Is Election 2016 a Conservative Victory?

There has been much comment in the past few days about how the election has been a victory for pro-life. That’s the good news.

A large number of candidates who pledged to protect the 8th Amendment were elected. And some of the most pro-abortion TDs lost their seats. Thank God!

More than in any previous election, at least a good proportion of voters took a principled stance by supporting pro-life candidates.

But we could have hoped for more.

A swing against an incumbent government is almost inevitable. And the principal opposition parties can expect to be the beneficiaries.

In 2011 Fianna Fáil lost three quarters of its seats while the Green Party was wiped out. The biggest opposition party, Fine Gael, achieved its historic highest number of seats.

In 2016, following five years of the worst government in the history of the State, Fine Gael lost one third of its seats (but still remained the largest party in the Dáil), and Labour took a serious hammering. Meanwhile Fianna Fáil’s gains were nowhere close to its losses in the previous election.

This was only the second election since 1927 in which Fianna Fáil didn’t win more seats than any other party.

The junior coalition parties in both cases fared worse than their senior partners. Could that be anything to do with them being the driving force behind the liberal social agenda of their respective governments? It was the Green Party that gave us Civil Partnership. Labour brought us abortion and same-sex “marriage”.

But Election 2016 wasn’t the great victory for Fianna Fáil that the exuberance of its members would suggest. Why, after such an unpopular government, did the party end up with the second lowest number of seats that it has ever had since its foundation?

The reasons are many. Its failure to live up to its important role in opposition was probably the biggest factor in the lameness of its comeback.

Opposition parties are supposed to debate legislation, to test it, question it, find flaws in it, put the government on the defensive and force them to prove that the proposed legislation is viable.

As long as they don’t fulfil this role, they might as well not be there at all.

Even when they are largely in agreement with the government, it is still better to question and test legislative bills before they are enacted than to find them flawed afterwards.

For the past five years Fianna Fáil acted as a prop to the government – a spare party in the coalition. 

This is hardly the way to present itself to the electorate as a credible alternative to the outgoing government.

On some very important issues it abandoned its responsibility as an opposition party. Why?

Its failure to oppose the property tax, other than on its timing, was out of subservience towards the EU and particularly towards the Troika, with whom it already had an understanding to introduce this unjust tax. Do they think that the electorate didn’t notice? Or at least that we don’t remember?

And out of political correctness and fear of the media they failed to oppose same-sex “marriage”, the Children and Family Relationships Bill. Some members couldn’t even bring themselves to oppose abortion.

Senator Jim Walsh had to resign the party whip in order to do his duty as an opposition senator.

By the way, two TDs (both independents) out of 166 declared themselves against the redefinition of marriage and it didn’t hurt either of them in the recent election. * 

In fact, 38% of the electorate, in the face of overwhelming pressure, misinformation and even intimidation, voted against redefining marriage. That is quite a pool of voters to be represented by only two members of the Dáil.

There are conservative votes out there for the taking by any party with the courage to canvass them.

* CORRECTION: Fianna Fáil TD, John McGuinness, also declared that he would be voting against the redefinition of Marriage. He topped the poll in Carlow - Killkenny. 

The Inconclusive Election

What does the future hold for Ireland in the aftermath of the general election?

Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are the only parties with sufficient seats to form a government without the support of independents or smaller parties. But there would be too many undesirable aspects to such a coalition.

One of the most malign influences of the outgoing government was its effect on the parliamentary system. With a two thirds majority in the Dáil, the reason for being of a parliament was all but abolished.

A parliament, as the name suggests, is a place for talk. It is a place in which legislation is discussed and debated.

But our outgoing coalition, made up of two parties each with a strong tendency towards statism, and with such a huge majority, dispensed with debate. Its preferred method was to railroad legislation through without proper consultation with the Oireachtais.

Perhaps a government with a smaller majority might behave better. The two big parties would enjoy sufficient a majority to ignore everyone else, just as the outgoing government did.

The alternatives to a Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil coalition are either a minority government or a coalition of several parties and independents. Either way it would likely not last very long. But perhaps that is the best we can hope for.

According to Fintan O’Toole, social democracy is the winner in this election. And we agree with him. As to whether the victory for social democracy is a good thing, on that we do not agree.

Social democracy is based on a socialist model for the economy. In other words, tax the rich, high taxes all round, high public expenditure and, thus, a high degree of government control of the economy.

But, aside from the moral problem involved in excessive taxation, there are some major flaws in the socialist model, making it unsustainable.

To start with, the public expenditure envisioned in the social democratic model could only be paid for with a birth rate that is well above replacement rate. Ours, although the highest in Europe, is still below replacement rate (replacement fertility rate is 2.1; our rate is 2.01).

And it doesn’t help when almost all of these winners for social democracy support policies in favour of contraception, abortion and same-sex “marriage,” all of which contribute to the aging of our population.

There just won’t be enough young people entering the workforce to sustain the future cost of pensions. On top of that there is the enormous cost of social welfare. Who will pay for that?

Of course – just tax the rich.

But one of the other fallacies of the social democratic model is that everybody should be equal. If everyone is equal, there will be no rich to tax. If everyone is equal there would be no need to redistribute wealth through taxation.

In such a world the state would play a much more limited role than socialists and social democrats tend to like.

The reality is that in order to raise taxes you need a thriving private sector. And the problem is that the private sector, burdened with excessive taxes and state control, is not able to reach its full potential within the context of a socialist economic model.

Even the Chinese Communist Party (much admired by Mr O’Toole) has figured that out. They came to the realisation that even a socialist economy can’t survive without some capitalism. That is one of the reasons the party has lasted so long.

Fianna Fáil and even Fine Gael are broadly social democratic in their outlook – perhaps a bit watered down compared to the more leftist parties, but still there is nothing in either party to really distinguish themselves from the social democratic idea.

Social democracy is unsustainable. In other words, the social democratic state has no future.

If Ireland is to have a future, we need to find alternative solutions – an alternative model, not just for the economy, but for society.