Let us have an election so we can punish the guilty party

Yeah why don't we do that? That sounds like a good idea. Get a budget that all the political parties agree to. That way it can actually pass a vote in the Dáil, there won't have to be an election, and Fianna Fáil can stay in power.

I DON'T THINK SO.

All a cross-party budget will do is let people off the hook; the only argument is over who it lets off most. Some would see it as a let-out for the Greens, but I can't. It's the Budget itself that's their real let-out. Their entire rationale for staying in power is that if they don't, FF will run roughshod over the environment. So if the major party does try to renege on any of the commitments it made in their original agreement, the minor at last has their opportunity to hit the eject button with honour. Or what remains of it.

Even assuming that they can somehow keep the Greens on board, FF also have to placate non-party supporters of the government. So it's easy to foresee drastic cuts to all aspects of our health and social services – unless you live within sight of a Healy-Rae. This preferential treatment, especially when compared to the electoral poison of the FF brand, must tempt many backbenchers to break the whip. I predict in fact that if there were a mass exodus, the new "I Was Never Really In FF In The First Place" party would sweep the polls.  

The simple truth is that the FF/Green/Anybody government cannot pass the budget we need. They probably cannot even pass a half-arsed budget that would do more harm than good. Whether we like it or not we need to take serious political risks, and this government is not in a position to safely cross the road. The only way we are going to be able to have a budget in December is if it's passed by a new Dáil with a mandate to take hard decisions.

What's that you say – "We need to put out best minds together in this time of crisis"? Exactly. A cross-party budget would have some of FF in it, the people who didn't even know that bubbles burst. No but seriously, if our response to difficulty is to change the rules so that no one has to take political responsibility, we're saying that this 'democracy' thing is all very well on sunny days but not much good in a crisis. Why not just call it all off and allow the country to be run by a self-appointing clique of financial interests?

Yeah, well.

Democracy may not be the perfect system. It does not necessarily always promote the most able. (Hollow laugh.) But if it has a saving grace, it is that it puts into the hands of the people the power to pass judgement on their rulers – and rid themselves of them when they fail. That, and that only, makes democracy both more just and more effective than dictatorship or aristocracy.

To put it bluntly, the real reason for democracy is so that we can punish the guilty. We do not want to be ruled by committee. Give us our election now.