The Cedar Lounge Revolution

So, this February election… January 26, 2011

…one of the odd things about writing about Irish politics at the moment, in pre-electoral and electoral mode, in this format of a blog is that each post tends to merge because the events and issues seem to merge and therefore it becomes a bit like a long running conversation rather than one issue, or another, during quieter times. So apologies if some, or many, posts during the next while are a bit rambling and discursive, but it’s the times that are in it.

Anyhow, this truncated Finance Bill and rapid run into an election is far far from the extra time that Fianna Fáil would have liked to see in order to allow the new ‘leader’ to settle into their job. In that respect Cowen didn’t merely seal his own fate last week by that ludicrous reshuffle, but he set the seal on the fate of the party by radically foreshortening the timeline to the election.

The great imponderable then is what a new leader does for Fianna Fáil. Poll boost or same old same old? Some have suggested that Micheál Martin may not be quite the leader for FF to galvanise itself during this campaign and that Lenihan (Snr) would do better. I’m unconvinced by that to be honest. At his press conference at the weekend Lenihan struck me as a man who was painfully weighed down by his political history however much that peculiar reality distortion field – which he appears to share with Steve Jobs – was only failing intermittently. Martin, by contrast, has the curious attribute of not being perceived as being directly involved/implicated in the economic situation. That he sat around the same Cabinet table as the others isn’t a minor issue though. That fact will be reiterated again and again over the course of the next month.

And then there’s the question as to how much of his [and I'm assuming Hanafin is out of the running entirely] own stamp he can put on the party, a party that is currently composed of a large number of TDs hugely concerned about their own personal political survival. There’s going to be an interesting game of chicken played over the next few weeks as rival polls emerge as we see whether clinging close to the new leader goes half-way to saving their skins or should the FF logos be made as small as is possible (or as someone joked to me, should the logos be on stickers that can be removed from posters and other material – as required. At least I think they were joking).

Campaigns seem to develop their own dynamic. Actually, the truth is of course that they are mediated in certain ways by the media so that they seem to have troughs and peaks that to those walking the streets and knocking on doors are blissfully unaware most of the time. I canvassed over a long period with Tony Gregory’s group and the reality was that however excited and heated the rhetoric in the media on the actual trail everything was much less pointed. But another curious aspect was how difficult it was to read the constituency – and this is true of any campaign I’ve been involved in. Until the boxes of votes are opened it genuinely is an imponderable as to what the result will be – except in the most fantastical exceptional circumstances.

In 2007 I was on my way along North Strand when who should I see at the bridge over the canal but Gerry Adams and Mary Lou McDonald gazing along it with a few party workers. That was mid-way through the campaign and I’d judged from the visual presence on the ground in terms of posters and canvassing teams, particularly up around Cabra, it seemed that SF would do very well, so well in fact that many thought that McDonald would easily take a seat. To be honest they all seemed pretty pensive and I’ve often wondered whether they had a sense of how things would turn out in the constituency even then.

Clearly she didn’t make it into the Dáil. But it points up how difficult it is to read even, or especially, from ground level. And shifting back from that level, as is evidenced by no end of contributions on Politics.ie is often a pointless exercise, the bland certainties of so many who haven’t darkened the door of a particular constituency can be a sight to behold sometimes.

Even the byelections that saw George Lee and Maureen O’Sullivan arrive in LH, didn’t appear on the face of it to offer any absolute clarity as to the outcome if one were to rely on encounters on the street or at doorways.

Yet not to arrive on the street or at doorways is to invite disaster.

And it’s in that space between activism and intangible but very real consequences as regards influencing votes that the outcome to what happens next hinges upon.

The next time out, say in Dublin Central? Who knows? The only truly safe seat is that of Joe Costello. All else are to varying degrees subject to the whim of an electorate that is near impossible to judge. Is a Fianna Fáil collapse nationwide likely to be greater or worse here given that it was Ahern’s old stomping ground? Worse I’d think, but then again. Has Maureen O’Sullivan done enough to ensure the seat? We’ll see. Will FG take a seat? One would think not, but then if the traditional Gregory vote were to collapse that might in part go in unusual directions. What will the last SF candidate do to the current ones electoral chances and so on and so forth. And all of this before we get to considering FF’s chances to take a seat.

To take a seat… in a constituency where they were guaranteed two up until recently (though perhaps the unusual nature of the election of Cyprian Brady, at least in transfer terms should have been a significant warning to FF that the loyalty of their voters while seemingly broad was potentially shallow given how few first preferences he garnered and how many Ahern did, indicating a huge personal vote but… not a lot more than that). How the mighty are fallen.

And each constituency is, to a greater or lesser extent, similar to that. Those imponderables mentioned earlier stack up. Local circumstances assist or block movement forward.

But all that said every straw in the wind gives some indication of that larger picture and can hint at the way forward. There are those who during 2007 didn’t depend on random glimpses of Adams and McDonald and other party workers to try to work out the way things would go, and largely got it right. I’m thinking in particular of an article in the Phoenix just before the election that year which went into the election constituency by constituency and by using the data from RedC polls at local and national level neatly skewered the idea of an SF breakthrough. I remember being dubious when I read it. I certainly wasn’t subsequently.

So over the next five weeks or so it’s going to be fascinating to see what emerges onto a political terrain largely unlike any we’ve seen before. In an odd way I’m looking forward to it, not merely because I hope the fairly varied range of formations and individuals that I’d support make it into the Dáil but because this offers an opportunity to shake things up like never before.

Doesn’t mean it will happen. But…