Fintan O'Toole: The blue-green smoothie ruling the country has no plan and even less passion

The Drifters went through a lot of different line-ups: the Classic Drifters, the Original Drifters, the New Drifters and the Drifters Legends. And then there is the late tribute act known as the Merrion Street Drifters. Adrift on a sea of money, the Government moves with the tide of affairs, rudderless, directionless, concerned only to stay afloat.This is surely the most aimless Government since the dog days of Éamon de Valera in the mid-1950s. Back then, there was the excuse that the chief was 75, the Cabinet was mostly populated with old men of the revolutionary generation and the economy was so flaccid that the young were leaving in droves. What Samuel Beckett called “a lingering dissolution” was general all over Ireland.But now, the Cabinet is relatively young, made up of men and women on average in their late 40s. The economy is booming and the exchequer has an embarrassment of riches. The population is rising rapidly and the flow of migration is inward rather than outward. The mismatch between the lassitude of the Government and the dynamism of the country is astonishing. Learned helplessness is the Government’s chronic condition. The nearest thing to a plan it seems to have is to keep pumping out money. It treats windfall corporation tax revenue as though it were a tidal wave of moolah washing over the sides of the ship of State: get rid of it before it drowns us all.READ MOREIn Budget 2027, €6 out of every €7 earned in corporation tax is to be spent immediately. To grasp how mad this is, the Government will be borrowing money at high interest rates to put into its own savings fund for the costs associated with the ageing of the population.It also, comically, can’t even anticipate the arrival of Christmas: the budget has no allocation for the Christmas bonus that will be paid to all welfare recipients in 2027, as every year. Simon Harris and Jack Chambers pretend not to know that Santa Claus is coming to town. Too far ahead, apparently. There is no narrative, no vision, no set of priorities, no burning ambition to solve long-term problems, no ability to imagine or innovate. Just keep working the money pump, stay afloat and drift, drift, drift. How do we explain this extraordinary listlessness? We can say it’s a failure of leadership and a paucity of political talent, and both of those things would be true. But I think there’s a deeper problem, one so absurd that I hesitate to suggest it: they miss Civil War politics.[ Are Simon Harris and gen Z about to turn Ireland into a nation of investors?Opens in new window ]For about a century, the dynamic of centre-right politics in Ireland was the narcissism of small difference. The real distinctions between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael evaporated over time. They were never very far apart anyway: both were Catholic nationalist parties committed to only as much social and economic change as was compatible with the interests of those who already had power and money. There were minor differences of emphasis in relation to Northern Ireland, but these were largely performative. There were different reactions to the rise of feminism and the so-called liberal agenda, but it should be recalled that, for example, Garret FitzGerald committed Fine Gael to what became the Eighth Amendment before Charles Haughey followed suit. Fianna Fáil was more flagrantly corrupt, but Michael Lowry was no beacon of political virtue and, in the warping of the planning system, both parties joined the feeding frenzy. The paradox is that the very absence of substantive policy or cultural disparity made tribal passion all the more important. Each party needed the other to bolster its own self-image. Fianna Fáilers could tell themselves that they must be great social radicals because they weren’t as pigheadedly conservative as the Blueshirts. Fine Gaelers could convince themselves they must be sea green incorruptibles because they weren’t as sleazy as the other shower. All of this was indeed absurd. But it was also, for a time, hugely successful. It created a binary choice and an apparent moral drama that reached its climax in the endless Garret v Charlie title bouts of the 1980s. And, as I think we can now see by virtue of its absence, it gave politicians in both parties their sense of purpose. [ The remaking of Jack ChambersOpens in new window ]This is what put fire in their bellies. The sibling rivalry of the identical twins made for an incestuous kind of democracy, but it was nonetheless intense. And now it’s gone.It’s not just that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are truly indistinguishable as parties – though it is certainly the case that even the old minor points of disagreement on the North or reproductive rights or styles of corruption have vanished. What’s striking, though, is that they are now so personally homogeneous as well.In manner, attitude and comportment it makes not a whit of difference that Harris is in Fianna Fáil and Chambers in Fine Gael – or should that be the other way round? They are identikit professional politicians. In the Coalition blender they make the same blue-green smoothies. The only competition between them all now is in the eternal arena of clientelism. It tells us everything that last month Fianna Fáil TDs held “an emergency meeting” because they believed Fine Gael TDs were getting in ahead of them to announce grants for local sports clubs. The world is on fire, but the only thing that gets these people fired up is the thought that a constituency rival might be pulling a fast one.[ Paternity leave shouldn’t be a privilege only the likes of Simon Harris can affordOpens in new window ]That’s what passes for passion now. The climate crisis? Child poverty? The whittling away of the tax base? The housing disaster? Just rocks invisible beneath the surface of the money ocean as we merrily drift along.I never thought we’d miss red-faced oul’ fellas roaring at church gates about the bloody Blueshirts or the Effing Effers. But it seems that that was the only energy our governing parties ever really had.