In the positivity ramp towards this week’s ‘breakthroughs’, there has been the usual calling in aid of public opinion.
``People want agreement''. So say academics, politicians of various shades, the British secretary of state and prime minister and the few in the Dublin government required to make some comment. Polls sometimes help out at such moments, though the pollsters rarely ask questions that might rile their interviewees into hanging up. Like ‘what are you planning to do about the outcome? Join a party? Form a party? Pester a party to do different, better? And if not, why not?’
Pollsters know better, that in most societies political participation is for the few, not the many. The tide that floated Jeremy Corbyn’s battered boat is a rare occurrence. Most people here, it’s safe to say, probably know far fewer activists than political couch potatoes, whose interest extends to watching the news with an occasional yell. Usually at traditional opponents of the couch potato’s community or particularly trundly, pompous or impertinent spokespersons. Occasionally at someone who used to be admired, now a disappointment.
It is plainly not in the least true that people are sick of the entire set-up. Not sick, as in sick to the stomach, unable to listen without retching. If this were true across the board, as is confidently asserted, the polls would show it at the next opportunity. That’s polls as in elections. Polling stations would see nobody but the families of politicians and those they employ, and not all of those. Is that going to happen?
Politics is not for most people. They want it done but in truth they don’t care all that much beyond shouting at the television, in the kitchen or the pub, and for sure they don’t want to get more closely involved. They might like to hear about it after the voting’s done, as long as a talking head on TV makes it listenable to, makes the odd joke, tells the odd anecdote about the count. But negotiations, deals? The fine print that sets up adjudication on march-routes or the behaviour of left-over organisations - what Jim Allister, correct chap if ever there was, calls ‘paramilitaryism’?
Hard work, that. Too much like being back at school again, with an uninspired teacher failing to explain in a way that doesn’t send the class to sleep.
Here’s a thought. A flood of righteous indignation with ‘the others’ – that might stump both DUP and Sinn Féin, make it impossible for them to sell the fudge and climbdown that will have to be sold. But neither side is honestly full of wrath to the exclusion of other thoughts, alive around the kitchen table if unspoken in the public square.
Sinn Féin’s ‘base’, the wider ring of support that votes for them, plus blow-ins from the fading SDLP who have come to them for want of better, they all know very well that this state of affairs is not all due to unionist badness. Of course the Orange is an affront, bonfires festooned with effigies and flags by people who so venerate their own flags; double standards about loyalist paramilitaries; DUP blocking and sheer bad manners in Stormont, the ‘stench’ and holding noses talk; Gregory Campbell and his yoghurt, insults to Irish.
All of that plays into Sinn Féin support. But the people who annoy themselves by daily recitation of the litany of rightful grievance also know the back catalogue against made over, supposedly peaceable republicanism: Andrew Kearney, Robert McCartney, Paul Quinn, the big robberies, Northern Bank, Makro. Máiria Cahill. That young fella in Ardee. Scapaticci. And the Disappeared, sins of the past that won’t lie down.
Winking at some bad stuff was possible. Who thought there could be an instant, smooth transition? All of that. Now it’s a sour wink. Who killed Kevin McGuigan? Do they think we’re all eejits? Cheek this broad and wide and charmless is bad for politics. If it was matched by effective performance at Stormont...but the most minimal news-watching shows empty benches and MLAs unable to express themselves clearly, speak without a page in front of them, read a sentence without a stumble. Their expenses sluice into party money-bags all the same. Just a shimmer there of North Korea.
‘Our people’ are not out for personal gain: that defence loses force against the spectacle of general brazenness. Fig-leaves, however, were never meant to hide faces. The general populace may have no keener sentiment about another fix than a tired ‘Ah let them at it.’
