Progressively Undemocratic

Max McGuinness will not miss the PDs.

It would be no bad thing if this country had a genuinely liberal party – a party prepared to advocate an expanded role for personal freedom in all areas, founded on the principles of John Stuart Mill and Friedrich von Hayek.  Such a party would argue for lower taxes and freer immigration, privatisation and gay marriage, a smaller public sector and legalised abortion, the elimination of subsidies and the decriminalisation of drugs. I probably wouldn’t vote for it but such a party would have the potential to make a marginal yet valuable contribution to Irish politics. Examples in continental Europe include the German FDP and Dutch VVD.

The Progressive Democrats were never such a party. Despite their membership of the Liberal International, they never seriously campaigned for liberal social reforms and latterly pursued an anti-liberal agenda with 2004’s citizenship referendum. The PDs were also in the tank for Fianna Fáil during the last abortion referendum, which, if passed, would have sent doctors performing abortions to jail for up to 12 years.

Their commitment to economic liberalism was pretty inconsistent as well. Yes to lower taxes but yes to clientilist vote-buying too via the fiasco of de-centralisation which Tom Parlon notoriously “delivered”. Throughout their eleven years in government since 1997, the party never once tried to restrain Fianna Fáil from bribing the electorate with the give-away budgets which have left us in an economically perilous state.

The PDs’ role in creating the Celtic Tiger has been similarly exaggerated. While I personally do not accept that cutting thousands of hospitals was ever good policy, if anyone deserves credit for fiscal rectitude it is former Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes, who enabled reductions in public spending through the “Tallaght Strategy” of support for a minority Fianna Fáil government in 1987.

The party’s real raison d’être was Dessie O’Malley’s hatred of Charlie Haughey. That has long since been irrelevant yet with under four percent of the vote, the PDs have exerted a major influence over policy for a decade and they will continue to do so through Mary Harney’s inequitable policy of hospital co-location. Consequently, a divisive figure like Michael McDowell who would have been a star backbench gadfly (which I mean as a compliment) in any other country was able to become Tánaiste. He did one great service in facing down IRA criminality when Bertie and Blair were prepared to look the other way.

Otherwise, the PDs have long since been an overrated anomaly and shall not be missed.

Comments

[John C. Begley]

So many of the problems of the world - including the recent mayhem in Mumbai - are the result of the Rapacious Avarice - either real or imagined [frequently with good reason.] When will Avarice be considered as a Societal Evil? And when will the ostentacious displays of wealth be perceived as repulsive?