Consumer Politics

The Sunday papers are, as expected, full of the recent internal warfare in the Progressive Democrats. What interested me most was the degree to which the PDs apply their privatised world view to the management of their party. The PDs are currently at about 3% of the vote, but the PD mindset is a remarkably pervasive one. It lurks behind the talk of adding value, year on year, going forward. It informs the cult of the Chief Executive, where every other functionary in the country fancies himself as Jack Welch. It is why you hear the cost-benefit analysis applied as a clinching argument in every other pub discussion. Why, someone recently asked me, should taxpayer’s money be spent on teaching kids such unmarketable subjects as Irish or History? It is the philosophy of the sort of person who uses the phrase “Ireland Inc.???. We are an economy, not a nation; consumers, not citizens. Talk about “rights??? is old fashioned. If can’t pay, you don’t get. And if you don’t need, why should you pay?

The Progressive Democrats have internalised this philosophy. When they need a candidate, they don’t bother looking within the constituency ranks, they go shopping. A candidate makes them a business proposition. If a guarantee of a portfolio is what it takes to buy the candidate, then so be it. If they aren’t willing to meet his price, he can take his business elsewhere. When Pat Cox lost the leadership contest to Mary Harney, he left the party and marched off to Europe. When Martin Cullen realised that his geographical location might prove an advantage in Fianna Fail, he took his custom to them without, so far as we know, any sleepless nights of agonising. The papers today suggest that, in any leadership contest between Liz O’Donnell and Michael McDowell, the loser would probably leave the party. Where’s the loyalty, the team spirit? You don’t get to be captain, so you just take your ball and go home? That’s no way to run a political party. It’s no way to run a country either.