You Can Just Do Things

A new newsletter focused on the machinery of the Irish State and the resilience of our economy

I have been mesmerised by Zohran Mamdani’s first 6 months in office as mayor of New York. He has been relentless, both at the big policy level (e.g. the holiday home tax) but also at the small stuff, like fixing potholes and removing red-tape for small businesses. I’m on board with about 80% of his proposals, and for the other 20% I’m genuinely excited to see them tried with competence, so we can all learn what works and what doesn’t.

Over in the UK, Andy Burnham is much earlier in his journey, but has hit the ground running with a similar pace. The Guardian described his first two weeks as “a blitz of hyperactivity”, including a crackdown on vape and betting shops, making cancelling subscriptions easier, slashing rates for pubs and clubs, a cap on bus fares and a VAT cut on energy bills.

This feels in stark contrast to most of what preceded them and indeed, it feels in very stark contrast to here in Ireland. Despite a “high energy” Simon Harris in the election campaign, what followed was “the lowest volume of legislation enacted by a new Government in its first year of office this century.”

Much of Mamdani and Burnham’s early success (as measured by the polls) is obviously a result of very effective comms team. Compare Mamdani, for example, fixing a pothole within hours of a teenager posting about it on TikTok, to the mayor of LA trying to do the same, finding a car parked over the pothole, leaving without fixing the pothole… but still for some reason posting a video about it anyway?!?

Good comms is more than just veneer. It’s a very important part of building political capital for your overall agenda. By pushing out a steady drumbeat of small, easy wins they are buying time and support for the more important, longer term work to get done. They are also giving tangible, concrete illustrations of their wider agenda, rather than pitching a vision in the abstract.

In addition to wondering how their comms is so good, I’m also wondering how they built up such a deep repository of policy ideas, formed and ready for announcement one after another. Are they pulling all nighters and getting this stuff written on the fly? Or have there been wonks on their team assembling the platforms for years in advance? Certainly Burnham’s time as Mayor of Manchester helped him develop his “Manchesterism” which others then formalised into a platform.

The most significant “well of ideas” being enacted right now, unfortunately, is Trump’s Project 2025. Built by a think thank in the years between Trump I and Trump II, it has allowed his administration to blitz 143 executive orders in their first 100 days, more than any president in US history. (FDR is second on 99, Obama did 19).

There are obvious downsides to all of this pace. Not all change is good. Speed can skip the consensus building that makes change more lasting. Many announcements may not translate into action. We shouldn’t want rapid change just for its own sake.

But it is clear that we are in a new phase of political action, after more than a decade of wandering through the haze of confusion that followed the Great Financial Crisis. People now have ideas about what should be done. What should change. And they’re trying them out.

I am excited about this energy arriving in Ireland. We’re overdue. I’m not sure we’ve had a big, coherent set of ideas for change since the PDs?

We need big bold ideas for how we improve the delivery of public services and for the capacity for our state to achieve its goals. We need big ideas for how our domestic economy can grow strong, so that we’re not entirely dependent on the whims of foreign owned companies.

I want this newsletter to contribute, in some small part, to that effort. While I hope the current Government steal some of the ideas shared here, most likely this effort will be building towards the next election, after which the opinion polls suggest that we might be in line for a more social democratic government.

My plan is to do analysis, interview experts and share international best practice (and lots more I haven’t thought of yet).

I hope you’ll join me for the journey!