1 week Ago
“Before a cat will condescend to treat you as a trusted friend, some little token of esteem is needed, like a dish of cream,” TS Eliot wrote. With a third of the general election campaign completed, the big political cats were busy dishing out the cream, along with the billions from the “Apple pie”. Strange to think that not too far back we were not going to touch the money from the EU ruling.
Now it is the gift that keeps on giving. The world of science may be relieved, as it will not have to redraw Newton’s gravitational laws. In politics, too, even golden windfalls must also come down, no matter how long they have been kept suspended in mid-air.
But the limitless largesse has left voters slightly bemused. The attitudes of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to each other are also puzzling. The latest opinion poll, from The Irish Times , still gives an edge to Taoiseach Simon Harris’s party, but predicts a close-run thing.
In government, the two main parties have been presented as two sides of the same coin. Now they are vying for votes, they need to convey an illusion that the gloves are coming off. But so far, it has just been a case of replacing the velvet with calf skin.
The “hold me back, let me at him” routine is not fooling anyone. The simple truth is, it is hard to see a pathway to government for one without the other. Yet Fianna Fáil’s Jim O’Callaghan wanted to get a dig in, with the charge that Fine Gael could no longer claim to be the party of law and order.
Fine Gael has held the justice portfolio for 14 years, but no progress has been made on crime, he claimed. In response Justice Minister Helen McEntee said: “Women all over the country will understand what it feels like when men try to claim credit for women’s work.” So yes, we have seen some theatrics, but for the real pyrotechnics we may have to rely on the independents.
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin has been following a “steady as she goes” approach. Party leader Mary Lou McDonald said she was “in it to win it” and that if a week was a long time in politics, two weeks is an eternity. The poll shows that Independents have made the biggest gains, up to 20pc.
Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin are both on 19pc, while Fine Gael leads with 25pc support. As for the outcome, at this point, we are crystal-ball gazing. Or, as former football manager and pundit Ron Atkinson once put it: “I’m going to make a prediction – it could go either way.
” It is always worth hanging a question mark on things we take for granted, and never more so than when it comes to the will of the people. We should also keep in mind that of the 160 TDs elected to the 33rd Dáil, 36 are not running this time, and of those, 66pc are from the ranks of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. So it is all to play for.
Or, more pertinently, given the amount of taxpayers’ money being bandied about, it is all to pay for..
