Does the EU need to give Greeks welfare payments directly?

Hey Stavros, here comes my dole!

I posted this blog in February, and I’ve decided to re-post with some changes because I think it is more relevant today. The fact is, the Greek people seem to be sleepwalking towards the election of a radical government that is going to destroy their country and effectively take them out of the euro. Not all their reasons for voting for the Syriza coalition are illogical either, given the corruption of Greek politics and the real pain that ordinary Greeks are feeling. Even right wingers like me, who support the EU/IMF and recognise the need for harsh fiscal discipline in the country, are beginning to despair at what the Greek people are going through. The fact is, if we are not careful, we will see Greeks dying, or possibly suffer third world levels of poverty as their public infrastructure collapses.

But what is the solution? To keep giving a corrupt, incompetent Greek state money, which it will squander, or use to stave off vital long-term reforms?

Instead, is it time for the EU to consider direct welfare provision, to stave off the worst excesses and protect the most vulnerable? Should the EU offer to voluntarily register individual Greek citizens and pay them a weekly amount directly? Or what about creating EU public works programmes, such as hiring thousands of unemployed college graduates to collect taxes from businesses? Would it be patronising, even colonialist? Quite possibly, but bear in mind that it was the Greek government that created this insatiable public money devouring clientelist monster, not the EU. It would be voluntary, anyway, perhaps dispersed from EU embassies, effectively the biggest direct aid programme in Europe since Marshall Aid or the Berlin Airlift.

How ever we do it, we cannot let Greeks starve. This is Europe, for Christ’s sake, and these are Europeans too. We have to offer the Greek people a realistic alternative to austerity, that is, austerity with a purpose. Maybe putting much needed euro directly into the hands of Greeks in return for complying with the reforms needed to make the Greek economy self sustaining? Will it work? I don’t know. But a chink in the eurozone accompanied by a Greek default would surely be more expensive than giving every struggling Greek  €200 a week?       

Of course, when I suggest something like this there’ll be the usual Irish voices demanding that any such funds be spent in Ireland, but the reality is that Greece is in a far worse state than Ireland, and unlike Ireland, is in serious danger of a military coup. One thing is certain, and this applies to Ireland as well as Greece. Whilst you must get taxes and spending into alignment, you just cannot cut your way out of a recession.

The Curse of High Expectations.

Watching the crowds cheering at Francoise Hollande’s election, I could not help wondering how long it would be before large numbers of his supporters (particularly his young ones) would be feeling disappointed and betrayed. Like Sarkozy and Chirac before, he has been elected on a platform of immeasurable unachievable nebulousness. Of course he will disappoint, as has Obama, Cameron and  Clegg.  Getting elected the way they do, they can do no other.

This is a factor that crosses the Western world which should worry us all. Electorates that are incapable or unwilling of understanding subtle, modest or technical political pledges have to be instead won over with emotive buttonpushing that leaves them ultimately unfulfilled, and so leaves an electorate feeling more cynical and bitter after each election, and more open to the heroin-like bigger better hit of left or right extremism, or religious fanaticism.

Ireland is no different. Every now and again, people lament the fact that there is “no one” to vote for. They call for a party that is sincere in its opposition to corruption, that advocates political reforms that put the community first, and that has nothing to do with the dodgy connections between business and politics in Ireland.

Then you tell them that there is such a party. Eyebrows jut up. It’s called the Green Party. Ugh! They say, and dismiss you with a wave of the hand, and there’s the funny thing right there. In the 2011 general election, the Irish electorate wiped out the one party that had been 100% clean on corruption, whose deputies had fought (in Trevor Sargent’s case, actually) in council chambers against corruption, and yet elected 20 Fianna Fail TDs. Go figure.

The Green Party is ready to reengage in the political system, but it needs to address its history and its actual purpose. Most of all, it has to deal with that perennial of Irish politics, The Curse of High Expectations. This is something that affects all Irish political parties when they enter government, and it can be particularly lethal to parties like the Greens and PDs with small core votes that rely on transfers from soft voters to win seats. In government, the Greens achieved certain policy objectives, but they failed to identify and meet the gut objectives that those soft Green voters were looking for to stay with the party. In particular, the party failed to shape, before its entry into government, the expectations of its voters. What would it specifically have to do to keep those voters on board. It’s extraordinary how Irish political parties never seem to give this much thought, especially when one considers how prone the Single Transferable Vote electoral system is to magnifying a drop in transfers into actual seat losses. Just look at how it worked with FF and Labour in 2011. Despite only a 1% vote difference, Labour got nearly twice as many seats as FF because Labour was transfer friendly whereas FF had the political equivalent of Herpes. STV is a fairweather friend voting system, which means that in the coming storm, Labour could be completely capsized.

Labour is heading in this direction, and seems unwilling to do anything about it. Like the Greens and PDs before them, they really need to look at the voting system and ask is this the best system for small ideological parties in a non-ideological country? Labour, like the Greens, needs to decide who it is for, what it must do specifically to keep those people onboard, and what voting system is the best for helping those voters deliver Labour TDs.    

A New Economic Model (Remake)

The good people at Dow Jones’s Marketwatch recently read a blog of mine, and asked me to turn it into a article for them, which you can read here. Apparently, according to the comments, I’m both a communist and a tool of international bankers, which is nice. I’m just a bringer of people together. Enjoy. 

An Occasional Guide to Irish Politics: The Thatcherite No Voter.

How would she vote on May 31st?

You don’t see him much in the media, because it doesn’t really suit. It’s much easier to have on one side the voices of economic orthodoxy, paying our debts, etc, and on the other side the Anti-Austerity Why Can’t Every Thing Be Nice left. Everybody knows where they stand, and to have a Ron Paul style slash big government by proxy type complicating the issue just doesn’t fit. The idea that there are Irish people who actually think that ever growing public spending might be a bad idea just does not compute in a political system that tries to pretend that there is no left or right in Irish politics. In fact, the idea that such an opinion could be voiced in Ireland is so offensive to some that they try to pretend that it is a fabrication of the Yes side.

But ask yourself this: if they could, how would the British Tories vote in this referendum? He is voting No because he is afraid that there could indeed be another bailout, funding the Croke Park Agreement and civil service increments. In his mind, a No vote will starve the public sector of funds from wherever, and throttle it down to size. The fact that he has Mary Lou, Joe Higgins and Richard Boyd Barrett to actually help him deliver that goal, well, that’s just delicious.

It’s like when Al Qaeda and Mitt Romney both agree that the gays should not have the same rights as, you know, real people. In politics, the strangest people can find themselves in bed together.

Europe needs the far left to win in Greece.

Hitler: Proved himself to be full of shit.

Imagine if the July 1944 plot had been successful, and Hitler had been killed, and the coup had succeeded. The war could possibly have ended earlier. But imagine Hitler’s reputation today, as the guy who could have won the war for Nazi Germany had he not been stabbed in the back by “traitors”. A similar situation exists in Greece, where the Greek people have pretty much turned their back on conventional centrist politics and voted for the extremes of left and right. Well, you know what? This is good.

We need one country to be run by the pain-free populist priests of anti-austerity, so that we can all clearly see what happens when easy answers are applied. We need to kill the Hitler Martyr Myth, that these guys have the answer if only they’d been given a chance. Let’s see how Greece does under Stavros Higgins and Richard Boyd Theodopolopolos.

And, by the way, the EU (and NATO) needs to make it very clear to the Greek military that on no account will any sort of military action against an elected Greek government, even of the far left, be tolerated. The Greek people must be given the right to confront reality themselves, even if that reality is to flush their own country down the toilet.    

Interesting thoughts.

Wonk!

If you get a chance, check out www.publicpolicy.ie, the website of the Irish Fiscal Policy Research Centre, which is funded by Atlantic Philanthropies, and is a new thinktank dedicated to putting out thoughtful options on various public policy issues. 

Interesting stuff for the policy wonks amongst us. You know who you are. Yes, you with a copy of Prospect magazine secretly stuffed in the middle of GQ. I’m looking at you.   

The Spoofer’s Guide to the Fiscal Treaty.

The talented Andrea Pappin and I have decided to put together a modest offering explaining or at least stirring questions (we hope) about the Fiscal Treaty, which you can access here.

Is it a Yes document? Well, I’m voting Yes, but, to be honest, I actually don’t know if she is. We’ve put together our thoughts on the treaty, and have tried to ask questions for people to consider rather than do a blatant “Vote Yes or they’ll murder us in our beds!” We did ask someone prominent on the No side to write something, but that person missed our deadline so we’ll just add their contribution in when we get it.

Anyway, have a read.

Do normal people go into politics anymore?

I recently had lunch with someone not involved in politics who had been asked to consider running for a party. He refused, and was surprised at the reaction of non-political friends who encouraged him to run. What was interesting, and I’ve experienced it myself, is how non-political people’s view of going into politics differs radically from the reality. 

The first big difference is the cost. It amazes me the amount of people who believe that political parties actually fund candidates campaigns. When I ran myself, friends who helped me could not believe how much time was spent fundraising, having assumed that the party just picks up the tab. I know people still paying off overdrafts from campaigns fought a decade ago. I also know a person who refused to believe that campaign workers weren’t all paid by the party.

Secondly, they couldn’t believe how many party members who demand an input into candidate selection vanish when the campaign starts, leaving candidates for the most part with their own family and friends, often running a campaign with people who are not even supporters of the party. In “The West Wing”, you never saw Jed Bartlett sitting at his kitchen table pleading with friends to give him an hour on a Saturday afternoon to drop a leaflet in an estate, or settling to bring his still half-drunk brother from the night before to drop leaflets with the promise of a dirty fry.  

Finally, the sheer amount of time and physical door knocking required stuns non-political people. It always raises a smile amongst veterans when a new campaigner, when asked what they can do, suggests something like “I can help hone your message, spin, that kind of thing?”. This is one of the big jaw-droppers from people who believe that an election campaign is only a month long. That and the realisation that the most welcome contributor to a candidate is not the guy with the campaign politics degree from Harvard but the weirdo wafting of BO who religiously drops 1000 doors every Saturday.

The truth is, not only do normal people not get deeply involved in politics when they realise the sheer effort involved, and the disruption it will cause to their normal work and family life, a new generation of people are not getting involved because they…get this…are actually interested in discussing politics.

What’s that, you say? Surely people interested in politics should join a political party? Actually, no. Don’t. Because there isn’t time with all the above to actually discuss what a given party is for. A candidate who spends his time in a pub discussing political ideas will not get elected. Modern political parties are dominated not by the politically interested but the politically ambitious, people who do not want to do as much as want to be. To them, politics is not an aim but a tool.  

Recently, I mentioned to someone the idea of setting up an informal “Chatham House Rule” political debate club that would meet maybe once a month to debate a political issue. No party ding-dongs, just discussion about a given issue, maybe around a motion or policy paper. What surprised me was the amount of party political people whose eyes lit up with enthusiasm for the idea. Not as a forum to further their party interest, but somewhere where they could discuss political ideas that could not be raised in an actual political party.

Somewhere outside of their political activities where they could actually discuss politics, which says it all, really. 

Supposing Bertie HAD done the right thing…

Supposing Bertie had tried to do the right thing...

June 2007. Cowen, blaming Ahern, concedes defeat as Kenny opens negotiations with Rabbitte.

The Taoiseach, Brian Cowen TD, has conceded defeat after tallymen said that FF senator Cyprian Brady would narrowly fail to be elected to the last seat in Dublin Central. This result confirmed that Fianna Fail’s loss of five seats in the general election meant that it was now impossible for the party to attempt to cobble together a majority with the remaining PDs and independents.

Cowen launched a blistering attack on his predecessor, Bertie Ahern TD,  for his decision, following the 2002 general election, to restrict mortgage lending and tax breaks. He identified Ahern’s attempts to dampen down the property market as the key reason for Fianna Fail’s defeat in the general election. The decision to restrict lending was very badly received by first time buyers, who accused the government of treating them like children and not letting them borrow as much as they wished.

Ahern’s January 2003 RTE Prime Time interview, where he suggested that the banks and mortgage holders were piling debts upon themselves based on massively overvalued assets caused the Taoiseach to be savaged by the media, who attacked him (and not just in their weighty property supplements) of being alarmist and talking down the market. Ahern’s refusal to back down led to a gradual slow down and modest dip  in property values, and following heated rows in heated tents in Galway with party supporters, finance minister Charlie McCreevy announced his resignation, accusing Ahern of lacking courage.

The policy led to a substantial drop in employment in the construction industry, with unemployment leaping from 3.1% to 5.1%, and demands for the Taoiseach’s resignation by some FF backbenchers. Fianna Fail suffered heavy losses in middle class areas in the 2004 local and European elections, with Fine Gael trouncing FF with a clear call to reverse Ahern’s restrictions. Polls showed clearly that Ahern’s interference in the property market was deeply unpopular with middle class and aspiring middle class voters,  and in June 2006, following a sustained campaign in the media, Charlie McCreevey announced that he was challenging Bertie Ahern for the party leadership. Although he defeated Ahern in the vote, McCreevy was beaten in the subsequent leadership election by Brian Cowen, his successor as finance minister, who pointed out that he believed in the “traditional idea that the leader of Fianna Failer should be, you know, a member of Fianna Fail.” The new cabinet announced it was reversing Ahern’s restricting on lending and restoring the tax breaks to the building industry.

The incoming Fine Gael/Labour coalition has said that it does not believe the fact that the country is building over 80,000 housing units when Sweden, with double the population, is only building 12,000, to be a cause for concern.

In other news, the family of Capt. Edward Smith, the “mad” captain of the RMS Titanic who rammed an iceberg in 1912 and caused over a €100,000 pounds worth of damage to his own ship, have petitioned the British Government to clear the captain’s name. Smith, who died disgraced in 1950, always maintained that if he attempted to turn the ship away from the iceberg it could have been badly damaged along its hull in such a way as to sink the ship, a theory that modern engineers have recently begun to suggest has merit. For years, the phrase “To Smith Oneself” was a derogatory naval slogan to describe a foolish action taken by a person who claimed that they were attempting to avoid a greater catastrophe.

The former luxury liner continues to be one of the biggest tourist attractions in London, where it is moored.

Sarkozy proves that pandering gets you in the end.

You actually have to do something.

As Sarko retreats from the stage following his narrow defeat (he was trailing Marine Le Pen in the polls a year ago) it is fair to ponder what lessons can be learnt by politicans. One thing seems clear to me: pandering and posturing, as opposed to actually making decisions gets you nowhere in the end. It’s a common legacy of the Chirac/Sarkozy years, where hard decisions on labour and pension reforms were delayed and ignored for years, leaving a legacy of nothing. Would he have been reelected if he had pursued the radical “rupture” with the past he had proclaimed in 2007? Possibly, if the reforms had actually started to deliver on tackling unemployment. Even if they hadn’t delivered during his time in the Elysee, they would have benefitted France in the long run, and his legacy too. Instead, he leaves office more remembered for his love life and his perceived materialistic shallowness. There’s a lesson here for a generation of politicians who seem to believe in nothing other than getting and staying elected: there are more important things than getting re-elected, and history will not be kind to those who just wanted to be there.