Notes on the Front

Commentary on Irish Political Economy by Michael Taft, researcher for SIPTU

Nothing Left to Say? The Recession Diaries – February 8th

Recession 222 So George Lee has resigned.  No doubt this will fill newspaper columns and blog posts with analysis of what this means for Fine Gael, Enda Kenny (will he be pushed?, the Government and, of course, George.  So far the one question that has not been answered – and not raised much either – is:  what were the policy disagreements that drove George out of Fine Gael and out of the Dail?  So far, all we have been treated to is, from George's perspective, is that he didn't have sufficient input into Fine Gael policy.  So far, however, he hasn't touched upon the specifics of the type of policies he wanted input on.  Did he have proposals that were unacceptable to Fine Gael?  Were there Fine Gael policies unacceptable to him?  What would have been the result of such input? 

Or are we in the 'policy-free zone' that constitutes so much of Irish politics?  If so, if there were no fundamental differences between Fine Gael policy and George Lee, then what we have here is a case of someone who resigned because he didn't have enough input into policy that he didn't disagree with anyway.

Or maybe there's something more provocative.  Maybe George had nothing left to say on economic policy.  Go back to his 10-point plan.  Read all the points he makes.  They have, for the most part, already been take up by Fine Gael (some of them, like point number one, was already party policy) or has been acted upon by the Government.  His 10-point plan that he ran on in the by-election is pretty much last year.

Maybe he just couldn't think up another 10-point plan to impress upon his party, the Government and the nation.

Maybe he just lost his  . . er . . edge.

2 responses to “Nothing Left to Say? The Recession Diaries – February 8th”

  1. tgmac Avatar
    tgmac

    I’ve often thought, in the broadest terms possible, that Ireland is like Japan in one respect. They have a saying in Japan that the nail that sticks up must be hammered down. No one individual must be seen to depart from the often unstated accepted social mores. There seems to be some unwritten scripts that one follows given a certain situation. As I’ve read various comments, the striking similarity of concensus (from the far left into the mainstream) is that Lee got too big for his boots and is throwing his rattle out of the pram, so to speak. He committed a cardinal sin in Southern Ireland. He didn’t conform to some faux pas notion of social consensus that strangely exists. As the centralisation of money and power continues apace in the South (never waste a crisis) the chimera of concensus, largely animated by the MSM, remains in tact if not reinforced. Lee brought undue attention upon himself for all the wrong reasons, as an individual, and must now be treated as a social misfit, sort of.
    Rowing back a wee bit, I’d give credence to the main point of the post. It’s very possible that his ideas were a bit “yesterday”, and furthermore he probably didn’t have the lobbying skills necessary to get his viewpoints or agenda across to the party as he saw fit. What I see is a guy who made a terrible career choice, realised his mistake if not his limitations, and decided to cut his losses and move on in life. That he choose to leave politics altogether rather than follow socially accepted conventions and become an independent seems like an insult to many Irish politicos. He didn’t carry on the charade of social concensus that the system is performing as it should. The system, if rejected by an individual, is always correct. So, therefore, there must be something inherently wrong with the individual.
    And, heaven forfend, if someone says the entire social and political system is rotten and malfunctioning, and really means it. It’s ok to pillory a political party, an organisation or an individual, but never say that Ireland, as a comprehensive whole, isn’t somehow less than correct in how it functions. If you’re lucky you’re only boycotted, but emmigration is the better option. (Ok, overstated, but I like hyperbole.)

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  2. Dr. X Avatar
    Dr. X

    I don’t see anything hyperbolic at all in your last paragraph, tgmac.
    But not all ‘sticking-up nails’ are hammered down in this country. If you’re in with the in-crowd you can get away with most things, as far as I can see. . .

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Commentary on Irish Political Economy by Michael Taft, researcher for SIPTU