Notes on the Front

This was originally written for Irishelections.com

Budgets are like viewing an impressionist painting but in reverse: the closer you are the more clearly you can make out the image, the further back the more vague and indistinct. Stand far enough back and all you see is the frame. With budgets, instant analysis and frenetic comment eventually gives way, in a very short time, to a critical shrug of the shoulders. The reality of wages, poverty, inflation and people’s expectations move on faster than the cheerleading and criticisms of the budgetary particulars.

There are exceptions, but sometimes not for the best of reasons: the 1927 budget that slashed pensions or the 1982 budgetary attempt to impose VAT on children’s footwear that ended in an election. There were the budgets that introduced children’s allowances, tax credits, the PAYE system but, in time, we forget the years it actually happened: we are standing too far back.

Minister Cowen’s budget won’t be remembered either. This is not a ministerial fault. For budgets are largely facilitating instruments whether its policy already stated (e.g. the cut in the top rate, the pensioners increase) or market processes (e.g. the refusal to muck up the housing market with an inflationary stamp duty cut). When they venture too far away from this process they can cause trouble for themselves – Minister McCreevey’s ill thought out launch of decentralisation during a budget speech. But for the most part, Ministers keep to the safe ground.

That is why budgets have a short shelf-life. When we return to debating specific areas – health, education, income distribution, climate change, etc. – we do take on board the budget because its part of the mix, just like all the preceding budgets we have forgotten about.

Take the vaunted social welfare increases of €20 per week. Between 2003 and 2005 real social welfare increases (i.e. after inflation) averaged 6.8% annually. What effect did it have on income equality? Almost none, according to the CSO. The real social welfare increase in 2007, according to the Government’s own projections, will be 7.4%. So we shouldn’t be surprise if the effect is still marginal (contrast that with a single person earning €100,000; next year, with tax cuts and salary increases, s/he will be €3,870 better off – not too shabby).

But budgets are political creatures, too. So what are the political images that will stay with once the number crunchers have worn out their calculators? ‘Buying an election?’ ‘Opportunity squandered?’ ‘Reckless?’ For me it is the sight of the budget debate on Prime Time Wednesday night. We were treated to only two contestants for the main event – Minister Cowen and Fine Gael’s Richard Bruton. Where were the progressives in this debate – the Pat Rabbittes, the Joan Burtons, the Dan Boyles, the Caoimhghín Ó Caoláins? Why is the debate confined to spokespersons from parties that share a similar perspective? Surely, there is an issue of balance for RTE.

Mr. Bruton’s budget critique, in both his Prime Time appearance and his Dail reply was a mixture of traditional oppositionism and a conservative fiscal perspective. Most of his Dail speech was a litany of Government failures (and to be fair, the sins of this Government are legion). His recitation of spending needs would also constitute a litany: capital investment, education, more Guards, carers, health, social and affordable housing, you name it.

And that’s the circle-and-square argument Fine Gael champion: they argue for more expenditure but accuse the Government of spending too much; they demand cuts in taxes and duties but reassure us we can still fund all those things we want. To square the circle, the entire issue of social and economic modernisation is reduced to administrative mismanagement (Mr. Bruton does use the word ‘reform’ a lot, but in many cases as a codeword for cuts such as ‘stamp duty reform’). If only we ‘managed’ better we could increase effective expenditure and cut taxes at the same time. This is a favourite argument of the Right (if Fianna Fail were in opposition they would say the same thing). It’s an old argument. It can’t be verified by any genuine accountancy.

In the end, the Prime Time debate deteriorated into both sides claiming they’re better at reducing taxation and increasing effective expenditure. Where was the Left? They were relegated to a minors match with a Junior Minister from a 3% party even if, because of the ideological distance, the exchanges between Ms. Burton and Tom Parlon had a sharper edge than the main event.

In terms of optics, if one wanted to shift away from the Minister’s party, there was only the Fine Gael representative to receive one’s gaze. But don’t blame the RTE producers. They only present what is on offer and the only offer on the table to a Fianna Fail-led regime is one led by Fine Gael.

The Left has only itself to blame for this. Labour, in particular, voluntarily vacated the metaphorical studio when the big boys entered. This is not a comment either way on the debate over electoral strategy – the election pact vs. the all-options-open strategies which actually have more in common than not. It is a more fundamental critique of a despairing situation whereby the Left refuses the opportunity to lead the critique of what is, at the end of the day, a regressive budget and a failed economic strategy.

They do this by constructing for themselves, not just an electoral strategy that cedes Fine Gael senior status, but a far more existential cage – one in which the very idea that the Left could develop and lead a new alternative, a new combination of forces, is forbidden to be thought of, never mind spoken about. And come election time, when the Party Leaders debate in the same RTE studio, the Left will again be somewhere else, completely silent about new possibilities. The chair will be empty.

After the budget, the Greens John Gormley, questioned outside Leinster House, stated that the ‘Greens are part of the equation.’ Fair enough, but progressives should be concerned that they are becoming a very small part. For in the last Irish Times/MRBI poll Labour, the Greens and Sinn Fein has each failed to increase by even 1% over the four years.

We shouldn’t be satisfied with being just ‘a part’. We should, even if only in the privacy of our party rooms, start seeing ourselves as an equation in our own right, with our own logic and perspective that has the potential to speak to a considerable section of society. If we don’t we should be worried that, even if we were eventually invited to the table to express our views on the budget, there may be no one in the audience interested.