How Do You Solve a Problem like Varadkar?

Carefully parsing the media over the weekend – or such media as were arsed working the weekend – one gets the feeling that An Tánaiste and the government are safe. An Tánaiste will have to say sorry to all the boys and girls in the class, but that will be the end of it.

Your correspondent is not so sure. Besides; if the media had their way the story would never have broken in the first place. This story came from the clear blue sky – Village magazine is by no means mainstream – and it was not mentioned on RTÉ at all until different TDs started asking questions on Saturday afternoon. Once these genies escape their bottles it’s not easy know just how to get them back. So let’s examine the battlefield and do a little war-gaming, to pass the long winter’s day away.

The Substantive Issue

Did Leo Varadkar behave unethically in leaking confidential information to his buddy while Leo Varadkar was Taoiseach? Well, dur. Of course he did. If there were such things as ethics in Irish public life, he’d be gone already, and anybody who says any different is either too innocent for the world or else on the payroll.

Consider recent resignations from public office. Why did Alan Shatter have to resign as Minister for Justice? Why did Enda Kenny have to resign as Taoiseach? Why did Frances Fitzgerald have to resign? What did they do wrong that went so far beyond the bounds that they had to go?

The answer is: nothing. Each went because it was politically expedient to throw him or her under the bus. Shatter went to save the guards from being exposed as being up to some very funny business indeed (and the fact that nobody likes him). Enda went because Leo decided that his time had come, and he had enough people in Fine Gael to agree with him. Frances went for the same reason as Shatter. Nothing else.

Therefore, the realpolitik of An Tánaiste’s position isn’t whether or not he behaved badly, because he certainly did, but is it politically expedient to make him pay? That is a matter of political judgement and political gamesmanship, and entirely in the hands of certain of the parties in the Dáil. Let’s look at them one-by-one.

Fianna Fáil

It is surely Micheál Martin’s dearest wish that An Tánaiste had managed to hit a higher bar than that achieved by former Minister for Agriculture Barry Cowen in attempting to weasel his way out of the mess. Sadly, he did not. The response from An Tánaiste on Saturday was watery in the extreme, and is worth nothing. There is no solace for Martin there. Therefore, he is hopeful for someone, somewhere, in the other parties to save him from having to make a potentially painful decision.

The Fianna Fáil parliamentary party want Varadkar gone, not least because they hate his guts. There was some quite bullish tweeting from Deputies O’Callaghan and MacSharry on Saturday, and from Senator Dooley. However, every time the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party has been asked to stand up and be counted, they have run for the hills like spring lambs. It is difficult to believe this situation will be any different.

The Green Party

I shouldn't laugh but.... https://t.co/Lejyb3k6pn

— Neasa Hourigan TD (@neasa_neasa) October 31, 2020

There exists a perpetual battle between the Green Party and the Labour Party to see who is the most virtuous of them all. This gets especially nasty when one or the other has taken the shilling and accepted a place in government. Each goes into government swearing that things will be different this time and each comes out battered and bruised, things having been exactly the same this time, actually.

Does Deputy Ryan have the stones to do a Ruairí Quinn and demand a head? If he does and gets the head, Deputy Ryan doesn’t get any gyp from the bolshy wing of his party from now until Christmas. If Deputy Ryan asked for a head and doesn’t get it, he can go to the country on the Ethics ticket. If he behaves as Deputy Hourigan seems to suspect he will, then his own head will soon be in a basket, beyond all shadow of a doubt. There’s only so much tree huggers can live with before they reach for their hatchets.

Fine Gael

The most delicious dilemma of them all. The fundamental question is this: do Fine Gael want to fight an election on whether or not their leader was right to leak a confidential document to his buddy when that document was considerably to his buddy’s material benefit? If they are, then Leo is going nowhere and he will dare either Deputy Martin or Deputy Ryan to oppose him. If they so dare, Deputy Varadkar then pulls the plug, the government collapses and either the President asks the parties to see if they can form another government without an election, or we all head for the polls.

Where this gets spicy is if there’s a majority of the Fine Gael party who do not want to fight an election on those terms. Pascal Donohue was on This Week on RTÉ Radio 1 defending An Tánaiste to the hilt, but of course Deputy Donohue was one of the first to back Leo for leader in the first place. There has been so statement at time of writing (Sunday night, about ten o’clock) from either Simon Coveney, Simon Harris or Helen McEntee, the contenders for the leadership should a vacancy arise. The longer there is no word from them, the more nervous Deputy Varadkar should get.

If Fine Gael turn against Varadkar, Micheál Martin’s problem is solved. Deputy Varadkar is duly defenestrated, a new leader of Fine Gael is elected and the government survives until Christmas, probably. If they don’t, then there are decisions to make. And the decisions will of course be influenced by Sinn Féin and the Labour Party.

The Labour Party

The Labour Party has the doubtful gift of sounding wonderful while in opposition. One imagines them parading through City Hall in their togas, such is the height of their rhetoric. They have been strangely silent so far on this issue, but Deputy Kelly has a combative personality. It’s hard to imagine him resisting going for a jugular.

But it’s going to take more than the Labour Party rattling their sabres to get the government’s attention should they decide to dig foxholes and wait out the shelling, because the Labour Party is not what you’d call numerous. Neither is it likely to be a substantial player in the formation of the next government. Unlike Sinn Féin.

Sinn Féin

Is this Leo Varadkar affair a Rubicon for Sinn Féin? The argument for them sitting dumb on this is their own tremendous need to show themselves as an acceptable party of government, a responsible party of government. Responsible parties don’t collapse governments in the middle of pandemics just because someone was a bit indiscrete with confidential secrets while Taoiseach, do they? One sees the bigger picture.

However. Sinn Féin incredible result in the last election was because of a perception that Sinn Féin were not like the other parties. If they give Varadkar a pass on this, they are exactly like other parties – something that will be loudly noted by the entities further on Sinn Féin’s left, such as Deputies Murphy, Smyth and the rest. This is a nightmare for Sinn Féin. Deputies Murphy, Smyth and rest will never challenge Sinn Féin for a place in government but they can, and have, cost Sinn Féin seats that they can’t do without.

It is interesting also to note that, ever since Dr Holohan returned to head up NPHET and his letter advocating a Level-5 lockdown was leaked, Sinn Féin have been notably less strident in their criticism of the government. Could it be that the party has echoed St Augustine and prayed “Lord, let us govern, but not yet?” 

The War Game

As it is now, if I were Mary-Lou McDonald, I would table a motion of no confidence in the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Leo Varadkar and see who salutes. I can’t risk being outmanoeuvred on my left, and my luck will be out should this manoeuvring precipitate an election. But I cannot allow myself to be outmanoeuvred on my left, and this is a risk I must take if I am to win all.

Most of the rest of the Opposition would support  a motion of No Confidence in Leo, as they’re not likely to be all that fond of him either, and know a sacrifice will help keep the public calm. A Deputy McGrath or a Healy-Rae may go rogue, for divilment, but otherwise it’s the canny thing to do.

This then passes the hand grenade back to Fine Gael. If Fine Gael decide they don’t want to face the country defending Leo, then out the window he goes and the crisis is over. Alternatively, if Fine Gael decide Leo is the boy for good or for ill, then the hand grenade becomes two hand grenades, one of which falls into Deputy Ryan’s lap, and the other into An Taoiseach’s.

In the best case scenario, Both Deputies Martin and Ryan agree that Leo has got to go. It will make the election look more worthwhile, and may cause Fine Gael to recalibrate exactly how up for battle Fine Gael really are, realising the strength of Fianna Fáil and the Greens together is greater than the sum of their parts.

In the worst case scenario, Deputies Martin and Ryan defend Varadkar because they are scared, and this will surely seal their doom. Ryan’s certainly, because the Greens have proved more restive since this most peculiar of governments was formed.

If Martin could have Varadkar defenestrated it would be the best news he’s had in nine years, but again that is not in his control. That is entirely in the gift of Fine Gael, which paints a very vivid picture of just how far Fianna Fáil have fallen in ten years.

TL;DR

Somebody is losing a head over this. It’s just a question of who, and how many.

The World Will Not End if the Greens Vote No

It would be an exaggeration to describe the current state of Irish politics as being like three-dimensional chess. However, there can be no doubt that acey-deucey it ain’t. There are many balls in the air at the moment, and how they fall, and in what order, will determine what happens next.

This isn’t a fault in the system. If anything, it’s a good thing. It means that our politics is transitioning from the civil war structure that’s existed since the foundation of the state to whatever exactly it is that’s going to replace it. And while all this is going on, a government still has to be formed, taxes have levied, bills have to be passed, debts have to be paid – all the everyday housekeeping of politics.

Right now the formation of the next government hinges on the thoughts of the two-and-a-half to three thousand members of the Green Party, north and south of the border. The current dynamics within the Green Party are fascinating and complex, as outlined in the diagram.

Are the Greens an environment first, socially progressive second party, or a socially progressive first, environmental second party? Are they more pressure group than political party? What are we to made of the people who negotiated the deal voting against it, or the remarkable intervention of the Northern Green leader, Claire Bailey, MLA, yesterday?

Each of those alone is worth a solid thousand words. But the particular point of interest this morning is: what happens if the membership shoot the deal down on Friday? What then?

On the face of it, the Greens are conducting a remarkable experiment in popular democracy, and are being thanked very little for it. The Greens’ membership ballot on the program for government is utterly orthogonal to Irish political history and tradition.

Micheál Martin made a big deal of listening to grass roots when he became leader of Fianna Fáil, and has made a point of ignoring them in the nine years since. Fine Gael, bless them, never even bothered to pretend. The party that likes to tell the country what’s good for it also likes to tell its own members what’s good for them.

The question for the Greens is if this popular democracy renders the party incapable of practical action. In a nice piece of modularity, this is the Greens’ political dilemma too – does their commitment to Green issues mean that just can’t function in a country where people travel by car and burn turf and raise cattle?

If the Greens were a normal political party, the anti-deal positions of Claire Bailey and Francis Noel Duffy and Neasa Hourigan and the rest would be just so much theatre, like Ringer fulminating over Fianna Fáil perfidy at the Fine Gael Ard Fheis. These being the Greens though, they might put their money where their mouths are, and the system isn’t built for shocks like that.

Pat Leahy wrote a remarkable column in the Irish Times on Saturday, outlining the land of milk and honey that awaits the Greens if they pass the deal, and the barren and empty wastes that await them should they be so foolish as to refuse to eat their sprouts.

Coincidentally, this analysis is also the analysis of the Fine Gael party, who would see the Green’s failure to pass the deal as proof that all avenues have been exhausted, leaving An Taoiseach no option but to call another election.

Francis Noel Duffy told Gavan Reilly on Reilly’s On the Record radio show that he doesn’t see a second election as being inevitable at all. There are other combinations of parties available, many of which did better at the polls than either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, and are more ideologically suited to Green issues than Fine Gael in particular. If this deal is voted down, perhaps the President would ask the leaders of those parties to see if they could somehow form a government before admitting defeat and returning to the people?

One of Leahy’s pro-deal arguments is that if a second election were held, the Greens would be mashed by Sinn Féin. It’s not clear why this would be the case. Their bases are different and, while Fine Gael would damn the Greens as putting squirrels before people, the Greens can counter that if a party doesn’t have principles it has nothing. That’s an argument with a strong appeal. Also, the Greens would go into the election with a higher profile than they had in February and in a position to get some of that huge left-wing vote that went to Sinn Féin last time out, to say nothing of the Fianna Fáil carcass from which all parties and none will feast.

In point of fact, the Greens and Sinn Féin could form a transfer pact for a second election - "you voted for a left-wing government, but they wouldn’t let you have one. Vote for us now, and you won’t be denied this time. Transfer Left!" Pigeons, meet cat.

Your correspondent is not a member of the Green Party and has no vote on the program for government. However, If I did have a vote, I would vote against the deal. Not because I don’t think it’s green enough or because it doesn’t tick enough social justice boxes; the uncosted program for government is built on sand anyway, and what’s in it won’t matter a damn once the recession hits.

I would vote no because I don’t care for being threatened with terrible and immediate war should I vote in a way that doesn’t suit some people. Bullies have to be stood up to where-ever they are met.

The world will not end if the Greens vote no; it won’t be like a new Covid strain sweeping in from the East, or a no-deal Brexit, or a foot-and-mouth outbreak, or famine or penal laws or the return of Cromwell. It’ll be just a question of politicians sitting around a table and cutting another deal, like politicians are meant to do. Roll on Judgement Day.

On the Matter of Government Formation

Deputy Micheál Martin told Ryan Tubridy on the Late Late Show of May 22nd that he expected the government to finally be formed by the end of this week. Not for the first time, the unhappy Deputy Martin appears to have missed the mark. The government is no nearer to being formed now than it was the day after the election, and the thoughtful citizen could do worse than to ponder why that may be.

The election will be 118 days in the past come Friday. Covid-19 or no, it’s ridiculous to suggest that all this time is being spent in negotiations to a common end. That process doesn’t take one hundred days. We do not know what is going on in those once smoke-filled rooms, and the political correspondents seem far too polite to ask, but negotiations are not going on. They cannot be going on if they’re taking over one hundred days to happen.

Your correspondent relies on the Irish Times, the Sunday Times, the Irish Examiner and The Phoenix magazine for his information. Close reading of all of the above suggests that the 33rd Dáil will never elect a Taoiseach; that the acting Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, will ask the President for a dissolution of this Dáil and another general election; and that all this will happen before the summer recess, rather than after.

The Phoenix has been forthright in its contention that Fine Gael are only interested in stringing out the talks. This certainly makes sense from Fine Gael’s point of view. Having first wanted to retire to their country homes with their football clutched tightly under their arm, the party now feels that the country finally understands how lucky it is to have them, and will be grateful to them over how steadily they have steered the ship of state through these terrible pandemic waters.

Fianna Fáil, the party that dominated politics in the state from 1932 to 2011, are dead, gone, kaput, over. If there were any sign of life in the party, Deputy Martin would have been defenestrated months ago. Fianna Fáil cannot face into another election with Micheál Martin’s face on the poster, and it looks like that’s exactly what they’re going to do. The soldiers of destiny are marching towards the Somme and oblivion.

Which brings us to the third hand in the reel, the Greens. Their has been general dismay among the commentariat over the Greens’ decision to heave their leader during these times of talks. It’s actually the best thing the Greens have already done and, like Napoleon’s victory at Marengo, it’s also the heralding of a new force to be reckoned with.

“Senior hurling” is the phrase most associated with the Green Party in terms of national politics, as in the Greens not being ready for senior hurling. The Greens are ready for it now, or at least, their leader-elect, Deputy Catherine Martin, is.

Fianna Fáil can look to Deputy Martin and weep. Martin, from the so-called Fianna Fáil gene pool, is doing what nobody in Fianna Fáil has either the talent, the will or the guts to do. She’s going to the back field with Old Shep, a shotgun, and a spade, and knows she’ll be coming back with only two of them.

Eamon Ryan, like Micheál Martin, is a dead man walking. It is impossible to conceive that Catherine Martin has not counted heads before allowing this happen, and there is no hope for Eamon Ryan. The future is already here.

Part of the shock among the commentariat seems to be over the fact that Eamon Ryan, like the Baroness in The Sound of Music, is getting the chop without ever having done anything wrong. Welcome to senior hurling, Deputy Ryan. Deserve has nothing to do with it. Gratitude has nothing to do with it. It’s all about want, want, want, and right now nobody wants it more than Catherine Martin.

The Irish Times ran a story on Saturday quoting anonymous sources on their impressions of the various participants in the talks. There was a description of Catherine Martin that is particularly worth noting. While Deputy Niamh Hourigan is voluble on the Greens’ different causes, Deputy Martin, according to the source, “sits there like a Sphinx.”

Have you been in many meetings, Reader? Trust your correspondent on this one; it’s the person who isn’t talking in the meeting that’s holding all the aces. Some lemon in the Green Party – they haven’t gone away, you know – disputed this characterisation of Martin as unfair. Reader, it was the height of praise.

So there we have the participants at the talks. Fine Gael, biding their time; Fianna Fáil, playing Weekend at Bernie’s, and the Greens, playing the long game. That dynamic would struggle to organise a bus to Leopardstown for an evening’s racing – if there were any racing, dammit. There’s no way it’s forming a government.

So the talks will break down, as they must. The Greens will go to the country under Catherine Martin, as Eamon Ryan may do a Sidney Dalton and go before he’s pushed. The Greens’ vote will improve under its marvellously-gifted new leader, with both the parties’ cores – the Range-Rover drivers of South Dublin, the donkey aters of the wild Atlantic way – both seeing themselves reflected in the new leader, and all parties and none outside those cores recognising in Martin someone with whom they can do business.

Sinn Féin will again make hay on their populist platform, a platform that Micheál Martin could have destroyed by simply talking to them, but whose effective ostracisation will simply have glamorised Sinn Féin further. Candidate selection will be the big challenge for Sinn Féin – getting enough to stand in the first place, and maybe sidelining a few of those loose cannons the last election turned up. If anybody should know how to bury a loose cannon, the Shinners should.

The Greens and Shinners will both feast on the FF carcass, and maybe Fine Gael will pick up a few seats as well. It’s possible the next government will be a Green / Sinn Féin coalition, with the Greens acting as a check on the hammer of Deputy Ó Broin and the sickle of Deputy O’Reilly.

It’s possible that the shocking nature of that new government, the first 21st-Century government of Ireland in its way, may be able to make the radical reforms the country needs. It’s possible, but not likely. The inertia of the vested interests will be too strong. The IMF will be back; it’s only a question of when. The hope here is that Irish politics will have matured sufficiently when the IMF do return to realise that electing the other civil war party is not real reform and the only way to judge a government is on how well it balances its books. It would be a shame to waste yet another crisis.

Half-a-Million Voters Have the Right to be Represented

Sinn Féin TDs: Children of a Lesser God?

There is a strange unanimity current in Irish political media at the moment. Unanimity would be odd at the best of times; these are not the best of times. Nevertheless, an accepted wisdom has developed, and this accepted wisdom can be summed up in four points.

First, the next government will a coalition dominated by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Second, there is no possible alternative to this arrangement. Third, it is the patriotic duty of certain smaller parties in the Dáil to make up the numbers in this coalition, and finally, there’s nothing very, very odd about points one to three as outlined.

The absence of any “now, wait a minute” impulse in all this is surprising. For instance, Pat Leahy of the Irish Times has written about the gulf in understanding between what the politicians thought the last election was about and what the people thought the last election was about. The politicians thought the election would be dominated by Brexit, and how things would break between Fine Gael’s expert handing of these delicate tripartite negotiations between Ireland, Britain and the EU, or else Fianna Fáil’s nobility and patriotism in giving Fine Gael a free hand to do what needed to be done.

The people, in their ingratitude, insisted on making the election about housing and health, subjects that were that much more real to the people’s own day-to-day lives and experiences.

The election was a reality-check for political consensus. Why, then, is it business as usual for the political establishment? Why isn't so shocking a result having a tangible effect in terms of governance?

One of the more thoughtful pro-Brexit arguments among our neighbours was the idea that, be it for good or for ill, the people had spoken. You may not like what they said, or you may be horrified by what they had said, but that they had spoken could not be denied. If Britain were a democracy, then politicians had no option but to accept the expressed will of the people.

There are not many buyers for that notion of accepting the expressed will of the people in - hateful phrase! - Official Ireland. Half a million citizens voted Sinn Féin in the general election. Where are those voices finding expression currently? Where is the pundit telling a Prime Time presenter that there is something wrong in the denial of that mandate? Where are the articles speaking for those half-million?

There are complexities to the situation. Governments are formed by seat-counts, rather than vote-counts, and if Sinn Féin did not run enough candidates to maximise their incredible vote, that is Sinn Féin’s problem and not anyone else’s. Of course this is true. But it doesn’t explain why Fianna Fáil’s 37 seats – not counting the Ceann Comhairle – count and Sinn Féin’s 37 seats do not, or why Fine Gael’s 35 seats count, and Sinn Féin’s do not.

The political commentary is reminiscent of the late Archbishop of Dublin, Most Rev John Charles McQuaid, preaching that nothing had changed after Vatican II. The 2020 general election voting was so revolutionary that the political correspondents are struggling to process it, and are trying to deal with it by pretending it never happened at all.

This is very dangerous thinking. If the election has been rendered null and void by COVID-19 fair enough; let’s have another election, and settle it that way. What’s completely out of the question is this ideas of ignoring the result of the election entirely. Ignoring the result of the election is a sure-fire confirmation that some people’s worst suspicions about the state are true.

Specifically, the suspicion that it doesn’t matter who you vote for, that there is a permanent government that doesn’t change, and that permanent government is run by faceless figures who are members of clubs to which you can never belong.

There was one particular factor in the last election that should have made all psephologists sit up and take notice. All through the history of the state, the Irish electorate has placed personality above politics. The Irish electorate votes locally first, nationally second. That’s why politicians attend so many funerals. If they don’t attend funerals, people won’t get to know them, and if they’re not known, they won’t get elected.

That went out of the window in the 2020 election. Sinn Féin had a TD elected in Kildare who went on her holidays instead of canvassing. Sinn Féin did not just get a blown-in elected in Clare, but a candidate who had blown in from Dublin. Dublin!

And these patterns repeated across the country. It’s all very well for pol corrs to be briefed by special advisors with stories about Shinners with British scalps around their tummy and pockets full of stolen money over big plates of Comeragh Hill lamb, spring vegetables and beautiful barley marjoram sauce. But it's too late to go bitching about the Shinners now.

Those Sinn Féin votes were cast all across the country, north, south, east and west, by rich people and poor people, by country people and townies, by people with nothing in common except a feeling that something has very wrong in a country where you obey all the rules and can’t afford a house for you and your family.

Politics is a contact sport and high-mindedness is a poor shield, but good God, how can so seismic a mandate be ignored? It is natural that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would seek to conserve their power – even if it is a little disappointing that there isn’t even some slight acknowledgement of how things have changed – but for the press, whose job it is to hold these jokers to account, to normalize Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael marginalizing of Sinn Féin’s democratically-expressed mandate is noticeably pathetic.

What should be particularly worrying is the question of how the half-million who voted for Sinn Féin will take the ignoring of their expressed wish and the confirmation of their worst fears. The guess here is: badly. Those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind, and we might all be destroyed in the coming storm.

On the Current Dáil Arithmetic

Buddy Movie Government

The Irish Times reported on Saturday that national peril sees the two great houses of Irish politics prepared from ancient grudge to break new unity in order to gift the country with the government it so richly deserves. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are on the verge of agreeing a program for government. What was not reported was the difference this makes as regards the current Dáil arithmetic.

The awkward reality is that it makes no difference at all. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael can agree on a program for government down to the last jot and they would still be eight votes short of a majority. And the nature of a majority is that you either have it or you don’t. On or off, one or zero. There are no in-betweens. There are no almosts, but not quites. You are there, or you ain’t.

Both parties are furiously briefing currently that if only those damned Greens would get with the program and do what they’re damn-well told the country would finally have a government to tackle the three-headed monster of Covid-19, Brexit negotiations and the EU’s upcoming revision of member-state corporation tax policy.

There is an implicit understanding in this story that the smaller parties should bow to the larger for that reason – that they are small and the larger parties are large. However, the last government saw power handed to Shane Ross and Katherine Zappone that was out of proportion to their parliamentary representation, and what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

The Green Party – because things do hinge on the Green Party, currently – realise that to hold the balance of power is to hold all the power, and they are correct in that assessment.

There is a thought experiment in the new maths of Game Theory that illustrates this quite well. Suppose a genie pops from a bottle and tells you that you can have one million dollars if and only if your buddy Frankie says it’s OK. How much of the million dollars do you have to give Frankie to get him onside?

Some people think a few grand will do Frankie just fine. He’s going from zero dollars to a few grand, the price of a new Beamer, maybe – what’s not to like? It’s not like your own soon-to-be great wealth is any skin off Frankie’s nose.

But this is incorrect. Frankie is in exactly the same position as you are, even though the money is offered to you alone. The offer to you does not reflect the true state of things – without Frankie’s participation, there is no money.

The offer appears to be made to you alone, but that appearance is not the reality. You alone do not have the power to make the offer come true. Therefore, Frankie must get half of the money because without Frankie, there is no money at all. And once that penny drops for Frankie, he’s damned if he’s settling for one penny less.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are in the position of the person who thinks she’s been offered a million dollars. She thinks it’s hers, but it’s not. The prize is only there if another party gives its permission. No permission, no nothing. Zero. Zip. The null set. The what-is-not.

Are the Greens correct to hold this position? Of course they are. Everyone in the Dáil can hold any position they like and, God help us, some of them actually do.

In what way is the Greens’ position – which is, if I understand it correctly, that a government of national unity has to be formed to get us through the current crisis and then another election held as soon as it’s feasible – less reasonable than that of Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael in their refusal to countenance anything to do with Sinn Féin? The teasing out of that question is what will decide the formation of the next government. Provided there’s a country left to govern, of course.

What Are, Aren't, and Should Be Major Issues in the Election

Saturday will be, we are told, a "change" election, after which things will never be the same again. This is not the country’s first "change" election. The post-bailout 2011 election was a change election. So was the 1997 Deep Bertie election, and the Spring Tide election of 1992, and the Rise of the PDs in 1987. We could go on back to the 1920s, always finding the repeating pattern of things changing in order that they may remain the same, like in that Italian novel.

The PDs won fourteen seats in 1987. The Labour Party won more than twice as many in 1992. Those are historical elections now; is it possible that it is the children of those who voted PD in 1987 and Labour in 1992 who are now going to vote Green and/or Sinn Féin?

For a country that so enjoys an election, we seem unusually poor at documenting and/or analysing our politics. Why have we had so many change elections in the past thirty years?

Some people are claiming that that the Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael duopoly is finally over. They said that in 1987 too. Like the life of novelist Mark Twain or the fate of the Irish language, reports of the duopoly’s demise have been premature before.

Why, though? Why is that? Why are there these sudden lurches among the electorate, from the right-wing PDs to the softish-left social democrats of Labour to the – to borrow a phrase from Seán Lemass about the origins of his own party – slightly-constitutional Shinners?

Don’t forget, there is nobody more surprised at this Shinner surge – if it is a surge, and not another false dawn – than the Shinners themselves. Up until ten days ago, Sinn Féin were about consolidating the seats they hold, and trying to shore up leaks. Now they’re getting their ears boxed in the media for not running enough candidates, when one month ago it looked like they might be running too many.

It’s a cliche of politics to talk about a gap between the elected and the elected, between the people and the elite. But my goodness, we had a Dáil declaring a climate emergency at the same time as rural Ireland was getting ready to picket meat factories and hold up traffic in Dublin over the destruction of a way of life that some feel the Green Party are only interesting in accelerating.

There used to be a tradition of match-making in Ireland. Were any matched couples such strangers to each other as the current elected and the current electorate?

What even is it that we do when do we go to vote? It’s not something that we really document. The weight of scholarly work on Irish politics seems to have been a series of laments and jeremiads about how awful it was that Irish politics did not operate along a left-right divide, thus shaming Irish academics when they attended conferences (in such socialist states as East Germany, Cuba and the USSR, funnily enough). Would it not have made more sense to document politics as they were, rather than as academics would have had them be?

Are we better at understanding Irish politics now, or worse? Where is the great study, for instance, in the rise of the Independents in recent years? Nineteen independents were elected to the 32nd Dáil. There’s a good chance that number will be higher after Saturday and whenever the Tipperary election is finally held.

What does a vote for an independent say about that independent’s voters’ views on how the country should be governed? Why does a TD who was voted unfit for office by his fellow parliamentarians continue to top the poll in his own constituency?

Whose job is it to tease these issues out? It is the media’s job to tease these issues out. Why don’t the media tease these issues out? The media defence is that these issues are not teased out because the public isn’t interested in teasing them out – that the public likes sausages but cares little about how sausages are made.

To which there are two responses. The first is that distinguishing between the public interest and what the public is interested in is meant to be a cardinal concern of a responsible media, not least when the primary media outlet, RTÉ, is a public-service broadcaster.

The other response is that the media has no problem in the world in featuring issues about which the public could care less, the recent climate emergency business being a case in point. Which is more important? Why not devote even half of the resources devoted to climate issues to electoral reform issues? It doesn’t make sense.

And here’s what makes least sense of all. This is another change election. The most seismic election in the history of this, or any other, state was in 2011.

Fianna Fáil, the party that ruled the state from three of every four years of the state’s existence, went from seventy-one seats to twenty as an outraged and furious electorate blamed them for everything that had gone wrong in the country since the 2008 global financial crash.

And now, nine years later, Fianna Fáil will be back in power. They won’t have seventy-one seats, but they look good for sixty, give or take. How has that happened? Was the crash as bad as it was made out to be? If it wasn’t, why did the people get the impression that it was?

Either the media made fools of themselves by saying the crash was going to be far worse than it was, or else Ireland, that dear little island of green, has pulled off a bigger economic miracle than West Germany pulled off in the 1950s. Which is it? How did it happen? Who is to praise? Who is to blame? And where do I go to read about it?

You may think the answers to these questions – just how bad was the crash? How did we recover? Have we recovered at all, or are we simply on the batter again and there’s an even worse hangover waiting around the turn? - would be front and centre in the election campaign, with politicians and pundits making cases pro and con different interpretations of recent history.

You would be wrong. These have not been issues in the campaign. At all. And it’s going to be change elections all the way to the horizon and the nation going around in ever-decreasing circles until we start asking ourselves these questions, and paying attention to the answers.

Liadh Ní Riada Can Win Sinn Féin the Presidency

Sinn Féin can claim an astonishing double-result this autumn if they contest the Presidency. Firstly, they can strike another devastating blow to Fianna Fáil, who were too quick to row in behind a second term for President Higgins. But more importantly, by selecting Liadh Ní Riada as their candidate, Sinn Féin can make a profound statement of nationalism and Irish identity, the kind of which we haven’t heard in at least half-a-century.

Why Ní Riada? Because of who she is and what she represents.

Liadh Ní Riada is the daughter of Seán Ó Riada, the man who saved Irish music from doom in the early 1960s. We have made a bags of many, many things as an independent state among the nations of the world, but two things we have to show for ourselves are our games and our music.

Before Seán Ó Riada, people were ashamed of the music. It was strictly for hicks. What made the difference was the music’s embrace by Ó Riada, because Ó Riada came from the classical tradition. He knew the table settings, as it were.

Ó Riada recognised traditional music’s inherent dignity, and brought it to the concert hall. And people who had thought nothing of the music heard the orchestration of Róisín Dubh that Ó Riada did for Mise Éire and thought: hold on – is that us? To echo Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Irish Nation suddenly realised that this music, which they had considered a joke, poor potsherd, was actually immortal diamond and worthy of admiration all over the world.

Ó Riada founded Ceoltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, from whom came the Chieftains. The Clancys and the Dubliners were the beloved sons of the masses but without the Chieftains the music would have sunk back to obscurity. Instead, it lives, survives and thrives.

Seán Ó Riada himself cannot run for the presidency. He died young, in 1971, two months after his fortieth birthday. But Liadh Ní Riada, in coming where she’s from and in being who she is, can be the avatar of what Ó Riada believed in, an Ireland Gaelic, united and free.

Because what does the President do, really? The office is the vestigial tail of the Lord Lieutenancy. It’s either a retirement home or a springboard to a cushy job in the UN or the Vatican (although that’s not going so well lately).

Perhaps the most important role of the Presidency is in telling us who we are, in being an avatar for the nation. And what better avatar than someone who believes in the causes for which independence was won, at the cost of so much blood?

At a time when it’s so hard to say what it is that makes us different, why Ireland deserves nationhood, why, God spare us, the island should be united under one flag, would it be so bad to return to first principles?

Even if she were not to win, Liadh Ní Riada could do her party some service in landing another kick to the prone body of what was once the mightiest force in Irish politics, the Fianna Fáil party.
Fianna Fáil was once renowned for its profound political sense.

DeValera said he only had to look into his heart to know what the nation was thinking. But that political sense is entirely absent from the party now as it lurches from one disaster to another.

The confidence-and-supply agreement was a good move. But everybody knew it was, to echo a phrase of the past, “a temporary little arrangement”. There was no way it could be long-lasting, because there would come a threshold when such kudos available to Fianna Fáil for putting the country first by supporting a government would all have been gained.

After that, the pendulum swings in the other direction, and Fianna Fáil gets all the blame for being in government, and none of the benefit. Fianna Fáil were always going to pull the plug.

Except they didn’t. Opportunities arose one by one, and passed by one by one as Mícheál Martin steadfastly refused to take advantage. The revelations about the Gardaí making up traffic violation reports was the sort of dream chance that oppositions of other eras requested from Santa in their Christmas letters, and still Fianna Fáil held fire.

And now, it is they who have presented an open goal to Sinn Féin, in a misunderstanding of both the age and the current political situation.

Our is a populist age. It an age of clearing swamps, and giving voices back to the people. It is an age of distrust of the establishment and cosy deals among the members of same.

Not only have Fianna Fáil backed President Higgins for a second term, they have done so absolutely, positively, with no way to back down. With Fianna Fáil now backed into a corner - the last place any sensible politician wants to be -  Sinn Féin can now run a candidate that hits Fianna Fáil in both the head and the guts.

The head, by making Sinn Féin look like a party more interested in what the people think than what is convenient for the establishment. The guts, by fielding a candidate who will be a siren song to the traditional vote of the (once) Republican Party.

Can Ní Riada win? Reader, she can win on the first count. She doesn’t even need to say anything. All they need do is play this at her rallies and the Park is hers. Go n-éirí léi.

Government or Circus?

The yawning gap that exists in Ireland between the process of electing a government and what a government is expected to do was illustrated in an almost offhand exchange about the Independent Alliance on the Irish Times’s Inside Politics podcast of last Friday night. The exchange is between Fiach Kelly and Pat Leahy of the Times’s political staff, and begins at 12:25 on the podcast:

FIACH KELLY
Sarah’s right. They are not used to government. They are used to saying ‘get up the yard, get off the fence, let’s put our shoulders to the wheel’ - 

PAT LEAHY
They’re the opposite of government. It’s not just that they’ve been a conventional opposition, but it’s the exact opposite. They’ve never been the sort of opposition that had to prepare, that had to watch what they said because they envisaged being in government after the next election.

FIACH KELLY
They had their ‘Charter for Change,’ which formed the basis of their negotiations over the past number of weeks. This document they drew up about a year ago about their principles – motherhood and apple pie is a generous description of said document. I was speaking to someone in Fine Gael today who said that last week was the worst week of their lives because, at least when they were dealing with Fianna Fáil they were professional operators, they knew how to negotiate. Then you turn around and talk to the Independents and they didn’t know how the system or the government or anything like that worked, at all. So it’s going to be a very steep learning curve for them.

And the question your broken-hearted correspondent asks of all this is: why don’t the media report this? Where are the articles and think pieces that say politics is a profession, like any other, and while getting elected is a key skill, being able to govern is another?

A national politician who is serious about national politics should know how the instruments of government work. He or she may disagree with how those instruments work, and that’s fine. When he or she is in power, he or she will then have the power to make those instruments better. But he or she must know what those instruments of government are in the first place. And it’s quite clear that members of the Independent Alliance haven’t a bull’s notion.

There is a chicken-and-egg situation here. Media claim that they don’t cover these issues because politicians don’t talk about them. Politicians claim they don’t talk about these issues because the people aren’t interested in them. But how can the people learn about them if not through the media?

Yesterday the Sunday Business Post led with a story about an ‘understanding’ between disgraced TD Michael Lowry and Fine Gael in return for Lowry’s support for Enda Kenny as Taoiseach. As remarked upon here earlier, Lowry is like the dog that didn’t bark in the old Sherlock Holmes story.

Why would Michael Lowry support the government? What’s in it for him? The people of Tipperary elected Lowry on the first count in the election because he is seen to “deliver” for the people of Tipperary. What’s Lowry swung for the Premier this time? Why haven’t we been told? Why hasn’t any other media outlet (especially RTÉ) reported the story? Why hasn’t anyone asked the Nemesis of Cronyism, the Minister for Transport, Shane Ross TD, how he feels about a secret sweetheart deal with Michael Lowry?

This tweet from Matt Cooper may help explain why:

Very clever and witty insider column from Shane Ross in Sindo. Hope he continues in this vein every week he is a minister. Transparency.

— Matt Cooper (@cooper_m) May 8, 2016

Extraordinary. A story broke in the US last week about how ridiculously easy a member of the Obama administration found seeding stories in the media. That man wouldn’t ever have to get out of bed in Ireland.

But we have a government now, and they are sitting down to govern. How will they do that? Well, some of those governmental decisions that effect people’s lives and, potentially, the future of the state itself will be decided by a man who won a coin toss. Not because the Taoiseach has had his eye on this or that person’s career and thinks he or she could do a really good job as a junior minister in a particular department. No. It’s because he won a coin toss.

Imagine if, God forbid, you are in court, accused of murder. And instead of a judge, Bozo the Clown walks in and announces that, as a result of a coin toss, he’ll be running the court while Mr Justice Murphy will be doing pratfalls and standing on rakes in Fossett’s Circus for the foreseeable future. Then, with Bozo tooting a horn rather than banging a gavel, the court comes to order and the trial for your life begins.

Welcome to Ireland in the year of the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising. God help us all.

A Government Cannot Be Formed

I, for one, do not welcome our new overlords.

A government cannot be formed, and it’s the people’s own fault. The sooner the political establishment comes to terms with that, admits it and pulls the lever for a second election the better off we’ll all be.

Fianna Fáil have had a merry old time over the past three weeks bullying Fine Gael in negotiations. And now, in the best schoolyard tradition, Fine Gael are going have their fun with that one group in the Oireachtas who are more natural victims than they are – the independents.

All that stuff out of Shane Ross and his bunch about new politics and broad policy outlines is now exposed as what anybody with the intelligence of a toad could see what it always was – nonsense. John Halligan is digging in over his local hospital, which should have every alarm bell ringing for Denis Naughten. Naughton won Roscommon because he knew Roscommon Hospital had to come first. If Halligan gets Waterford – oh, excuse me, your honour, the South-Eastern – Hospital sorted for a cardiac unit, what must Naughten do to deliver for the Ros? Brain Surgery? Head transplants?

It is interesting to note that supposedly the most idealistic of the independents, Deputy Zappone, was the first to row in behind Enda Kenny’s re-election as Taoiseach. It would be interesting to know what exactly she’s been promised in return for her support. Your correspondent likes to think she’s been promised a herd number for a unicorn farm somewhere outside Firhouse or Knocklyon, but chances are the deal isn’t even as substantial as that.

And what of that most mysterious of independents, Deputy Lowry? Deputy Lowry has made no bones about his support for Enda Kenny as Taoiseach, and nobody seems to have a problem with that. Five years ago Dáil Éireann passed a motion calling on Deputy Lowry to resign his seat, such was the Dáil’s repugnance at his behaviour, as exposed by the Moriarty Tribunal. Nobody now seems to have a problem with his presence, to say nothing of his vital vote in electing a government. If everyone and their uncle is getting sorted, what in all this for Deputy Lowry?

The media don’t seem too bothered harping on about this. The media are part of the problem. The media are negligent in their duty in calling these members to account, and saying this is not the way to govern a country. It’s all a game in Ireland’s political Bermuda triangle of Leinster House, the Shelbourne Hotel and Kehoe’s of South Anne Street.

Your correspondent thought – foolishly, as it turns out – that the crash of 2008 would be a learning experience for the country. Instead, it’s been an exercise in becoming more ignorant.

At the nadir of the boom, the standard narrative was that the country had fallen into an economic abyss that would take thirty years to recover from. It took three. So, either the abyss was actually a pothole, or Ireland pulled off an economic miracle so extraordinary it makes the German post-war recovery look like two cavemen fighting over a tusk using the barter system. Or both. Or neither.

There are subtleties to all these things. We don’t subtle in Irish politics. Or thoughtful. Or even vaguely sentient.

Maybe, when the election is called, we’ll bite the bullet. Maybe we’ll show the political parties that there is a reward at the ballot box for proper, intelligent politics. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. The only functional part of Irish politics is that we get exactly the government we deserve. God help us all.

A Second Election is the Only Sensible Solution

Enda Kenny must do the sensible thing. He must go up to the Park and tell the President it’s time to give the wheel another spin.

The strong media consensus that a Grand Coalition between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael was not only the only possible result from the election but that it was the only sensible result from the election has proved to be so much blather.

It would take a seismic change to overturn a political culture that has lasted for nearly eighty years. As it happens, that seismic change happened five years ago, but instead of a radical realignment of Irish politics, we got a return to the Fine Gael / Labour coalitions of the ‘seventies and ‘eighties. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were just as ideologically similar then as now, and they certainly had numbers to form a coalition, but nobody was talking about an FF/FG coalition being either inevitable or obvious then.

Five years on, we have stalemate, as the difference between how elections are run in this country and how governments are formed are clearer than they ever have been. In theory, the voter goes to the polls with the intention of selecting a government for the country. In practice, the voter goes to forty different polls and votes for the candidate that will best represent his or her local area when it’s time for goodies to be handed out.

Hence the impasse. In the past, the dominance of the major parties has been such that the flaw inherent in the system was never exposed. Fine Gael’s loss of a TD for not building a school in Ballycarrick was made up by the gain of a TD who was passionate on the retention of the garda station in Carrigbally. Checks and balances.

Unfortunately, the slow dissolution of the two-and-a-half party system has not been matched by a likewise evolution of political awareness in the electorate. This is partly a western thing; it doesn’t seem that the US electorate are having a particularly statesmanlike moment right now either, while the Tories in the United Kingdom are pointing a gun to their own heads while threatening to shoot the hostage. Extraordinary behaviour.

But the Irish context seems worse, somehow. Not least because the country is so small, and it shouldn’t be so hard to communicate what’s actually happening. For a small country to be independent, the citizens must be more active than they have to be in the big country like the UK or Germany or the USA. In big countries, there will always be enough clever and/or informed people to keep the political show on the road. Here, we need more hands to the mast.

A second election, then, but an election like no other. This second election, if it comes soon, will be the first honest election in God only knows how long. It will be an honest election because the electorate will be eager to know just why it’s going through this all again, and this will involve asking hard questions of the politicians.

Elections are understood to be about what different parties will do if given the chance to govern. This election has been unusual in electing a substantial number of TDs who are not trying a jot to govern, or who cannot muster support because they are independents. It will be interesting see them answer the question of why anyone should vote for them next time out.

For that reason, the Taoiseach should accept that, while the people have spoken, what they’ve said is unintelligible. Therefore, they must be asked again. Enda Kenny bottled a chance at remarking the politics of the country after the 2011 election by coalescing with Labour, rather than forcing Fianna Fáil to support their own policies. It is that choice that allowed Fianna Fáil to rise again so spectacularly.

But now Enda Kenny has that rarest of things in life: a second chance. By calling a second chance he can expose the limits of clientelist system and bring the voting public to a new understanding of politics and what good governance can actually do. The people will see that they must vote for a government, rather than a county councillor with super powers.

For what it’s worth, your correspondent doesn’t expect that happen. Some sort of government will be cobbled together that will pass a budget (Berlin permitting), and then collapse in 2017, leading to the election then. But things will have moved on by then, and the moment will have passed. New politics is difficult for old politicians, after all.

And yet that hope still glimmers. Enda Kenny has a very rare chance to really make history. I hope he takes it while it’s there.

You Can Still Be a Winner in #GE16!

Eight or so days from polling day, and some two months from the 100th Anniversary of the Rising, it seems that Irishmen and Irishwomen are determined to elect the greatest Irish stew of a Government the misfortunate nation has seen. But don’t despair reader – before you pack that Samsonite bag and hightail it to Canada, Australia or where-ever else will have you, knock some bit of crack out of the election at least by trying your hand at elecTeD, the general election 2016 game!

Devised in his simple scholar's hut, or bothán, on plains of sweet Mayo, a friend of the blog has come up with this excellent election competition. Here’s what you do:

1. Pick who’ll be elected in each constituency.
2. Send The Man a tenner via Paypal.
3. 50% of the total pot goes to the winner, and 50% goes to a charity of the winner’s choice. Simple as that.

Don’t fancy them apples? Like your competitions short and sweet? Then take a crack at this one, where you just call the seats for each party. Tenner again via Paypal, and you’re in there.

Entry is open from now until the polls close on polling day, Friday, February 26th. Throw down your tenners now, and get yourself something to cheer in this farrago of representative democracy.

The Ungrateful Electorate

Nearly half-way through the General Election campaign, it's beginning to look as though the Government’s master plan was to sit back and humbly accept the gratitude of the Irish people for the fine job they were doing. If Enda and Joan have a Plan B in a filing cabinet somewhere, right about now would be a good time to haul it out.

To get elected on the basis of the gratitude of the electorate seems a tremendously stupid idea for experienced and professional politicians to toy with but, perhaps unbeknownst even to themselves, this seems to have been exactly the Government’s plan. Stephen Collins, who has given up all pretense at being anything other than a Fine Gael cheerleader as he approaches retirement, echoed this in his piece in Saturday’s paper. “The people will surely realise how lucky they have it,” was the message between the lines of his article.

Well. They surely won’t, actually. Electorates are a mean and suspicious bunch, generally. They are always on their guard against sellers of chocolate teapots, as they ought to be – they seem to buy one every time out, after all. But instead of accepting their fate, the electorate seems to insist on reacting according to how they themselves see the country, rather than as how the political insiders see it. One day, they dream, they’ll elect a real teapot, and finally have a good cup of tea. One day.

This, perhaps, is the salient point in this most depressing of elections. It’s always been the case that there has been a distance between the ruling elite and the plain people of Ireland. John Waters explains it brilliantly in Jiving at the Crossroads and, while the country is far better educated now than it was in the 1980s, the elite still seems safely cocooned from what real people are talking about in the real world.

The rise of Sinn Féin in the current campaign is the textbook example of this. Sinn Féin always under-perform their polling, says a studio expert. Gerry Adams made a shocking balls of that TV debate, thunders an op-ed columnist. Marian Finucane has a Dr Julius Hibbert-soundalike on to talk about the – a-ha-ha – long and proud history of the Special Criminal Court, making no mention of a junior minister’s husband and special assistant’s time up before that very same dock. No point muddying the narrative, after all.

And despite all that, here are those dirty, dirty Shinners rising in the polls all the time, and in line to pick up second seats in several constituencies. And every one of those bonus seats is another step closer to power.

Sinn Fein’s rise will be watched with both glee and concern by Fianna Fáil. Glee, because although they are loathe to say it, there is a considerable tranche in Fianna Fáil who will coalesce in Government with Sinn Féin in the morning if only they could. Concern, because if the Shinners could steal the SDLP’s clothes in the North, what’s to stop them doing the very same to Fianna Fáil in the south?

Sinn Féin know how close power finally is too. Reader, have you noticed Eoin Ó Broin’s absence from Sinn Féin’s media appearances? Ó Broin is the mastermind – if that’s the word – behind current Sinn Féin economic policy, but the party is cute enough to keep him under wraps during the election, for fear of his insights – ah, threatening the recovery.

If the Government were serious about taking out Sinn Féin, they would forget about the history lessons. They would smoke out Ó Broin and make him do some sums. Hard sums. Instead, they keep harping on about the past as if the Bay City Rollers were still at the top of the charts.

The Government has the same tactic when it comes to tackling Fianna Fáil. The Indo reports that Fine Gael are to remind the electorate of “the gross and abject contempt which the Fianna Fáil party had for the people of this country,” in the words of An Taoiseach himself.

Well guess what Taoiseach? The electorate gave Fianna Fáil its worst-ever kicking for that offence five years ago, and handed you more power than any other Fine Gael leader before you. You will be judged by how you used that power.

The current Government was elected at a time of crisis and had a unique opportunity to end civil war politics for good. It failed. Enda Kenny could have led a minority Fine Gael government that would reform the state as it approached its hundredth birthday.

Instead, he chose to coalesce with Labour, his theoretical ideological opposites, because that’s the way things have always been done. Anyone who had hope for reform should have got a sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach when that happened. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

The Government wants praise for the recovery. The recovery that was engineered by the last government, and overseen by the Troika. But we made the hard decisions! wail the Government. Yes, they did – and blamed the Troika for every lash. Those hard decisions can’t be the Troika’s fault then and evidence of Governmental prudence and far-sightedness now.

The Government says only it can be trusted to be fiscally prudent, while shooting down the best and fairest tax they have. Do they know what they’re at at all? Have they really thought all this out, or did they think they just had to turn up and wait for the cheers?

In the final days of the election, the electorate will have to deal with the prospect of a hung Dáil. A hung Dáil is infinitely more frightening to the politicians than it is to the electorate. You see, reader, for once, the Government is right. When in Opposition, the current Government made much of Ireland having lost its economic sovereignty, and this is still the case.

Every Irish budget from here on in will be signed off by a list of people and European institutions. Frau Merkel, God bless her and keep her, doesn’t care if the homework is done by Enda Kenny or Mick Wallace, as long as the sums add up. Everything else is a detail.

Besides; seeing the scoop monkeys attempting to do their sums may be light relief for her as she faces the twin threats of the rise of militant Islam in the West and a Russia desperate for a war to distract her populace from her own issues of governance in the East. Domestic Irish politics is students’ union stuff in comparison.

32 Things - Insider Gossip v Public Service Journalism

RTÉ are currently running an online series called 32 Things Paddy Wants to Know about the upcoming general election. This series is a precise illustration of the failure of Irish political journalism to inform the electorate about how the country is run.

The first of the 32 things Paddy wants to know is who’ll get elected in Cork South Central. This isn’t politics. This is gossip. Personalities are trivial. Policies are important.

The second of the 32 things is who’ll get elected in Tipperary. Again, gossip.

The third and fourth of the 32 things are how Labour and Renua will get on. This is a who’ll bigger, the Beatles or the Stones?-type story. Gossip.

The fifth of the 32 things is how women candidates will get on. It's an ideological topic, but there's no real substance there. The quotas have given the argument a false perspective, so you end up with a cat-fight report from Dún Laoghaire Fianna Fáil. Gossip.

Sixth and seventh are how Fine Gael and Sinn Féin will get on. See third and fourth.

The eighth is who’ll get the chop when Mayo reduces from five seats to four. Gossip, gossip, gossip.

That’s not public service journalism. That’s water-cooler conversation in the Dublin 2 Beltway. Fascinating for Insiders, not worth two balls of roasted snow to Joe or Jane Citizen. Here’s what Paddy and Patricia really want to know.

1. At the time of the crash, we were told that Ireland was sold into bondage for the next thirty years. Now the economy is growing at six per cent per annum. So – what happened to the projected 30 years of living off hot gravel? Has an economic miracle occurred? Or has nobody really known what was going on since August 2008 they’ve spent the past seven years bluffing for their lives and thanking God and Frau Merkel?
2. Six per cent growth per annum. Two per cent is ideal, isn’t it? Two point something, maybe? If the economy is growing at six per cent, doesn’t that mean it’s overheating? If it’s overheating, shouldn’t the government be trying to cool it down, rather than heat it up some more?
3. Or has the government embraced Charlie McCreevy’s belief that if you have it you should spend it?
4. Doesn’t that run against the advice of JM Keynes, who had the idea of a salting away the silver for a rainy day as a bedrock of his macro-economic policy? Weren’t we hearing about Keynes all during the crash?
5. Or when they hear “Keynes,” are Roy and Robbie the only men that come to the government’s mind?
6. I see those lads who terrorized that family in Tipperary had seventy previous convictions between them. How many previous convictions do you need until the Guards start to think you might be worth keeping an eye on?
7. If you run up twelve points on your driver’s license you’re taken off the road. How can you have multiple previous convictions and still be running around?
8. A guy with eleven previous convictions, for public order, robbery and assault, got a suspended sentence for beating the head off a girl on a bus recently. He was also recommended to do a course in anger management issues. Any idea where a citizen could do an anger management course after reading that court report?
9. Speaking of our learned friends, does anyone remember that cutting legal fees was something the Troika stressed over and over again during the time here? How’s that coming along?
10. Any plans to set up an Irish-Water-esque quango to get that show in the road?
11. Yeah. Poor example, I know, I know.
12. Remember when Enda promised a quango cull?
13. Or the report card for Ministers?
14. Whose report card are you looking forward to the most?
15. Alan “AK-47” Kelly?
16. Phil “Big Phil” Hogan?
17. Doctor James “Bottler” Reilly?
18. Heather “A Rebel I came, I’m still the same” Humphries?
19. Jan O’Sullivan, who’s so helpless she doesn’t even have a nickname?
20. Alan Shatter, who had the poor Attorney General plagued ringing her at all hours of the day and the night about the nicer points of torts, malfeasances and likewise legalease?
21. He might even have asked her about fees now and again, of course. Just to break the tension and have a laugh, like.
22. Speaking of reports, how long it’s been since Moriarty Tribunal Report came out?
23. Four years? Four-and-a-half?
24. And that’s resulted in – what, exactly?
25. And Labour are all fine with that, I suppose? Them oul’ ethics aren’t bothering them? Martyrs for the ethics, Labour. Labour used to be worse bothered with the ethics than great-aunt Maggie with the lumbago. The ethics must have cleared up after Labour got into government. Poor Maggie is still crippled, of course. 
26. And how are things looking in the North? Not too great?
27. After all these years, wouldn’t it be something if Ireland were to be finally united by politicians on both sides realising that there are enough cookies in the cookie-jar for all the boys, Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter?
28. And are we all sure there’ll be enough room in Longford for all those Syrians along with everyone else?
29. No Minister, I couldn’t name three streets in Longford either. Although I suppose Pearse and O’Connell are always good guesses.
30. Did you see where the Phoenix reckoned the next Presidential election will be between Michael D, Miriam O’Callaghan and Enda? The Lord save us.
31. Come here, Do you still have that brother beyond in Cricklewood Broadway?
32. Do you think he could put me up for a week or two until I find a job and a place to stay? I’ve had my fill of this nightmare country.

Hello Again, Square One

First published in the Western People on Monday.

The Houses of the Oireachtas rise on Thursday for the Easter break, and do not return (descend? Hardly an inappropriate verb) until May 6th. Siesta time in days gone by, whatever the whining from the members, but not this year. This year there are two elections coming to the boil over the holidays, and every party expects boots on the ground to get the vote out.

The sovereign nation was told that things would never be the same again as the votes of the last election were being counted, the election that routed Fianna Fáil and saw the current Government sweep to power on a five-point-plan ticket. Things, we were told, would never be the same again.

Well. That didn’t work out, did it? A recent opinion poll in the Irish Times saw Fianna Fáil neck-and-neck with Fine Gael, the Government parties using their huge majority to protect the Minister for Justice at the cost of a massive amount of public goodwill. The Government had a mountain of public goodwill when elected. It’s safe to say the needle is now as near to zero as makes no difference.

Enda Kenny, had he so chosen, could have created a Second Republic three years ago by claiming a single-party mandate and daring Fianna Fáil to support him as he carried out Fianna Fáil’s own Troika-dictated blueprint for recovery. The moment Fianna Fáil’s support quivered, Enda could damn them as traitors to the recovery, run to the country and achieve not only the first-ever Fine Gael overall majority, but the end of Fianna Fáil for good and for always.

Enda Kenny choose the more stable option in coalescing with Labour, but now, bizarre though it sounds, the country is too stable. The Crash seemed like a wake-up call at the time, a painful lesson that the state has been run badly and could never be run the same way again.

But nothing has changed. Yes, the bailout is over and the sky didn’t fall in, but what has changed as regards the fundamental structures of the state? The recent controversies would suggest: nothing. Nothing at all has changed, or will ever change.

And as such, the pendulum swings back to its default position and Fianna Fáil, having being laid out on its back by the General Election, could be standing on its own two feet again come the summer, and chomping at the bit for the next general election.

Irish politics has been on a twenty-year cycle since the Second World War. Fianna Fáil governs for sixteen years, the country tires of them and gives the other crowd a go.

Even though it’s been sixteen long years since the other crowd were in charge, they’ve managed to use that time to learn nothing about how to last for longer than one term when they get back. It is genuinely extraordinary.

Last week a British junior minister had to resign because a claim of £45,000 in expenses to which she was not entitled.

In Ireland the Minister for Justice is at the centre of controversies that include using Garda information as a political smear, phone-tapping (official), phone-tapping (unofficial), not reading letters that are his duty to read and the Lord knows what else. One of those alone should have cost his job. Not one of them did, nor ever looked likely to, either.

Where will this all lead? In a game where a week is a famously long time, it’s a risk to project into years. But we’re all friends here so let’s take a shot.

The mystery about who gets elected from our current European super-constituencies exists in inverse proportion to how very little it matters. We could send the Shamrock Rovers first XI for all the difference it’d make. Toothless tigers. Pointless.

What is more interesting are the local elections, and how badly the Government parties fare. Fine Gael and Labour celebrated the exit of the Troika, but they haven’t had a moment’s luck since. And if the local elections are a disaster for the Government parties, could we be looking at a double-heave?

Joan Burton has made noises recently about the need for Eamon Gilmore to have a Ministry based in Ireland, but it’s more likely she’s doing that to twist his tail rather than launch her own bid. Gilmore will go down with his ship. Anyone who took over now would take the blame for the likely massacre at the next general election, and who wants that?

As for Fine Gael, Enda Kenny’s stubborn loyalty to Alan Shatter has depleted his goodwill reserves within the party. The sensible thing to do was to either pension Shatter off or else simply fire him. The longer the thing went on, the more it cost Kenny.

And Kenny’s enemies have never gone away. The question for conspirators now is whether or not to launch their heave before or after Phil Hogan is made European Commissioner, as seems to be the general expectation in the corridors of power. Hogan is Kenny’s chief lieutenant – Kenny will be more vulnerable without Hogan to keep the troops in line. However, if Kenny is sufficiently vulnerable after the local elections, the rebels may decide to treat themselves, on the basis that two heads are better than one.

Independents will be the big winners in the locals, but the big winners in terms of the next general election will be Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin, of course. The commentariat insist that the Sinn Féin rise is due to Mary Lou McDonald’s undeniably impressive performances on TV. The opinion polls say that Gerry Adams has the highest leader-satisfaction in the country. So it’s not easy reconcile those opposites.

The real turning point of the next election, then, will be whether Fianna Fáil are the majority or minority party in coalition, and how broad will that coalition have to be. We are too far out to tell, but it’s hard to see the Government turning their fortunes around short of a heave, and the Reform Alliance have missed the most open goal since the foundation of the state. Hello again, Square One. This is Ireland. We’re back.

Lucinda

First published in the Western People on Monday.

Irish politics is like an iceberg. Only a small amount is visible at any one time, while there is a great mass of it that’s hidden, away from prying eyes.

This was especially obvious this Christmas, as the TDs and Senators luxuriate in a break that lasts for another ten days or so. But while they continue to relax, at home or abroad, the more thoughtful members of the Oireachtas will be wondering: what is Lucinda Creighton going to do next, and how dearly might I myself pay for it?

As discussed in this place earlier, Lucinda Creighton has it in her power to finally close the book on the civil war, and lead Ireland into the second century of independence (such as it is). So far, she has not put a foot wrong and, while the theoretically-retired Gay Byrne has been on television more often than Creighton, her influence is everywhere.

Creighton outsmarted Sinn Féin in backing a winner during the Seanad Referendum, and now she’s released another cat among the pigeons when the news broke over the holidays that the Reform Alliance has registered as a political party with the Standards in Public Office Commission.

What does this mean? It means as much as you want it to be mean, really. Registering with the Standards in Public Office Commission means that the Reform Alliance can fundraise. That in itself doesn’t necessarily mean the party will fundraise. The act of registration is just another chess piece, sliding along the board. It may mean nothing, or everything. We’ll have to wait and see.

The second interesting thing that came to light over the holidays is that if the party is formed, it will not be formed until September. And that delay leads to three more fascinating points of interest.

Firstly, the delay allows Lucinda Creighton herself to have her baby (announced in November) before she returns to the front lines. There had been speculation that Michael McDowell or Shane Ross were potential leaders of the Reform Alliance, but this does not stand up to scrutiny.

McDowell failed as leader of the PDs, and there is no evidence to believe that the sovereign people would follow Shane Ross in the queue at Tesco’s if they could avoid it. If there is no Lucinda Creighton, there will be no Reform Alliance. Right now, Creighton is Irish politics’ Joan of Arc, for good or ill.

Secondly, if the party isn’t to be launched until September, that means the Creightonites are avoiding the local elections entirely. Conventional wisdom is that you need boots on the ground for general elections – that your candidates must have served their time in local councils before moving on to the Premier League of the Teachtaí Dhála.

But of course, if the word “reform” in the party title is to mean anything, then it makes sense to avoid the local elections. Maybe reform means no longer presuming that the Dáil is just a king-size county-council, and that a TD is an equally king-sized county councillor. Maybe that’s not what you want in a legislator.

There is a risk in this strategy. If one particular party does particularly well during the locals, the momentum is then with that party, and taken from the Creightonites, but little in this life is guaranteed. It’s a risk worth taking, and besides the corollary – no clear momentum behind anyone, low turnout, oddball results – makes a further case for the Reform Alliance.

But the third interesting thing about leaving the formation of the Reform Alliance for nine months is that the delay gives nine months’ breathing room to mend fences between Fine Gael and the Creightonites before all is lost. And that possibility isn’t to be ruled out at all.

Have Fine Gael learned the lesson of history? Fine Gael has traditionally been the alternative party of government since 1932. When the PDs were formed in the 1980s, they took a slice off Fianna Fáil, specially FF’s long-cherished core value of never going into coalition, but the PDs did severe damage to Fine Gael.

No Fine Gael leader led his party to general election victory during the life of the PDs, not least as middle class votes that used to go to Fine Gael went to the PDs instead. Do Fine Gael want to risk that happening again? Is it better to have Lucinda Creighton inside the tent?

Fine Gael will think about that very seriously in the run-up to the local and European elections in the summer. Enda Kenny has been a phenomenal success as Taoiseach, and has grown into the role. But politics is not a sentimental game and Fine Gael will make a cold and hard assessment based on potential, rather than achievement. Gratitude is poor currency in politics.

If the local and European elections go well for Fine Gael, Creightonism will be over. Enda will be unassailable, it will be all the one to Fine Gael if Lucinda Creighton forms a new party or a rock band, and Creighton’s time will have passed. But if the elections go badly for Fine Gael, the potential for a Creighton reconciliation will be there, as the lesser of two potential evils.

It will depend where the power lies. There will be a faction who want Kenny gone and their own candidate in as leader. There will be another faction who are aware that Creighton’s return may make her heir-in-waiting to new leader, and that new leader will not relish the thought of always having to watch his or her back.

And these are just the macro-factors that anybody can figure out when you sit down and think about it. Politics, as the former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, are entirely dictated by events. Who knows what story will break between now and September that will turn over the entire board, and have everyone start again? NAMA? The public sector? A constitutional crisis? Who knows?

Whatever happens, it’s an interesting time to study Irish politics. It would be tremendous fun if only the future of the country weren’t at stake.