Despite flooding the zone with frenzied anger in the Dáil, the opposition has lost the battle

It’s rare for me to question or criticise or even quote a press editorial of any paper never mind my favourite, The Irish Times. In twenty plus years of blogging I’ve never succumbed to the old habit of “fisking” and I won’t start now. But given the important influence of the paper, I thought I’d share a contrary view.

Its view today is that blame for a controversy that has held the Irish parliamentary body, the Oireachtas, back from doing even something as routine and mundane as setting up scrutiny committees (where the real job of monitoring of government is done) “lies squarely at the door of the Taoiseach”.

The paper may be right (and it echos some of the Taoiseach himself said yesterday) but only in the sense that there is no precedent for this week’s scenes in the Dáil. The last Ceann Comhairle to resign was John O’Donoghue in the long death throes of the last Fianna Fáil led administration in 2009. It also notes that:

By tradition a Ceann Comhairle serves all members of the Dáil. A partisan divide in support for the office holder will deepen the fractious and sometimes personal antagonisms which have emerged between this Government and its opponents.

But for me, the fact is that this a telling recurrence of what can reasonably be described as a similar form of political extortion that Sinn Féin practised in closing the Stormont institutions in 2017. However whilst it is clear Sinn Féin is after the Ceann Comhairle’s head, on this occasion they didn’t have the means to get it.

Where in these islands has a government fallen silent for three years because of the disruptive actions initiated by just one party? Nowhere. That’s because nowhere else has Northern Ireland’s particularly rigid brand of power sharing. If you flounce out immediately after an election anywhere else, a rival will almost certainly take your place.

I have heard over the years lots of people blame the DUP for that collapse, or the media (whose coverage undoubtedly did not help, but was only an influence not a cause). Anyone, except SF. One year into SF’s stailc and apparently it was the DUP’s fault because they did not give in to Sinn Féin demands on a language act.

In the end their fruitless protest was ended not because of any concessions (they won nothing of any value at the time, except further negotiations), but because the 2020 General Election in the south was coming and they didn’t want to leave themselves open to the accusation that they could not be trusted to run a whelk stall.

Not only has Martin called them out on this, but Sinn Féin and their newly co-opted (and self denying) Greek chorus on the opposition benches have tied themselves to a battle which they have already effectively lost. This rambunctious opposition has collapsed, and after losing a confidence vote the government will move on.

As I have kept repeating throughout various related threads on Slugger, the most remarkable feature of these manoeuvres has been the demonstration of the power of the government’s newly substantial majority. The Dáil has voted decisively for a change that gives government TDs more air time. And that change is now permanent.

We can argue all we want about the rights and wrongs of it (there’s legitimate views on either side), but as the Taoiseach has said, it means that Leader’s Questions is no longer a play thing for every tiny fragmented opposition group in the Dáil, whilst government TDs are expected to sit back in silence.

He’s also right about Labour. This is the exactly same surrender strategy to Sinn Féin the SDLP has been following for many years now and which has taken it from the most popular party by vote in NI in 1998 to by far the most marginal of the five largest parties. Labour is literally and metaphorically throwing its own hard won recovery to the wolves.

Of course closing Stormont did benefit SF and Alliance. And it actively hurt the DUP and the SDLP. As a unionist party the DUP could hardly pay SF back in kind, and the formerly largest Nationalist party had accustomed itself to subsisting in SF’s shadow rather than providing any alternatives to their shared electorate.

But that’s not how Martin is choosing to play this attempt at a similar class of political extortion that closed Stormont. Tuesday’s tempestuous acrimony played directly into his hands on Wednesday, when the opposition quietened and it became obvious that acrimony alone is no substitute for having the numbers to get business done.

Extortion only works if you have the means to carry out your threat. For all the talk of the Ceann Comhairle, shady deals and no confidence amongst the opposition, she did win the confidence of the Dáil. That’s a double defeat not just in the vote, but that it also permanently enhances the government’s voice in the Dáil.

It’s not come from nowhere. This is a direct consequence of Irish voters giving SF’s ambitions (who were telling everyone who would listen Mary Lou would be the next Taoiseach) a firm boot into touch. In spite of such false arguments, in a democracy there’s no such thing as “loser’s consent”. It’s merely a version of Steve Bannon’s flood the zone distraction tactic.

After two months of inaction (with barely any committees formed), when the Republic faces some of the biggest external threats it has seen since the 2008 crash, the opposition is indulging in a politics of chaff. Traditionally opposition is how parties show they’re ready for government. But this procession of reaction will do it no end of damage with the voters.

Sinn Féin is not the much fabled strategic power of popular media myth, instead as we have seen in its serial failure to meet the needs of voters in the north it’s a purely tactical operation. This is why many of the voters it had so surprisingly won in 2020 rolled away from them last November. As Sun Tzu so famously said in The Art of War:

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

And, despite flooding the zone with frenzied anger in the Dáil, the Opposition lost the battle. No doubt the war will continue. But many of the critical swing voters (be it in Ireland and anywhere else) who regularly decide who gets into government, and who doesn’t, really don’t like backing losers. If you don’t believe me, ask the SDLP?

Faced with fearsome political and economic seas, Ireland’s democracy is little more than a tiny dinghy, no less subject to populist insurrection as the great ocean going liner that is the American Republic. It’s time Ireland stopped gazing at the entertaining/terrifying political porn across the ocean and got a wee bit more sceptical at home.

This whole episode has landed exactly where the decisions of the electorate last November deemed it would: ie, with a decisive government win. Everything else, to quote the Bard…

…is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.

Mick Fealty

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty