Ideology and NI politics
The similarity between Brendan Rodgers, the DUP and Sinn Féin
Football’s ideologies, like political ideologies, are in place to achieve a goal. We adopt ideologies to reach a target, whether that be a more equal society or a clean sheet. Despite this fact, sometimes we apply our ideologies in times when we know that they are not the best answer to the given problem. We commit to the ideology because we have formed an identity with that ideology and wavering from that path can feel like a betrayal. Take a man from Ulster, Brendan Rodgers (current Leicester manager, former Liverpool, Celtic and Swansea manager) as an example of this. When chasing the 2013/14 Premier League title, his Liverpool side played some of the most attacking football England had seen, playing with an ideology that achieved a given outcome. That outcome, when boiled down to its essential parts, was simple: score more than the opposition (football’s most basic objective). His footballing ideology was compared to that of Barcelona at the time, with Rodgers taking inspiration from the renowned Pep Guardiola. Rodger’s downfall was simple, he was an ideologue who could not waver from the strict guidelines which he applied to football.
That was most obviously illustrated when Rodgers was three points away from winning the Premier League title with Liverpool. 3-0 up against Crystal Palace and all the team needed to do was not concede but Rodgers’ team was not trained to think about not conceding, they only focused on scoring. It took Crystal Palace 11 minutes to turn the tide and score their third goal in the 88th minute, with the game ending 3-3. Logically, at three goals up and a title within touching distance, a team should shut up shop and let the game take its obvious course but that was not what Brendan Rodgers’ ideology dictated. The ideology had prevented the team from reaching its objective. However, at the same time, the ideology was the thing that got them so close to achieving the goal in the first place.
The two largest parties in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin and the DUP are, at times, weighed down by the same issues. Both gained their footholds in Northern Irish politics due to a strong commitment to a single ideology which pervades every area of their policy making (or lack of policy making). Each ideology has an obvious goal but at times their complete obsession with achieving that goal can harm their own attempts to reach their aspirations.
We have seen it happen on multiple occasions to both parties. Mountains are made of mole hills, a prolonged media cycle begins (which most NI media outlets lap up due to the lack of consistent news worthy events in a population of 1.9 million) and, inevitably, the parties involved come out the other side looking more childish than victorious. In my personal opinion, this is due to the fact that they have misplaced the purpose of their political ideologies: making the lives of those they represent better. That is the most obvious goal which both parties will even openly admit is the true objective of their ideology. Too often has that simple objective been blocked by the mole hills of Northern Irish politics. Too often does the ideology itself block progress for their own communities.
This misplaced aim comes from an obvious place (in my mind at least). To follow through on the football metaphor, a prolonged period of ideological worship often follows a period of sustained success but usually limits the team’s future creativity. This can be seen in a team like Barcelona: their compulsion to stick to a single, unchanging ideology can not only create an unrealistic mythology (myths in the same sense that Roland Barthes would use the concept) around the bygone period of success but also pigeon holes the team into a lack of creativity due to a strict view of what football ‘should be’. The DUP certainly suffers from this and Sinn Féin can as well on occasions. Each has massively mythologised a period of their past and created strict ideological positions around those periods, greatly confining both parties creativity moving forward. Any deviation from the parties mythologised leadership (Paisley=DUP, Adams and McGuinness=Sinn Féin) would likely be seen as a scandalous and blasphemous action that could not be forgiven. The main problem then developed when the contemporary ideology’s objective clashes with the mythologised past that the party cannot deviate from. Two questions should be asked.
The first: Is it truly possible for the DUP to abandon any right wing element in their party or for Sinn Féin to wander away from a generally accepted left wing position without being accused of blasphemy?
The second: are the political circumstances which applied in the days of Paisley and McGuinness (which formed the basis of their political ideologies and their desired objectives) even applicable in our modern circumstances?
I won’t pretend to have the answers for the two parties but I believe those are the two questions which have to be asked by the parties themselves.
It is also important to realise the strengths of having a clear ideology in a world where neo-liberal politicians are viewed as fake and unrelatable. Much like a manager who lacks a clear approach to playing football on the pitch, it is hard to tell what they rely upon when the ‘passion’ and speeches are stripped away. This could be applied to the smaller parties in Northern Irish politics, all coming across as too ready to sway from a perceived ideological position just to score political points against a competing opposition. They are too ready to define themselves in contrast to the ones they criticize but not ready to present a viable alternative ideology which could actually achieve the desired results. At times, even their success feels like a result of the inconsistency of the larger parties, rather than a successful presentation of their own alternative ideas.
Yet, somewhat detached from the general point of this piece, too often have these smaller parties attempted to present themselves as the rational, calm and logical alternative to the larger, more radical parties. In the backwards world of Northern Irish politics, it is those who have pushed themselves out to the extremes who have attracted the most support while those who present a more restrained and compromised position have to accept the fact that they are viewed as second choice at best. The Executive’s smaller parties, who come across as fully accepting of a neoliberal electoral approach, have mistaken why that approach functioned in the rest of the world but not here. For example, Blair was able to make former consevative voters switch sides with his moderate position and his cleaned up look, a departure from the firmly left wing, slightly old look Labour had developed with Kinnock. The issue for the neoliberal Northern Irish politicians is: who do you convince to vote for you from the other side? The only real place you can steal votes is from those more extreme than you but that would require you to lose the one thing which differentiates you from the party you have to steal votes from. This leaves NI politics in a position where the large parties have overly committed to one approach while the small parties have to find their enclaves with little chance of success which does not presuppose the complete collapse of another party.
To call back to the original metaphor, Brendan Rodgers had to change. He learnt from his mistakes and became a better coach for it, knowing when to deviate from his ideology and when to commit to those ideas to benefit the objectives which his team had set. Can we say the same of Northern Ireland’s leading politicians?
Overall, ideology in Northern Ireland is not an easy balance to strike. It is fine to look at political ideologies in their theoretical groundings and see what they look like in their purest form but when actually applied in real life, that pure ideology will never realistically apply to a complicated political system like the one we inhabit. On the other hand, approaching politics without a set of beliefs and values will most likely lead to many viewing you as someone who doesn’t actually stand for anything. Somewhere there is a balance but there is no blueprint for that balance due to the complexity of politics with its daily crises, media spin and behind the scenes chaos but it is certain that few, if any, in Northern Irish politics have found that balance.
