Sir, – Further to "Paul Murphy is Ireland's Boris Johnson" (John McManus, Opinion & Analysis, July 9th), it is a calling card of nonplussed commentators of the extreme centre to lump left-wing and right-wing political forces into one unfathomable but homogeneous blob – the "protest vote" narrative.
It is amusing that the dominant media find themselves in such a tizzy over Mr Murphy above any other left-wing figure, as if he were the sole ringleader of the unwashed masses, whereas in fact this fantasy only exists as a caricature painted of him by those who fail to grasp the possibility of popular movements guiding politicians instead of the other way around.
The animosity is nonetheless understandable. Mr Murphy has a number of irredeemable character flaws. It is bad enough that he is a socialist. Worse, he is a middle-class socialist, which also makes him a class traitor. Hence the wink-wink references to “posh schools” and “good universities”, the insinuation being that socialism and a middle-class upbringing are somehow mutually exclusive. Incidentally, are there “bad universities” in Ireland?
Worse still, he is an articulate middle-class socialist who has shown himself capable in media and parliamentary debates of cutting through rightwing appeals to “common sense” and the bog-standard “where’s the money going to come from?” guff.
Not that I have any particular grá for Paul Murphy. I agree with the substance of most of what he says but disagree with certain of his party’s organisational and tactical positions. However, the ceaseless hatchet jobs reveal more about certain elements of the media than Mr Murphy or his party.
Funding what should be public services out of progressive central taxation is “a bad idea”, according to John McManus, but any argument as to why this is so is kept to himself. – Yours, etc,
WILSON JOYCE,
Chapelizod, Dublin 20.