Turkeys won't be voting for Christmas

Believe me. If we had politicians who understood what they are doing we wouldn’t be looking down the barrel of a General Election on Christmas Week. We may be. As some may know I’ve skin in the game on both sides. I’m a proud Labour member but I’m also related to the Tánaiste. She’s a decent person who’s made her contribution as the state’s first Minister for Children. She drove the Children’s referendum and has made this state a better place for children to grow up in. I know here and I’ve met her.

To summarise where we are; Sargent Maurice McCabe is a man who is above reproach in my view. Garda legal advice to a tribunal indicated a strategy to undermine him with a trumped up charge while at the same time he was being hailed as a whistle blower who Leo Varadkar called distinguished. The strategy was advised to the Department of Justice and was referred to the Minister with an advice to her that the matter was not for her to determine. This advice was re-inforced by the AG.

But we live in a world where what happens in the media shapes our evaluation of a person.Many will point to how this week’s controversy of the email emerging from the ether after 2 years and will ask, just how does that happen? Some more of us might ask, who sent the email to her and indeed point to the fortuitous stroke of luck that the Department of Justice’s Secretary General announced his retirement a week before the whole controversy re-ignited. 

Aine Lawlor’s dogged determination during a radio interview that over ran the ad break spelt trouble as questions piled up.  The spiralling crisis sees a supposedly united Fine Gael behind her. I suspect that’s not the case. I seriously doubt that there are many  FG TD’s happy to lose their seats over this.

So out of the blue we’re supposed to be heading for an election over a Tánaiste who doesn’t remember something that happened a while back? Doesn’t that ring a bell?

Out of the blue in 1990, Charlie Haughey sacked Tánaiste Brian Lenihan in the face of a threat by the PD’s to walk out of government.  Within 15 months, Haughey was gone from office. Within another 9 months the first FF coalition was hammered at an election as the party was paralysed in office by a tribunal into the beef industry. History may well be repeating itself. 

Whatever the outcome, big stakes are being played for.  It’s like playing pass the parcel with a time bomb. Nobody wants to be seen holding the parcel when the bomb of an election goes off.

That’s why I think this matter should not lead to an election. It will be diffused. There’s more reasons to hang together than to hang separately. Brexit negotiations about the border, Repealing the eight although collapsing that may appeal to some in FF and FG and of course the ongoing housing crisis.

Otherwise the 2 main parties deserve to lose votes and seats in an election. Christmas is all about Santa Claus, but I don’t see FF or FG gifting seats back to where they won them less than 2 years ago.

And at the back of it all is Sargent McCabe and his family.  They deserve the justice of the tribunal and answers as to why he was vicitimised. We the electorate deserve to be able to trust the Garda again. Will an election deliver either by Christmas? No I don’t think so either.

Someone is going to blink. Either FF will pull back or Frances Fitzgerald will resign on mature reflection of  the consequences for the country of an election. But that only buys time, the trust that the government was based on is gone.

But here’s another question. Who’d enter a supply and confidence arrangement with FF after the General Election? Nobody would. That’s  why a FF/SF government is now a step nearer. 

Whatever you say, say nothing.

Usually the post general election period sees moves towards government formation with possible combinations entering exploratory talks.  Do you remember the old expression; “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” or “the negotiations teams have left matters for final decision to the party leaders”? 

You see here’s the rub. Everything is agreed but nobody has the backbone to admit it. Thursday will see everyone going through the motions until after St Patricks Day.  I suspect we will have a new government in the run in to Easter.  There is every incentive to form one.  The historic anniversary of 1916 and the sense of occasion appeal to the core of FF members.  Moreover what would the outgoing Minister for Education possibly say in the set piece speech to Teacher Union conferences during Easter Week? Such speeches set out the ministers policy in the year ahead and are the centrepiece of conference week. Jan O’Sullivan can’t deliver any such a speech and there is a need for a clear line from Marlboro St on junior cycle reform and the restoration of posts and increments. The more I think about it the more I believe we may get movement when the Taoiseach is away in the US for St Patricks Day to visit President Obama for the final time.

And as the old adage goes, when the cat’s away the mice will play.  It may well be by the time that Enda Kenny returns to Ireland the negotiators will have signed off on their programme and referred it upstairs to the party leaders.

FF and FG are sniffing one another over in the same way as an inquisitive terrier hangs around a rabbit hole.  The mood music is that they are the only game in town.  And here’s the really extraordinary bit.  Those who are cheering them the loudest are mostly those who won the argument; Sinn Fein AAA and the left on water charges and property tax. 

They say the numbers now don’t stack up.  A few weeks ago they said that there were 3 blocs, FF, FG and the Right2Change group.  Now SF and the left say do the maths a Right2change bloc hasn’t enough votes. 

So let’s take them up on the offer and do the maths. At the minute FG has 50, FF 44 and SF 23. But add in 6 PBP/AAA, 4 Independents for Change and the following independents who are all left wing and oppose water and property charges; Seamus Healey, Catherine Connolly, Maureen O’Sullivan, Finian McGrath, John Halligan, Thomas Pringle and Katherine Zappone.  That gives you a block of 40 TD’s with SF at its core and if the Social Democrats who have 3 TD’s opposed to water charges are included it could be level with FF if an FF TD is elected Ceann Comhairle.  If SF and this coalition went to FF they would be in just as good a bargaining position as FG since many independent TD’s may not be interested in holding ministerial office.  As Mary Lou herself says as she quotes Bobby Sands, “Everyone has their role to play”,  Is this merely a slogan or does it mean anything at all?

You see since the results of the General Election there has been considerable spin much of it encouraged by a left with little appetite for government.  That of course means that once a new government is formed, the vow of silence will be broken and all the answers to all the problems facing the country will once more tumble from the lips of those on the left.  Now that real issues are on the table, Paul Murphy and Richard Boyd Barrett are playing schtum on what should happen next.  They are going round with their fingers crossed behind their backs that the task of solving problems never ends up on their laps. It is for the left very much a case of reverse engines before we hit the iceberg.  Only in Ireland does the left interpret electoral success as a failure to secure a mandate.  If not now, then when, if ever?

Another Election? To be sure, to be sure!

Only in Ireland would it happen that parties that win an election tell you that they don’t want to go into government.  One wonders what the men and women of 1916 would think ? In 1916 Irish men couldn’t elect their own government. Irish women of course were not allowed vote until 1918 and when they voted they spoke with a clear voice. 

100 years on those who lay claim most to the heritage of 1916 are first to tell the electorate the day after we’ve voted that they’re more interested in their parties and protecting their political position than the country they claim to love.  Today the centenary has become an embarrassing reminder of how the vision of the proclamation has been discarded in favour of political expediency and short term political advantage.

I’d an inkling what was about to happen yesterday at the count.  During a long conversation with a candidate whose posters called for transparency in government he told me he was opposed to his party entering government and that it was Fianna Fail and Fine Gaels job to govern.  The Social Democrats never told the electorate that on the doorsteps when they were collecting an impressive vote of over 2,000. 

You see this wasn’t a snap election, it’s been flagged for years.  Opinions have been well formed Suggestions now that we should have another in the next few months and that somehow there will be a different result with one party getting an overall majority are unrealistic.  This is the result whether we like it or not.  Fine Gael and Labour lost 50 seats.  An opinion poll showed 60% want a change of government.  In anyone’s language that means those who won have to form the government.  That’s how a democracy works.  It is time to give the people the change they want.

Anything else is farce and will rapidly wind up the electorate the wrong way.  The mistakes that undermined Labour in the last government were made before they entered office.  History is now repeating itself in the case of Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein, AAA and Social Democrats.

When you organise under the banner of Right to  Change you either keep that promise and deliver change or you let down people.  All these parties shared policies on water charges and property tax before the election. Why now are they finding even the thought of forming a government impossible? 

If 100 years ago a Scottish Socialist who didn't speak Irish could see common ground with a conservative Gaelgoir school teacher in developing a fledgling state, what's the real problem now

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