Here’s Lady Macbeth giving her husband what-for, because he’s acting scaredy-cat about killing King Duncan:
“…Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life
Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’
Like the poor cat in the adage”.
Things have come to a pretty pass when the wife is comparing you to a cat that’d like to eat fish but is scared of getting its paws wet.
I thought of this tense little scene in Macbeth when I read about the Greens today. They are in a heart-attack bind, and if you ask me Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin are to blame. In exchange for being part of the government coalition, they’ve offered the Greens extra money for public transport and cycling infrastructure, more carbon tax and an average of 7% a year reduction in carbon emissions. There’ll be a ban on off-shore gas exploration and the importing of fracked gas, and an end to the harsh system of ‘direct provision’ for asylum seekers, which the Greens and others see as inhumane.
So what’s not to like?
In what way could you say that the Greens are like that cat at the edge of a pond, dying to get at the fish it can see but congenitally allergic to water? Well, because what looks like a pretty nice deal on closer examination may be anything but.
To take one example: the 7% reduction in carbon emissions. Step past the fact that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil wouldn’t bother their barney with such a target if it weren’t for the need to woo the Greens. But what looks like a jolly good idea and one that could save the world sounds a bit less shiny when you hear Leo Varadkar on telly the other night, explaining that that’s an average of 7% over ten years.
Yes, you heard aright. Even though the coalition will at best work as government for five years, Leo’s selling the 7% reduction in carbon emissions as an annual figure spread over ten years, five of which he and Micheál and their respective parties may be nowhere near government and thus unable to deliver a. pint of milk, let alone a 7% reduction.
So pity the poor Greens. On the one hand they have a tidy number of TDs elected, they are kingmaker in a coalition that will not work without them – and they have a range of their policies included in the programme for government. And that’s good.
What’s bad is, they know they can’t trust Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Leo is already backing away from the 7% reduction. Many in the Green Party suspect that Micheál and Leo will be very wobbly on their other promises as well. Once the Greens are in the coalition, if they were to dare pull the plug, they will suffer grievous bodily harm at the election that must follow.
So joining the coalition is something that bristles with danger for them. On the other hand, they’ll never have a better chance of getting even some of their policies implemented, and with climate crisis bearing down on us, they don’t believe that postponement of this chance would be a good idea. So if the Greens want their policies implemented, there’s no better time than this.
There is a catch, though. If the Greens go into government, they know from bitter experience that they may well be blamed for all the failures of that government in future years, and be butchered at the ballot box. From the off, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail will be manoeuvring ways in which all unpopular measures can be blamed on the Greens. If that happens, the Greens will take an electoral blood-bath.
And did I mention that two Green stalwarts, Nessa Hourigan and Catherine Martin, have their sights firmly fixed on taking out Eamon Ryan? All this while Micheál and Leo both have the entire Green Party in their cross-hairs?
Or that the Greens have no position on the constitutional issue?
Join the Greens – it’s a cat’s life.
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