Flash the red card to 'green jersey' politics

Resorting to patriotism is the last refuge of a bankrupt political elite that has shown itself short of ideas

WHEN THE Government took office last March, I reckoned it would take two years before we would hear Ministers using the two most idiotic phrases in Irish politics. I lost the bet; it has taken just 10 months.

The Government has moved with impressive speed from optimism to gibberish, sparing us a long agony of hope.

The two phrases that summed up the fatuity of Fianna Fáil-led governments under Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen were (a) “pull on the green jersey” and (b) “talking down the economy”. Between them, they captured the essence of the mentality that allowed Ireland to squander its best hope of sustained prosperity.

They suggested, firstly, that there is a “national interest” which can be identified entirely with the interests of the governing elite; and, secondly, that anyone who questions this obvious truth is not merely wrong but is in fact a treasonous saboteur. In this world view, the problem with dissenting views was that they created the very doom they predicted – if things went wrong, it was the fault of those who were not true believers.

The Irish economy was like the fairy Tinker Bell in Peter Pan. When Tinker Bell drinks poison, she will die unless all the children clap their hands to show that they believe in her existence. "If you believe," Peter shouts, "clap your hands; don't let Tink die". "Many clapped. Some didn't. A few beasts hissed."

“Green jersey” and “talking down the economy” were the Irish political versions of clapping to keep Tinker Bell alive and defy the few hissing beasts. The green jersey cliche started, I think, with Mary Harney’s indignant rebuff to the European Commission when it suggested (rightly) that Charlie McCreevy’s policies of fuelling a blazing economic boom might not be altogether wise: “I hope everyone wears the green jersey on this and stands together to defend our economic success.”

It reached its apogee in May 2008, when the house of cards was about to fall. The regulator called in the banks and urged them to stick together. According to Gillian Bowler, then chairwoman of Irish Life, which went on to help Anglo Irish inflate its accounts, “it was suggested that there would be a green jersey agenda, that all banks would help each other”. That is the green jersey agenda. It begins in delusional arrogance and ends in catastrophic cover-up.

“Talking down the economy” had a similar function in our Tinker Bell politics: to render dissent (or even mere realism) unpatriotic. There was Bertie Ahern in September 2007: “There is no place for politically motivated attempts to talk down the economy.”

Bertie later explained his infamous suggestion that the “moaners” should “commit suicide”: “What I was saying was you should never talk down your own economy. You should talk up your economy” – even, he might have added, when it’s imploding.

Or, as our hero David Drumm, then chief executive of Anglo Irish, put it in March 2008: “It is unpatriotic talking ourselves into doom and gloom.”

This idea that it's your fault if Tinker Bell dies was given its fullest expression in a majestic Irish Independenteditorial of September 2007, entitled "Talking down the economy": "Groundless prophesies could conceivably become self-fulfilling. The economy is healthy and robust and even the most persuasive doom merchant should not succeed in talking us into a recession."

Was it naive to think that, given what we’ve been through, there might be a moratorium of a few years on this cod-patriotic rhetoric, this use of the “green jersey” as a suit of armour to ward off awkward realities? Evidently. But it was still breathtaking to get the “green jersey” and “talking down the economy” at the same time.

Thus, on Thursday we had Eamon Gilmore telling Mary Lou McDonald that “it would be helpful if on this occasion she put on the green jersey and assisted the Government in dealing with the negotiations we must have with the troika.”

We then had Michael Noonan on the News at Oneon RTÉ radio complaining about "people who continue to sap confidence and talk down the economy" whom he blamed for "undermining their own economic position and their own job as well as everybody else's". In other words, if you lose your job it's your own fault for being so goddamn gloomy.

Gilmore and Noonan are intelligent men and they probably know how fatuous this stuff is, not least because they’ve been on the receiving end of it themselves. During the general election, Noel Dempsey accused Gilmore of virtual treason for “talking down the Irish economy”.

That they’re resorting to it now is a sign of their despair at their own capacity to say anything more meaningful.

If you’re implementing Fianna Fáil policies, it should not be surprising that you find yourself talking Fianna Fáil’s hollow language.

But hang on. If talking about a recession causes the recession, doesn’t talking about how talking about a recession causes a recession also cause a recession? Best to say nothing and just clap as hard as you can until Tinker Bell comes back to sprinkle us with fairy dust.