Reviewing a Broadway performance of Katherine Hepburn’s, the acidic Miss Dorothy Parker wrote that she ran the gamut of emotions from A to B.
When it comes to Irish political parties views on social issues, more or less the same could be said.
There are clear ideological differences between, say, Renua and Sinn Fein, on economic matters.
But when it comes to social issues such as abortion, Renua reaches for the free vote, as does Fianna Fail. A free vote is an improvement on a rigidly applied whip, but it hardly represents the gamut of views that exist in Irish society. It is extraordinary that there is no overtly pro-life party in Ireland.
Even from a pragmatic point of view, it makes no sense, given that individual electoral success often hinges on a handful of votes.
Other countries manage to have far more political diversity.
This writer does not believe, unlike some other commentators, that Scandinavian countries are some kind of earthly paradise.
However, it is intriguing, for example, that Finland’s political parties span a much broader spectrum than Irish parties do.
Finland uses a variant of the d'Hondt system of proportional representation which allows people to vote for an individual candidate rather than for a list. Amusingly, the Finnish people feel that their electoral system leads to too much political consensus.
Please, please, come to Ireland to see what stifling consensus really looks like.
In the 2015 election, the Centre Party, which won 49 seats, and which since 1906 has held the post of Prime Minister twelve times, decided to create a right-leaning coalition, which includes the Finns (formerly the True Finns) party.
The Finns are a populist party with a highly eclectic mix of views, managing to be nationalist and Eurosceptic, resistant to unlimited immigration but also left-wing economically.
The Finns’ leader, Timo Soini, converted to Catholicism after an experience in St Mary’s Cathedral, Killarney, in 1987.
A nun who was showing him around asked him whether he wanted to pray now, or later. He was impressed that she asked him to pray, rather than just giving him a tour of the Cathedral. It was the beginning of a spiritual search that ended with conversion to Catholicism.
Catholics are a tiny minority in Finland, and being a Catholic politician is a severe disadvantage, yet Soini never attempts to hide his faith. Nor does the current Prime Minister, Juha SipilÀ, who is a member of a small group affiliated to the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
To be clear, if I were Finnish, I would not be voting for the Finns party.
It has some members with repellent views, such as blogger and politician Jussi Halla-aho, who in the past has suggested Greece’s financial woes could not be solved without a military junta, and who has also claimed that Islam as a faith is soft on paedophilia.
The Finns are not the only party who could probably not exist in Ireland. Finland also has a small Christian Democratic Party who were in coalition in the 2011 government, but lost out in the 2015 election.
The party declares their values to be respect for human dignity from conception to natural death, the importance of family and close communities, defending the weak, encouraging resourcefulness and individual and collective responsibility, not just for themselves but also for their neighbours and the rest of creation. They are unashamedly pro-family.
For example, in relation to childcare, they fought for the retention of a homecare allowance which facilitates a clear alternative to institutional childcare. It can be claimed by parents or guardians of children under three. The money can be used by a parent or other relative to look after the child, or to buy private childcare.
It is impossible to imagine a party like this holding ministerial roles in Ireland, but it happened in Finland. Why is this?
There is a strong conformist streak in the Irish psyche. We have simply replaced one set of authorities whom we feared to challenge with another, equally strong group who continue to set the boundaries of permissible views.
This conformity is slavishly reflected in a media that is virtually mono-cultural. Certain sectors, especially in broadcast media, express open contempt for anyone holding conservative views. (There are, of course, others who act with greater professionalism.)
And let’s not blame our fear of standing up to authorities on our colonial past. Finland was ruled by Sweden for centuries and was invaded by the Soviets in 1939.
A former Finnish minister for education, when asked why its education system is so good, suggested that it might have something to do with 150 unbroken years of respect for learning and the teaching profession.
Maybe Finland’s ability to generate political diversity has to do with a similar level of respect for sincerely held beliefs, rather than constantly gauging what way the wind is blowing, and adjusting your views to suit.
While Finland is no paradise, as it is struggling economically and has high youth unemployment, it still manages to maintain respect for diverse views in a way that Ireland cannot achieve.