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Bad Government may make country ungovernable

Issued : Friday 24 October, 2008

Speaking at Graduates Renuion, Waterford Institute of Technology, Tower Hotel, Waterford

I am pleased to speak to you at the end of one of the most remarkable weeks ever in Irish politics. Since the foundation of the State and despite the violence that accompanied its birth, Ireland has been a remarkably stable polity. At intervals since independence the State has endured subversion in pursuit of the fourth green field but the balance of democratic politics has changed hardly at all. The two and a half party system has endured the slings and arrows of modernisation but has emerged more or less intact. If you were to anticipate a government being shaken to its core by a peoples' revolt, you wouldn't prophecy that it would be led by senior citizens.

Yet that is exactly what has happened. A spontaneous uprising of retired citizens humbles an elected government. They were followed onto the streets by students in numbers that we have not seen for a generation. Next week the teachers are coming and they will scarcely have returned to the classroom when the tractors can be expected to roll onto Kildare Street. Meanwhile the trade unions are doing their best to defend the citadel while the government - partly in exile - regroups.

All the while the stock markets are tumbling. The economy is in recession. The banks are not lending. The developers are not building. And we are in danger of Europe moving on without us. The only thing rising is the cost of living, the river in Kenmare and the Live Register.

Suddenly for us in Ireland at any rate the world has been stood on its head. We have gone from boom to bust in the space of one very wet summer.

Emigration has recommenced. Bertie Ahern has broken his leg, the developers have broken the banks and Waterford lost the All-Ireland.

A government that dozed through the summer brought forward the Budget to show decisiveness. And they came in their thousands with their walking sticks and wheelchairs and blasted a hole in the Budget almost as large as the one in the public finances. Collapse decisive Government!

I believe that bad government risks making our country ungovernable. Michael McDowell used to argue that our market economy couldn't function without an element of inequality. I believe that without fairness at the heart of government our society can't function. Fairness was not evident in this budget. Senior citizens understand perfectly that they got access to free primary care in a "stroke" designed to win a General election. The same parties were returned and now they want to take the medical card back. As the lady in the wheelchair said "Like f**k you will."

The standard joke in Leinster House these days is the Chinese curse - may you live in interesting times.

These certainly are interesting times, if not a little scary too.

The world financial system totters from crisis to crisis. The economists pore over oil prices and shipping rates - the cost of moving goods to and from China, which is plummeting- shake their heads and murmur about global recession. A truculent Russia sits on the Border of Europe, and if that weren't enough Kerry is flooded, to remind us all that climate change hasn't gone away.

Interesting times indeed, and perplexing if you happen to be a recent graduate, trying to set a direction for your career.

Across the world, learned commentators are asking themselves whether we are looking at a new global swing to the left. The American historian, Arthur Schlesinger, put forward the theory that US politics was like a pendulum, swinging from left to right every thirty years or so, and then swinging back again.

The disciples of Thatcher, Reagan and Bush the younger have held sway now for nearly thirty years. It is only now, when their theories have brought the world to the edge of financial disaster, that we are seeing a swing back.

For the next two weeks, all eyes will turn to the US, and to Barack Obama. Is his lead unassailable? Is there to be yet another twist or turn in what has been the most truly extraordinary election? I don't know, though the prospect of four more years of the Republicans, with Sarah Palin waiting in the wings, is too scary to contemplate.

The big question is, if Obama does win, what kind of president will he be? Earlier in the campaign, he was being compared to John F Kennedy. These days, more people are wondering if he will be a new Franklin D. Roosevelt.

When FDR was sworn in, on Saturday March the 4th, 1933, one in four Americans were unemployed, The American Banking system was literally falling apart. There was no time for niceties. The new President declared a Bank Holiday which lasted for four days, while the new Treasury team pulled together a rescue plan, that was passed by Congress the following Thursday.

Even before Obama assumes office, he will attend a summit of world leaders in Washington tasked with building a new architecture to regulate the world banking system. And that is before he turns to the task of pulling the US out of recession.

So, will Obama be a new FDR? Or a new Kennedy?

It's easy to see from where the comparison to Kennedy comes. He is young, a Senator, charismatic, and since he got the nomination has been doing what all American Presidential candidates do, running as a centrist candidate.

My own hope is that he will be more like Kennedy's successor, one of my own great political heroes, Lyndon Johnson. A rough, tough political bruiser from Texas, it was Johnson who embraced civil rights and introduced real change to make the US a fairer, more equal country.

Because it is not just the greed of the bankers, or failure of the regulators that caused this crisis. There would be no sub-prime crisis, if there did not exist a virtual third world country within the US. The bottom fifth of American families saw their real incomes grow by only 2.8% in the 30 years between 1974 and 2004. It is that inequality, in the face of astounding wealth, that has brought, the US, and the world to where we are.

At home of course, our Government has learned no lessons. Rather than charge the banks a fair rate for their bailout, or perhaps ask property developers to pony up a few quid, the targets have been the over 70s, students, the low paid, and children in primary schools.

There has also been a concerted assault on any thing that looks like public service. Listening to the stockbrokers, you could almost believe that it was the public service - the nurse in A&E, the teacher, or the soldier behind a sandbag in Chad, who caused this mess.

There has been a lot of talk about patriotism in the past two weeks. Patriotism comes in many forms. And you don't have to be a public servant to perform public service.

I hope that many of you will stay in the South East, to build up the economy of this region. I hope the Government will assist that effort by conferring on this institution its deserved status.

I hope that many in this audience will go on to be the wealth creators and drivers of innovation for the future.

No matter where you go from here tonight, where ever life takes you, it is worth remembering that patriotism often comes in the form of service to others, and that public service too, in its many manifestations, is a worthy calling

So, let me conclude, with a remark from another American President, Woodrow Wilson, with apologies for the sexist language of another era.

"Every man sent out from his university should be a man of his Nation as well as a man of his time."