A Bit of Perspective on the Minimum Wage

Published on 24 February, 2011. 0 Comments

In a couple of days time, we’re going to find out the composition of our new government for the next few years, most likely in the form of a Fine Gael-Labour coalition. While a lot of media attention has been placed on the two parties’ policy disagreements over the past week, one of the few economic issues on which they agree is the reversal of the recent cut in the minimum wage to €7.65 an hour. The cut in the minimum wage was certainly an unpopular move, but with the cost of living having decreased so much in the past few years, has it really made minimum wage earners that much worse off, and is reversing it really necessary?

To investigate this, I’ve put together a simple cost of living index* for those living on minimum wage, based on my own experiences living on a similar income over the past few years. The following graph shows the real value of the minimum wage since it was brought in in April 2000, according to my cost of living index (click to see full size):

realminwage_500px

You can see that, prior to 2008, the trend in the minimum wage was quite regular; the real value of the minimum wage would gradually drop due to inflation, coupled with an increase in the nominal rate by the government every year or so, causing the overall value to slowly increase over the first 8 years of the minimum wage’s existence. Since late 2008, though, we’ve had a very different dynamic, as dropping prices (in particular the big drop in rents) have caused a big increase in the real value of the minimum wage, to the point where the €8.65 minimum wage was worth 11.3% more in January 2011 than when it was introduced in July 2007.

So, has the drop in the minimum wage (shown to the far right of the graph) made a big difference to minimum wage earners? Compared to the recent past, yes, as they’ve benefitted significantly from a large drop in the cost of living. Looking back over the past few years, though, a minimum wage of €7.65 is still very high in real terms. It’s actually worth more than €8.65 was as recently as November 2008, although it’s a little lower (by 1.5%) in real terms than when the €8.65 rate was introduced in July 2007.

The big question, though, is not so much the effect of the decrease in the minimum wage, but whether it was necessary. That is, was €8.65 an hour too high? I think we can all agree that there’s such a thing as a minimum wage that’s too high; if the minimum wage was set at a million euros an hour, no employer could afford to pay it and there’d be 100% unemployment. The question then, is how high a minimum wage can get before it starts to have negative effects. There’s no easy way to determine this, but the closest guide we can go by is by looking at the unemployment rate of the social groups most likely to work at or around minimum wage; if unemployment is high amongst these groups, it’s likely that the minimum wage is having a negative effect on employment. One group which is very likely to work at minimum wage is those under 25 years of age, so I put together the following graph of unemployment rates both of those under 25, and those over 25 for comparison (click for full size):

unemploymentbyage_500px

As you can see, there’s been a huge increase in unemployment for those under 25 over the past few years, and the unemployment rate for the group is now approaching 30%. Of course, there’s also been an increase in unemployment for those over 25, and a chunk of the male under 25s unemployment since 2008 will have been from the construction sector, which would have paid over minimum wage. Nonetheless, an unemployment rate of almost 30% for any group is still astonishingly high, and it’s very likely that the €8.65 minimum wage was having an impact on this, which would lend credence to the argument that the decrease will have a positive effect on employment, and should be left as is by the new government.

Another factor that has to be taken into account when talking about the impact of the minimum wage on employment is the similar effect of social welfare rates. Put simply, people aren’t likely to go out looking for work if they’re better off on unemployment benefits. In Ireland, this is particularly a problem when it comes to part-time work; as jobseeker’s allowance is reduced according to the number of days you work, someone working three 8-hour days at minimum wage is actually worse off than they would be if they weren’t working at all. Those working shorter shifts are in an even worse position. A smart, and relatively easy move, for the incoming government would be to link reductions in jobseekers allowance to the amount earned, rather than days worked, which would significantly increase the incentive for the unemployed to take up part-time work, and mitigate against any need for further cuts in welfare rates.

* The composition of the cost of living index is 30% rent, 20% food, 8% each for clothes, electricity and gas, and the remaining 26% being represented by the HICP (which, unlike the CPI, excludes mortgage interest). The data is from the CSO and Daft.ie, with early rental data compiled by the ever-helpful Ronan Lyons.

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Want To Fix The Dáil? Then Take The Cabinet Out Of There First

Published on 17 February, 2011. 0 Comments

It may surprise readers to hear this, but when we go to the polls next Friday, we won’t actually be participating in the legistlative elections of a parliamentary democracy. Of course, ostensibly, the people we elect go to Leinster House to choose our laws for the coming years, but the reality is very different. Like some sort of Quasimodo-esque cousin of the US presidential elections, what we’ll really be voting for is an electoral college. We elect 166 TDs whose most important role is fulfilled on their first day on the job; voting in a Taoiseach and a cabinet.

In Ireland, these 15 people in the cabinet are the real legislative branch of government. Due to our exceptionally strong party whip system, every bill proposed by a cabinet member is passed along party lines, every bill proposed by a member of the opposition is defeated along party lines, and backbench government TDs simply don’t get to propose bills at all. Even amendments are managed carefully by party whips, with only the most trivial being passed in the Dáil chamber. Our Ministers are the only legislators who actually get to legislate, and even then, power is overwhelmingly held by the Taoiseach and Minister for Finance.

Without any meaningful input into legislation, the remaining 151 TDs have little choice but to focus their efforts solely on local affairs in their constitutencies to get elected. This constituency work, which TDs freely admit to spending more than half their working time on, can range from quite literally getting potholes fixed, to securing passports and welfare payments for constituents. As a result, the cabinet themselves are appointed from amongst a Dáil composed entirely of local politicians, who rarely have any expertise relevant to their portfolio.

Furthermore, with little basis to distinguish by expertise or competence, front bench posts are chosen largely by seniority, which has lead to the worrying scenario where the current Taoiseach, Táinaiste and leader of the main opposition party all entered the Dáil in their twenties, from political families, and have almost no experience of life outside Leinster House. Our cabinet, then, who have little to no expertise, but are expected to fulfil both executive and legislative roles simultaneously, rely heavily on the civil service to devise policy and draft legislation. Of course, the civil servants themselves are generalists by nature, and almost never hire outside experts to senior departmental positions.

To make things even worse, Ministers are expected to continue their duties as local TDs while in office. This results in perverse situations such as the one John Gormley found himself in over the past four years, where he has had to implement the proposed development of an incinerator at Ringsend as Minister for the Environment, while at the same time opposing it as TD for Dublin South East. In the end, the conflict of interest has benefitted neither the nation nor the constituency.

It is clear, even without the country’s economic collapse as a wake-up call, that the political institutions in Ireland simply don’t function as intended. We have a political system that is actively biased against expertise, backed up by a civil service that is actively biased against expertise. What’s more, in the continuous quest to get reelected, the national interest is always fighting a losing battle against 43 separate local interests.

While there have been a broad array of proposals put forward to reform our political institutions over the past months and indeed years, there is a single reform which would clear up the litany of problems which I’ve described. That is, we should introduce an executive branch of government which is completely separate to the Dáil. This would both allow for the appointment of cabinet members with real expertise, as well as freeing up TDs to actually legislate.

We could, for instance, hold an election for an executive President concurrent with our Dáil elections, as happens in France and the US. As we move further away from our two party system, though, it’s highly unlikely that the President’s party would also hold a legislative majority, as is often the case in those two countries. An optimist would see this as ushering in a new age of legislative bipartisanship. A cynic, however, would see it as ushering in a new age of legislative deadlock. To appease the cynics, it would be possible to bring in a more subtle change instead, where a Taoiseach is still elected from within the Dáil, but then gives up their Dáil seat to head a seperate executive branch. This would ensure the executive branch has the support of the majority of legislators.

Regardless of how the head of the executive branch is chosen, Ministers could then be picked from the populace at large, no longer restricted to the 80 to 90 government-supporting TDs. Once chosen, the appointees would then, like in the US, be individually questioned and ratified by the Dáil prior to taking their posts, ensuring that only those who can demonstrate competence and expertise in their field would become Ministers. Furthermore, the reform would completely reshape the legislative process, as there would no longer be a distinction between frontbench and backbench TDs. All TDs would be expected to initiate and contribute to legislation.

Of course, other reforms could also be introduced to help reduce the pressure on TDs to resort to local clientelism. For instance, the number of constituencies could be reduced considerably, resulting in larger constituencies where clientelism would no longer be feasible. Extra Dáil seats could also be allocated by a national list vote, creating a constituency of TDs for whom the national interest is paramount. Reform of local government would be another positive step; by providing better resources to Councillors and directly-elected Mayors, they could take over much of the local work undertaken by TDs.

In the end, though, the most effective reform is the simplest one. We need a cabinet of experts and a Dáil of legislators, and separating the two is the best way to achieve both.

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A New Approach to Promoting Democracy – The DFTA

Published on 17 February, 2011. 0 Comments

Spreading democracy to the furthest corners of the globe has always been a tough business. Western European democracies developed into their current form in fits and starts over many centuries, but inevitably attempts are made to speed the whole process up, dragging dictators, juntas, strongmen and politburos into the democratic world, often whether they like it or not. Unfortunately, the approaches that have been used have a very poor record of success, and a quick transition to democracy is still a very rare occurrance indeed.

Attempts to spread democracy usually take one of two forms. The first, multilateral “soft power”, is often channelled through the UN, and mainly involves sending in election monitors and publishing non-binding reports in very diplomatic language. Unsurprisingly, this is almost never effective, not least due to the senior UN posts held by oligarchies such as Russia and China. The second approach, the use of the “hard power” of military force to depose an autocrat, has just as poor a record, as the inability to set up stable democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan shows.

Amidst many failures in spreading democracy throughout the world, though, one region has bucked the trend, and democratised with astonishing speed. That region is Eastern Europe. Within little more than a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, many of the former communist states had each independently managed to transform into fully functioning, stable and inclusive democracies, a transformation which has few historical precedents. Behind all these developments was a common aim; EU membership.

The EU is the only intergovernmental agency in the world with strict democratic requirements for entry. These don’t just include monitored elections, but also other important factors in the proper functioning of a democracy, such as independent judiciaries, a free press, protection of minorities and elimination of low-level corruption. Furthermore, the incentives to join the EU were considerable for these ex-Soviet states. Not only did access to the EU market offer significant economic benefits, but membership also conferred an important degree of legitimacy and credibility among the international community to these young states.

What’s perhaps most important to note in looking at how these democracies developed, is that the pressure for development of the democratic institutions came from within each country; it was a “bottom up” democratisation, unlike the attempted “top down” democratisations of Iraq or Afghanistan. In Poland, for example, the building blocks of democracy were put in place by the Solidarity movement, who had gained popularity and legitimacy from their years of opposition to the communist regime. Of course, in many cases international assistance was given in setting up these institutions, but this assistance was requested, not imposed. The fact that the driving forces for democracy were internal to the countries gave the democratic institutions a legitimacy that an internationally imposed system of governance could never hope to achieve.

Of course, we can’t bring democracy to Zimbabwe or Burma by offering them EU membership, but we do have the opportunity to set up an international institution that could use the same incentives, free trade and legitimacy, to promote bottom up development of democracies in far flung places. That opportunity presents itself in the gradual but inevitable failure of the WTO which, due to its unanimity requirement for negotiating trade deals, has been in almost perpetual stalemate since it was founded in 1995.

Suppose that, out of frustration with the ineffectiveness of the WTO, the world’s leading democracies decide to set up a new organisation, which we’ll call the Democratic Free Trade Association, or DFTA. This new institution would only allow membership to democracies, with the same sort of strict requirements as the EU, and would continually monitor the democratic credentials of member states, with the threat of expulsion for those whose standards drop after joining. Once a country joins the DFTA, it would then have significantly reduced tariffs and trade restrictions with other members, and could take part in a qualified majority voting system for further trade liberalisations.

The economic incentive for developing dountries to join would be clear. By providing preferential market access to the EU, US, Japan, India and Brazil, among others, and with a decision making system that would allow further liberalisation to be achieved much more effectively than in the WTO, countries would see very real economic benefits from joining. Furthermore, the rigid democratic requirements, and membership of almost every developed country, would confer a significant degree of legitimacy on any government which does bring its nation to membership. In this way the DFTA could use a kind of semi-soft power, eschewing coercion or force, but with solid incentives which would provide fertile ground for just the kind of bottom-up democratic development that occurred in Eastern Europe.

It’s also important to note that the DFTA wouldn’t need a remit that extends any further than monitoring democracy and eliminating barriers to trade. In particular, workplace or environmental standards could be left off the agenda, greatly simplifying negotiations. Certainly, one of the principal critiques of free trade agreements in the US and EU is that developing countries often have lax workplace standards and poor environmental records, allowing them to undercut local producers. This is undoubtedly true in some cases, but it simply isn’t feasible for any organisation to monitor and enforce these standards internationally. By far the most effective tool to combat exploitative work and environmental practices is a functioning democracy itself, backed up by a free press. Brazil is an excellent example of this; as its democracy has matured over the past two decades, public pressure has brought about significant improvements to its once abysmal environmental record.

Of course, we can’t expect any organisation to bring democracy to the whole world overnight, but the DFTA could provide the right incentives to bolster those who are trying to promote democracy from within, and in doing so make a modest but positive step towards a world where everyone has a say in how their nation is run.

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Ireland’s Economic Collapse And The Need For Ideological Politics

Published on 17 February, 2011. 0 Comments

“The dangers arising from the potential bubble in the housing market are significant. […] it could turn an external shock in the Irish economy into a cause of major trauma.”

Sensible economic commentary hasn’t been as rare as most people think over the past decade or so. The above quote, to give an example, is from the Economic and Social Research Institute’s Medium Term Review published in October 1999. The ESRI, who were set up by the government as a semi-independent body to provide research and advice, were quite clear in their recommendations at the time; abolish mortgage-interest relief, slow the increase in public-sector wages, and run a large budget surplus. Most independent economists, mindful of the fact that our membership of the Euro required a change in fiscal policies, would have given pretty much the same prescription for long-term economic stability.

Of course, I don’t have to tell you that the government ignored this advice. Since the bubble burst, many well-informed commentators have shown in great detail how successive Fianna Fail led coalitions have led the country down such a disastrous economic path. What these commentators often fail to point out, though, is just how important a role the opposition parties have played in facilitating our national downfall.

Fine Gael and Labour are currently enjoying a surge in popularity, where the main cause of this surge has been, understandably enough, their not being Fianna Fail. Indeed, opposition TDs spend most of their time these days campaigning against Fianna Fail, rather than for their own party, with the clear underlying implication that they wouldn’t have made such a complete mess of things had they been in office themselves. Unfortunately for the opposition parties, who are happy to rely on unsubstantiated counterfactuals, the evidence for this implication doesn’t really hold up. Over the past decade both parties have repeatedly promoted economic policies almost indistinguishable from those pursued by the government.

Take mortgage-interest relief as a prime example. Since formally joining the Euro in 1999, Irish interest rates have been decided by the ECB, and any sensible economic commentator would have pointed out that these rates were too low for the rapidly growing Irish economy, and needed to be offset by appropriate fiscal policy to prevent, among other things, a long-term property bubble. The ESRI and others correctly pointed out that mortgage-interest relief, the practice of subsidizing mortgage repayments, was having exactly the opposite effect; by lowering the effective interest rate, it was inflating the bubble even further. The scheme, which at its peak cost the state €500 million a year, was possibly the most damaging of any of the government’s economic policies, and experts made repeated calls for its abolition.

One would think, with Fine Gael and Labour’s claims to economic responsibility, that they have spent the past 13 years opposing such reckless policies. In fact, far from calling for the abolition of mortgage-interest relief, the two parties actually made repeated calls for its expansion, as well as promoting a wide variety of other schemes that would have inflated the housing bubble even further. Of course, these policies were always easy to sell to the electorate; with property prices rising, they all claimed to make it easier for people to afford homes, even though their real effect was far less benign.

The same pattern manifested itself in other areas of economic policy; where experts advised moderation in tax cuts and spending increases, and the running of a large budget surplus, the election manifestos of the main parties in both 2002 and 2007 consisted largely of competing claims as to which party would at the same time both tax the least and spend the most. Instead of voicing the flaws in government policy and acting as a counter to economic short-termism, the opposition parties were in fact bolstering it, by not giving the public any other option.

This almost complete homogeneity of opinion isn’t a modern phenomenon in Irish politics, either. Time and time again, studies have shown that Irish voters don’t distinguish between parties on the basis of policy. Not only is this true for Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, who have their roots on either side of an issue no longer relevant to Irish life, but it’s been shown that even the supposedly centre-left Labour Party and now-defunct centre-right Progressive Democrats attracted voters that were effectively indistinguishable from each other in terms of their stated ideological preferences.

There are likely many causes for this lack of ideological cleavage in Irish politics, ranging from the then ideological Labour Party’s decision not to contest the 1918 and 1921 elections, to our electoral system which favours local, rather than national politicians. Regardless of these, though, there can be only one solution that would provide us with a political system where parties offer genuine choice, and opposition parties effectively counter the complacency of governments, and in the end this solution relies on us, the voters.

As citizens we have failed ourselves, and our nation, for too long, voting for local fixers instead of national statesmen, supporting parties that peddle comfortable lies instead of uncomfortable truths. We must take it on ourselves to seek more from our elected representatives than simply not being the people who got us into this mess; they should be men and women of expertise and genuine conviction, and it is our duty as voters to demand this of them. If we fail to do so, we may still eject Fianna Fail from government and punish them for their failings, but we will have done nothing to tackle the political culture that allowed them to make such mistakes, and will inevitable allow future governments to do just the same.

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“I Didn’t Cause This”

Published on 25 November, 2010. 2 Comments

“I didn’t cause this problem and I refuse to pay for it”

I’ve heard this a lot recently. The whole mess was caused by evil bankers, speculators and Fianna Failers, and you’ll be damned if you’re going to be the one to clean it up. Fair enough, whether you’re in the public sector, the private sector, unemployed, a student, a pensioner, or pretty much anyone other than Bertie Ahern or Patrick Neary, you’re probably not directly responsible for the massive property bubble which crippled our government’s finances when it burst.

Of course, being a clued in individual who saw this coming a mile off, I’m sure you knew where the money for your big public service pay increases was coming from for the past decade. And for those middle-earners in the private sector, I’m sure you were well aware of where else the government was taking in revenue to be able to afford to lower your income tax bill to the lowest in the developed world. Those who weren’t so well off were of course keeping full track of how welfare payments could be increased at above the rate of inflation year after year during all this.

As a student, I’m sure you knew where the government got the money to pay your tuition fees and those of all your friends. You elderly folks in the back were also right on top of how the government could make such big increases to the state pension without increasing the retirement age. And, not to forget, that all of you in any of those groups or none are well aware of how spending could be increased massively on policing, health and local services without you having to contribute to it.

At the height of the bubble, the construction and finance sectors were contributing tens of billions of euros, directly and indirectly, to the public purse. They were paying for my degree, they were paying for your pension, and they were paying for another guy’s tax break. They were paying for all these things we’ve been taking for granted over the past decade, and they aren’t any more.

So no, you probably didn’t cause the bubble that’s landed us where we are, but you did benefit from it. So did I, and so did everyone else in Ireland. We were all quite happy to take this money that was pouring in from our glorified national ponzi scheme and pretend it would last for ever. Well, of course it didn’t; the money simply isn’t there anymore, and every one of us is going to have to accept the simple reality that we can no longer pay for things with money we don’t have.

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UK Elections Under Alternative Vote: An Analysis

Published on 12 August, 2010. 3 Comments

Both before and since the UK election in May, there has been a lot of talk of electoral reform and how it would affect British politics and the makeup of Parliament. As the Liberal Democrats have secured a referendum on bringing in Alternative Vote, I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to develop a full simulation of how elections under Alternative Vote would work out in the UK, based on the results from May 6th.

While there are full methodological details below, the model I’ve developed is a full and thorough simulation of AV, modeling every round of transfers in all 650 constituencies, based on educated estimates of the transfer rates between different parties. I’ve run the model twice, under slightly different assumptions. In the first version of the model (which I’ll refer to as the simple model), I have assumed that the votes cast on the 6th of May would be the first preferences of voters in an AV election. This is a nice simple assumption to make, but it doesn’t take into account that people vote tactically in first-past-the-post (FPTP), and often won’t actually vote for their preferred candidate if they don’t think he has a chance of winning. AV would remove the incentive to do so, so you would expect that first preferences would be different than votes cast under FPTP.

In an attempt to account for this, I’ve also run a second version of the model (which I’ll call the adjusted model). One of the notable features of the recent election is how different the actual result was from what people were saying to pollsters right up to the day before the vote. It’s a reasonable hypothesis to say that the polls were reporting the actual preferences of voters, and that the shift on election day was the result of people voting tactically due to FPTP. As such, for the adjusted model, I’ve applied a proportionate adjustment to the first preference votes in each constituency, to make the national tallies add up to what the pre-election polls were predicting. It’s hoped that this adjusted model can better capture the true first preferences of voters than the simple one.

Anyway, on to the results. After running through the model for each set of assumptions, here are the predicted seat totals for the simple AV model (AV-Smp), the adjusted AV model (AV-Adj) and the actual election results for reference (FPTP):

FPTP AV-Smp AV-Adj
Con 307 285 (-22) 269 (-38)
Lab 258 245 (-13) 207 (-51)
LD 57 94 (+37) 148 (+91)
DUP 8 8 8
SNP 6 6 6
SF 5 5 5
PC 3 2 (-1) 2 (-1)
SDLP 3 3 3
Green 1 0 (-1) 0 (-1)
Alliance 1 1 1
Hermon 1 1 1

What’s immediately obvious is that, as would be expected, the Lib Dems gain the most benefit from the new system, as they’re the party most disadvantaged by FPTP. What might be surprising, though, is quite how much they benefit from it when you look at the adjusted model. It’s often pointed out that AV is not a truly proportional electoral system, which is quite true. However, my model suggests that it would be far more proportional than the current system, with the Lib Dems winning 23% of the seats on 27% of the vote, rather than the current 9% of the seats on 24% of the vote.

The model also suggests that coalition government could well become the norm under AV, as under both simulations a government would need any two of the big three parties to form a majority. Nonetheless, this simulation is being applied to an outlier election in the first place, and it’s still entirely possible for parties to gain an overall majority under alternative vote.

It’s worth pointing out that this isn’t developed as a predictive model of elections under AV; it’s a simulation of what might have been on May 6th, not what will happen in future elections. I might amend it in future to analyze likely results in the next election (if it’s held under AV), but the output will be unlikely to closely reflect what you see above, due to changes in political dynamics between elections. The Lib Dems, for example, are likely to lose out on transfers from Labour and independents after going into government with the Tories, but will be more transfer-friendly to Tory voters.

Continue reading for full methodological details >>

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The Speech Kenny Should Have Given

Published on 16 June, 2010. 0 Comments
The Speech Kenny Should Have GivenThese past few days have seen the downfall of Enda Kenny as leader of Fine Gael. Following the sacking of Richard Bruton, his leadership became untenable, following the resignations of nine further members of his front bench, his leadership became impossible. What is most unfortunate about the whole affair is that, after four decades of political life, Kenny’s career should come to an end with him trying so desperately to cling to power, damaging both himself and the party in the process.
Yesterday afternoon he had an opportunity to change that. After witnessing the resignations of most of his front bench, he was due to speak for a vote of no confidence in the Taoiseach, a situation where he, not Brian Cowen, would paradoxically be at the center of the Dáil’s attention. I had hoped that he may have taken that opportunity to make a speech that would be worth capping a political career with, but unfortunately he gave the same speech in the same way he always does, a speech that reminded many why they no longer wished for him to be their leader.
The following is, in a brief form, my humble opinion of what he should have said, of the kind of speech he should have given.
“This is not a time for business as usual, and it is not a time for politics as usual. If we are to recover as a nation, if we are to leave our children the Ireland they deserve, then we cannot keep along the same political path that is so well trodden in this country. We need a class of politicians for whom the notion of putting the interests of the country above their own is not simply rhetoric. We need a class of politicians who can pass that most difficult test of leadership, stepping aside.
This morning you and I were in very similar situations, Taoiseach. We are both leaders, and we both serve those who elect us. Over these past 24 hours I have come to accept that those who elect me, the Fine Gael parliamentary party, no longer have confidence in me, and that the only honorable thing to do is to step down as leader of the party. It has been the most difficult decision of my life as a public servant, but one which has become inescapable to me if I wish to truly place the interests of my political party and the Irish public ahead of my own.
Over the course of weeks, months, and indeed years, you too must have come to the realization that the people of this nation, the people you serve, no longer have confidence in you as their leader. Beneath all the bravado, beneath all the rhetoric, deep within you you have come to the same inescapable conclusion that I have over these past few days. It is not an easy realization to come to, Taoiseach, it is that one fear that shakes a politician to his very core, and it is that one truth that is hardest for us to accept.
Tomorrow I will be stepping aside, accepting my fate and doing what is best for the country. I ask you to do the same, to resign as Taoiseach, call a general election and allow the Irish people their right to choose a new government that truly represents them. It would not be an easy decision, it would require a courage, an honesty and a decency that have been lacking in politics for far too long. It would be a selfless decision that is worthy of a true statesman, a true democrat, and a true public servant. It would be a decision that could help signal a return to those highest of standards in political life that we so often talk about but so rarely act upon. Most importantly, it is a decision which you know in your heart to be right.
Put simply, Brian, it’s time for us to go.”

These past few days have seen the downfall of Enda Kenny as leader of Fine Gael. Following the sacking of Richard Bruton, his leadership became untenable, following the resignations of nine further members of his front bench, his leadership became impossible. What is most unfortunate about the whole affair is that, after four decades of political life, Kenny’s career should come to an end with him trying so desperately to cling to power, damaging both himself and the party in the process.

Yesterday afternoon he had an opportunity to change that. After witnessing the resignations of most of his front bench, he was due to speak for a vote of no confidence in the Taoiseach, a situation where he, not Brian Cowen, would paradoxically be at the center of the Dáil’s attention. I had hoped that he may have taken that opportunity to make a speech that would be worth capping a political career with, but unfortunately he gave the same speech in the same way he always does, a speech that reminded many why they no longer wished for him to be their leader.

The following is, in a brief form, my humble opinion of what he should have said, of the kind of speech he should have given.

“This is not a time for business as usual, and it is not a time for politics as usual. If we are to recover as a nation, if we are to leave our children the Ireland they deserve, then we cannot keep along the same political path that is so well trodden in this country. We need a class of politicians for whom the notion of putting the interests of the country above their own is not simply rhetoric. We need a class of politicians who can pass that most difficult test of leadership, stepping aside.

This morning you and I were in very similar situations, Taoiseach. We are both leaders, and we both serve those who elect us. Over these past 24 hours I have come to accept that those who elect me, the Fine Gael parliamentary party, no longer have confidence in me, and that the only honorable thing to do is to step down as leader of the party. It has been the most difficult decision of my life as a public servant, but one which has become inescapable to me if I wish to truly place the interests of my political party and the Irish public ahead of my own.

Over the course of weeks, months, and indeed years, you too must have come to the realization that the people of this nation, the people you serve, no longer have confidence in you as their leader. Beneath all the bravado, beneath all the rhetoric, deep within you you have come to the same inescapable conclusion that I have over these past few days. It is not an easy realization to come to, Taoiseach, it is that one fear that shakes a politician to his very core, and it is that one truth that is hardest for us to accept.

Tomorrow I will be stepping aside, accepting my fate and doing what is best for the country. I ask you to do the same, to resign as Taoiseach, call a general election and allow the Irish people their right to choose a new government that truly represents them. It would not be an easy decision, it would require a courage, an honesty and a decency that have been lacking in politics for far too long. It would be a selfless decision that is worthy of a true statesman, a true democrat, and a true public servant. It would be a decision that could help signal a return to those highest of standards in political life that we so often talk about but so rarely act upon. Most importantly, it is a decision which you know in your heart to be right.

Put simply, Brian, it’s time for us to go.”

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Some Hung Parliament Hypotheses

Published on 8 May, 2010. 5 Comments

Hypothesis 1: Any meaningful electoral reform in the UK would effectively prevent the Tories from ever having an overall majority again. Because of this, the Tories, whatever overtures they may be giving Clegg at the moment, can never credibly commit to real electoral reform.

The Tories have been a minority party in UK politics for three-quarters of a century. That may seem odd, given that they’ve come out with an overall majority of MPs in nine elections since, but you have to go all the way back to Stanley Baldwin in 1931 to find the last leader of the Conservatives to lead the party to get over 50% of the votes in a general election*. Even in Margaret Thatcher’s 1983 landslide, the Tories only managed 44% of the vote, but won a large majority of seats as the opposition vote was split between Labour and the SDP/Liberal Alliance. Winston Churchill, now considered one of the greatest Prime Ministers of all time, never even actually won an election on the popular vote. During his three elections as Tory leader, he managed to win a majority of MPs in just one, and even then with a slightly lower percentage of the national vote than Labour.

The Conservatives know all this, and David Cameron, a former student of politics, knows it as well as an of them. The history of the Conservative party since universal suffrage has been of a declining popular vote, mitigated only by the gradual split of the center-left between Labour and the Liberals. With the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system, this had been good enough to secure frequent parliamentary majorities for the Tories, but under any even remotely proportional system their hopes for an overall majority would almost completely disappear. Their choices would either be eternal opposition, or a shift to the left for occasional coalition governments. Neither are particularly appealing to die-hard Tories.

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On The Ordering Of Ballot Papers

Published on 27 March, 2010. 0 Comments

Even in the already nerdy field of political theory, the discussion of the ordering of candidates on ballot papers is quite an obscure one. It is, however, one of the few areas of politics where reform would be simple, uncontroversial, and provide relatively clear benefits to the democratic process. The problem is a pretty simple one; because our ballots are ordered alphabetically by surname, a candidate with a surname like Aaronson will likely be placed at the top of the list, whereas a candidate whose surname is Zykowski will be placed at or near the bottom. People have a slightly higher tendency to vote for candidates placed further up the list, so Aaronson is more likely to get elected purely because of his name.

There are a few different systems used or proposed to combat this. The first, and probably the simplest, is to just randomize the positioning of candidates on the ballot paper. From one election to the next, this does prevent a candidate like Aaronson appearing on top of the ballot every time. However, in any given election there is still one candidate who appears on the top of every ballot, and hence receives an advantage from that position. Likewise, one candidate will be unfortunate enough to be on the bottom of every ballot, and will be similarly disadvantaged.

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A Perfect Opportunity

Published on 20 February, 2010. 0 Comments

A couple of months ago, I blogged about the possibility of an experienced outsider being brought into the cabinet as Minister for Trade, Enterprise and Employment (Jim O’Hara being that outsider). Through the various twists and turns of Irish politics over the past week or so, a sequence of events has given Brian Cowen the perfect opportunity to make just such a shake-up:

  1. Willie O’Dea’s resignation from the cabinet
    With O’Dea gone from the Department of Defense, a cabinet reshuffle is now inevitable. While many are speculating that Cowen will simply appoint one of the junior ministers to fill O’Dea’s post, he hasn’t reshuffled his cabinet since taking office in 2008 (in a very different economic climate), and now would be the perfect time to do so. What’s more, with a vacant seat on the cabinet, an independent minister could be brought in without having to relegate any of the sitting Fianna Fail ministers to the backbenches. This could help diffuse any animosity that the FF parliamentary party might have about bringing in someone from outside Fianna Fail.
  2. Deirdre de Burca’s resignation from the Seanad
    As well as an opening in the cabinet, there’s now an opening in the Seanad, thanks to Deirdre de Burca. As she occupied one of the 11 Seanad seats reserved for nominees of the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen can now appoint whoever he likes, at as short notice as he likes, to replace her. Indeed, he could nominate someone on Monday morning, and by Monday evening they could be sitting at the cabinet table. Of course, as the seat was previously held by a Green, the Green Party will undoubtedly want another of their own to replace her. Cowen would do well to remind them that Fianna Fail recently elected Niall O’Brolchain as an additional Green senator to replace Labour’s Alan Kelly, and that Cowen’s appointee would be independent, rather than from Fianna Fail. Of course, if that didn’t work, a promise of an additional junior minister post for the Greens in the reshuffle would probably do the trick.
  3. Mary Coughlan’s cock-up over the Ryanair hangar proposal
    Mary Coughlan has made quite a few mistakes and gaffes during her tenure as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, but, at a time when unemployment is at its highest in a generation, her inability to secure 500 jobs that seemed to be offered on a plate by Ryanair is the first one to really make her position look untenable. What’s more, after O’Dea’s resignation, any further revelation in the Coughlan-Ryanair saga could have catastrophic consequences for the government. It would be best for Cowen to reassign her to a different portfolio as part of a wider cabinet reshuffle, which would prevent any arguments over her handling of Ryanair’s proposals from becoming a resigning matter. In order to illustrate that her movement out of the portfolio is simply part of the reshuffle and not a demotion, she could keep the position of Tanaiste in her new role.
  4. Greece’s future is still shaky
    Within the the next week, Greece is expected to try to raise up to €5 billion euros from international bond markets, which will be a big test of market confidence in their finances. If Greece struggles through this test, renewed pressure will come not only on them, but also on the other ‘peripheral countries’ in the eurozone, including Ireland. Brian Lenihan’s budget in December bought us a bit of leeway compared to Greece, Spain and Portugal, but we can’t count on that goodwill from the markets to last forever, and now would be a very good time to differentiate ourselves once again, by bringing in an outside expert to a major economic post on the cabinet. By picking the right person, and handling the international press well, any potential fallout from Greece’s problems could be neatly defected, keeping our own borrowing within reasonable costs.

I had previously suggested Jim O’Hara to take over the role of Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, and I still think that he would be a very good choice. Of course, so long as Cowen were to avoid appointing anyone who was in any way involved in either the property or finance industries, there are quite a few successful Irish businessmen and businesswomen who would fit the bill, including some of the members of the Taoiseach’s own innovation taskforce. The important thing is to appoint someone who would be respected by the international business community, with any experience in high-tech exports as an added bonus.

Whoever Cowen were to choose, he now has a perfect opportunity to create a rare piece of good news for the government, and to end a dreadful couple of weeks for his party (and Irish politics as a whole) on a high note. Of course, whether he has the fortitude to make good on this opportunity is a different matter entirely…

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