AND there you have it – another election wrapped and the Irish people, on the whole, seem to be content to leave well enough alone. On the face of it, it was a bit of a meh-lection, but of course there were loads of fascinating subplots, mini dramas, and intrigue.
On the day of the count, there was a faint smell of inevitability as officers and counters worked through the ballots and were then paraded in front of the cameras every few hours to distribute surplus allocations, deeming so-and-so to be elected and putting other candidates out of their misery so they could be released back into the wild.
Personally, I very much enjoyed the proportional representation Eurovision as it played out on TV, with pundits and political nerds all lined up to give their two cents on panels that went on for days. ex-Taoisigh, history professors, political correspondents and the type of people you would normally run a mile from in the pub were having their moment in the limelight on TV, as they do every election cycle. God bless them. I call it the Night of the Long Nerds.
And then there was the joy and the tears on the floor of community centres across the country. Big country lads being hoisted on shoulders with red heads and years of vouched expenses ahead of them. Serious-looking socialists enjoying a rare smile before what will be a long spell opposing everything that moves in the name of Karl Marx. It wasn’t all happy faces and fellas googling images of ministerial cars, of course. There were those who didn’t make it. ‘A Seoige sister, the Minister for Health and the Monk walk into a count centre’ might sound like the start of a joke, but not this week.
Indeed, one would have thought that a Seoige sister would have walked into the Dáil, given this country’s weird predilection for former female newsreaders, but nothing is certain in politics. And who would have thought The Monk would have come so close, a sign of worrying things to come perhaps. What Hutch does next, from a political standpoint, is anyone’s guess. All I know is that it was the only thing they were talking about on the BBC news bulletins on the first day of the count. Is it any wonder democracy around the world is creaking?
I suppose ‘Nation in rude economic health defies international trends by voting pragmatically for incumbents in the wake of global uncertainty’ doesn’t have the same ring to it as ‘Ireland dodges a bullet as Dublin voters narrowly reject gangland boss’.
It was a good day for the Social Democrats and Labour who both made significant gains, 11 seats each, but a case of ‘stuck in the mud’ for Sinn Féin, with Mary Lou destined to remain an angry bridesmaid for another Dáil term, it seems.
Sinn Féin, all of a sudden, wants to embark on cross-party negotiations on the left to explore forming an alternative government. This could have been considered weeks ago and an actual alternative put forward for the electorate, of course. Now, they are doing so without the numbers to achieve it, which would certainly make you worry about their grasp of basic mathematics.
The next few weeks will see some very interesting horse trading. If only they could film it in the First Dates hotel and broadcast it to the nation.
It is unlikely we’ll see a government that doesn’t involve some version of Micheál and Simon playing civil war musical chairs, but the choices of who they take in to get them over the line won’t be known for some time.
One version would see them partner with the Soc Dems and/or Labour, perhaps with Ivana and Holly rotating which party gets eviscerated at the next election. Whoever is in the spotlight when the music stops gets to be the next Green Party, ending up with just enough seats to run a bicycle. Bacik seems very keen on getting into government. You’d imagine there will be a lot of resistance within both the Labour and Social Democrats’ grassroots about going in, though.
And anyone keeping an eye on the precarious international situation with Trump threatening tariffs can see there may be trouble ahead, in which case building for the next election might be more pragmatic for the parties of the centre left.
Would the Greens, Labour and the Social Democrats not consider a pact going forward or go ahead and merge, given their relatively minor policy differences?
But Minister for Justice has an awful strong ring to it. And aren’t we all ambitious, at the end of the day? And those pensions, those lovely, lovely juicy ministerial pensions.
Of course there is another route. FF/FG will start to engage with the raggle-taggle band of independents, both from inside and outside the ‘gene pool’ – the phrase of the weekend.
This will be sweaty, dangerous work. They might find themselves driving into the depths of rural Kerry or the Far West of Cork on secret midnight missions, meeting Haely Raes in the backrooms of local pubs. Bypasses might be promised. Fishermen’s feelings will be considered. Lads will be effing and blinding about ‘Mercosur’. Gravy will be consumed in vast quantities, slathered over roast chicken legs and overcooked carrots. And meaningful climate action would almost certainly be pushed back a generation or two.
This looks all the more likely now that FF/FG are so close to the magic number … but sure a week is a long time in politics. And you get the sense we’ll be kept guessing for a while yet.
