Campaign Gist: And in the end...

What seems like the most conventional of all outcomes to an Irish election (Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael back in power) actually holds the seeds of radical change. Unfortunately, not all change is good. This is the last Campaign Gist.

It seems strange to write a Campaign Gist at this distance from the actual campaign, but then this has been a very protracted election. The knowledge that it was coming shaped behaviours and actions throughout the year. Fine Gael got a new leader becuase their sitting Taoiseach just didn't want to go through it. Sinn Féin's poll-ercoaster ride saw them gyrating through a series of desperation-tinged lamentable decisions as they saw the cliff-edge of the public vote approach.

By the time the actual election was called and the campaign officially started in the dead of November, the political and horserace commentariat had been driven insane. For them, all of 2024 was an ashen-faced electoral Narnia– always the Winter of campaigning but never the Christmas of an actual vote.

Well, the vote has come and gone and we have a new Government ready to start the business of making decisions for the country now they've decided how to divide the spoils of success between them. But despite the familiarity of the cast of characters, this government actually represents a departure from anything else we've seen before. This is an undiluted right wing government facing a leftish opposition. This is the moment decades of political science academics and frustrated Labour Party theorists have waited and pined for.

A Contriwise Equilibrium

For much of the history of the state, we've had one of two models of government. We had the era up to the 1980s where Fianna Fáil governed as a hegemon, interrupted by short periods of Fine Gael/Labour (and Misc) coalitions.

Then we had the era of coalitions, where each election was followed by a mathematically-defined effort to jigsaw a majority together. If Fine Gael were in office, they governed with Labour and faced Fianna Fáil as the lead opposition. If Fianna Fáil were in power, they also had a Labour or Green partner and faced Fine Gael as the main alternative voice. Even when Fianna Fáil relied on the PDs, Fine Gael provided the main other option for voters to turn to. Is it any wonder that Sinn Féin's leader re-used a Tweedledum and Tweedledee reference for the second campaign in a row.

In each version, the government had a nominally leftish component and/or faced a right wing voice as the main alternative.

This new government will have neither.

FF, the Socialist Party

It would be silly to suggest that Ireland has never had a right wing government. I mean, look at Ireland. But it has never had such a clear division between a right wing government and a nominally left wing opposition. There is no minor mudguard in this coalition. The alternative is something different, not the usual “same but a different coloured tie”.

Micheál Martin, who the election has reminded us is a pretty canny politician, has seen the danger here. Like socialist Bertie Ahern before him, he has started to position Fianna Fáil as the left wing voice in the government. Given the government voices are going to include a Healy-Rae, this doesn’t require that much movement. The Overton window of what may be said by people in power is about to make the Taoiseach look like Micheál The Red in comparison.

The danger of this arrangement is that the flavour of a political coalition tends to be set by its loudest, most provocative members. Every time Danny Healy-Rae opines on climate science now, it won't just be the BBC and his voters in Kerry his message will reach. It will colour opinion of all the government's TDs with their voters. When Barry Heneghan, a FF-style Independent TD in the guise of a manic children's TV presenter, appears giving a thumbs up in a photo with a man who had to give his house up to CAB, that's the Government Deputy Chief Whip doing it.

Now look at that through the prism of today's absurd row, where Michael Lowry proposed that the government coalition regional members who didn't actually land a ministerial job should get to keep the perks of being in an opposition Technical group. Lowry, best imagined as a collection of faults roughly pressed into human shape, is no idiot. He knows the danger of leaving all of the reactionary voices inside the Government tent.

The Red King's Dream

For the very first time, almost by accident, Ireland's government will offer voters single political worldview and the Opposition, from their various angles, will offer a different and opposing one.

Whether the Opposition is up to the challenge of this moment is still an open question. The largest opposing party, after all, will be Sinn Féin, a party which has never had to take responsibility for anything that hadn't exploded. After its unseemly gyrations around immigration, it will have only a bare few months to reassert itself as having any leftish credibility before people tune out again. We have no idea if the party is even capable of learning from the experience of its second short fall election. It may not be able to imagine anything beyond "One more heave". A party with only two leaders in 42 years is hardly one that has shown a capacity for fleet-footed responsiveness to change.

For Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the keyword for the programme for government is 'continue'. Their plan is to just keep doing what they were doing anyway, but stop doing the Green Party things that irked them.

But this isn't a continuance of the last government. It is something new and rougher.

When Tweedledum and Tweedledee refuse to ever battle the fight will move on without them.

After all, how else will we all shake Ireland up?

It needs a nice hard rattle.