The World In Which To Do Business (By 2016). The rest of us will have to bunch up if we’re to squeeze into the 7% of the country that Enda and Joan deign to acknowledge they’ve made a complete and utter hames of.
140 characters is usually enough 