As a facially hirsute man, it gives me no pleasure to behold the fact that the most dangerous politicians on either side of the Irish Sea both have beards, but such is life. Jeremy Corbyn, now favourite for the leadership of the British Labour Party, and Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein’s Teflon-coated leader share more than just a taste in grooming.
They were both first elected to Westminster in 1983 and they can be described as friends, inasmuch as they have met many times and seem to have a high opinion of one another. They have both entered the political mainstream after decades in the political wilderness and they are reaching their political prime in their mid-sixties. Their political careers have survived those of significantly younger men and they are each riding the crest of an anti-austerity wave.
In Britain, partisan outlets like The Daily Telegraph cannot contain their glee at the prospect of a man of Corbyn’s discredited and antediluvian economic views leading the opposition and giving the Tories a free ride. Here in Ireland, we have no equivalent to the Telegraph, but nonetheless, senior figures in Fine Gael and Labour, such as Leo Varadkar and Alan Kelly have made much of the notion that the only alternative to the current purple coalition is one led by Adams, whose “Peppa Pig economics” – to use Kelly’s words – are constantly raised as a warning to middle Ireland of what happens if the incumbent government does not get its way.
We stand at a historic inflection point at which the sheer economic toxicity of what Adams and Corbyn advocate is difficult to overstate. In simple terms, both men have abandoned the rudiments of the welfare state politics that they claim to advocate – principally, that what the government spends on entitlements and services, it must raise in taxes or other revenues, such that every deficit that may emerge in a given fiscal year must be balanced by a surplus in another. Of course, our mainstream politicians have played fast and loose with this rule, turning deficits in good times and bad alike into a permanent feature of the western fiscal landscape. What few in the mainstream have gone so far as to do, however, is to actually effectively endorse permanent sovereign insolvency or permanent deficit budgeting, if you prefer, as a permanent solution to the world’s problems.
This is where Corbyn and Adams enter the fray. For most of their careers, they have been so far from the merest whiff of power that their fiscal views were secondary – after all, if your politics are revolutionary, then what does it matter if debt is used to fund welfare and public service entitlements. Ironically, having modified their opinions as power has beckoned, they have become far more dangerous.
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Taking the most primitive caricature of John Maynard Keynes’ economics, they are now selling the delusion that a welfare state that’s swimming in red ink can be expanded, with no tax increases other than for the ill-defined “rich” and despite the unprecedented indebtedness of the households and businesses that will be expected to fund this expansion. Their hopes all appear to rest on the infinite indulgence of the sovereign debt markets who they despise. There is a word for this kind of phenomenon and that word is magic.
Ironically, the genesis of the most recent manifestation of this problem lies on the right. After the tech bubble of the 1990s burst and 25 years of projected budget surpluses disappeared down a budgetary vortex, the newly elected American presidential team of George W Bush and Dick Cheney found themselves with a deficit and no desire to face the political consequences of its reduction.
Their solution was a binge in tax cuts and spending increases with low Fed interest rates to finance them. This party ended in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed. We are still dealing with the consequences today.
So lacking are Adams and Corbyn in imagination that they seemingly cannot understand that they are simply promoting a reprise of Bush and Cheney’s role, clothed in the politically correct vestments of leftism. As Cheney said to Paul O’Neill, his sceptical treasury secretary: “Deficits don’t matter”. That looks like a pretty good mantra for Adams and Corbyn around now.
What’s worse though is that unlike Bush and Cheney, Adams and Corbyn don’t even need to win power to wreak havoc. Irresponsible opposition beget irresponsible governments. Without an electable opposition, Fine Gael is already showing telltale signs of ethical atrophy – look no further than the Garda whistleblower scandal – and with a Corbyn leadership, the Tories may not be far behind.
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Meanwhile, auction politics from a delusional opposition causes governments to crawl under an ever lower bar. Fine Gael can recklessly promise universal free healthcare and the Tories can impose a £9-an-hour living wage that will destroy perhaps millions of jobs, but what recourse do economically literate voters have? Can we seriously punish Kenny and Cameron by replacing them with Adams or Corbyn?
Our political choices seem to consist of cholera or the plague.
@jacktchrakian