A view of the latest RedC/SBP poll

Let us turn to the paper itself where McDowell has harsh words for FF and FG. It was ever thus, wasn’t it? He argues that given how similar the parties are policy wise…

…if as appears likely FF will not seek a mandate to enter into government with FG after the next election and will compound that stance by ruing out an FG-FF coalition, we are collectively stuck with a ‘choice’ between two hotchpotch coalitions kept in office on a supply and confidence arrangement by two equally hotchpotch oppositions.

But this, surely, isn’t a glitch but a feature, necessary to prevent the development of a left, or lefts that could strike for state power, or am I reading matters incorrectly?

McDowell argues that:

This is a recipe for permanent weakness and paralysis in our democracy. The recent faced budget is one token of the de critic vacuum we live in. Current industrial unrest in the public sector simply reflects an expectation of political appeasement and drift.

Up to a point that last. He surely can appreciate that after a decade or so of austerity and wage and condition cuts public sector workers are entirely legitimately seeking some amelioration of their situation. Anyhow, this is more on the nose:

The Oireachtas, our national parliament is on ‘standby’ mode. Ministers and their departments have lost their appetite to legislate or to reform. They prefer to farm out the legislative function to the the citizen’s form and to farm out the Dáil’s function of political accountability to enquiries.

He’s not wrong in that last. This is an administration that is doing the bare minimum and keeping controversy at bay – as best it can. How that works out, well, we’ll see.

He notes the most recent poll:

As for the left the poll suggests that SF may well be in danger of catching Labour’s disease. AAA/PBP is capitalising on abortion, industrial unrest and rent control agitation to steal the limelight from the rest of the comrades.

But he makes a most interesting observation:

But still the Left’s share of the overall vote is static. No party of the Left has the appetite for office, and the politics of protest is a crowded market.

No, not the boilerplate of the last sentence above but the first. There really is just a shifting of ballast on the leftish vote.

When you add the Independent vote of 10 per cent to the 51 per cent support of the Civil War parties, middle Ireland seems to heavily outweighs the Left. But even then, the breakdown of middle Ireland’s vote across FF, FG and the Independents makes for a neutered insipid politics that lacks vision and purpose – except perhaps the purpose of self-preservation most effectively symbolised by Enda Kenny’s long, long goodbye.

And he adds.

The much-vaunted centre is holding on by its fingernails. Middle Ireland is losing confidence in its politics.

Of course, there’s one solution for him, sort of…

If just one TD was elected in each constituency at the next election on a policy platform based on forming a coalition with one or other of the centre parties, we could have an effective government well placed to deal with the consequences of Brexit, public pay policy issues, political reform, local government reform, reform of the grossly unfair LPT which promises severe injustice in certain parts of the country in two years’s time, housing, health and many other issues.

Does the require a new party? It may do. It probably does.

But he must know that given the number of constituencies that’s an impossible challenge for any group. He might also reflect upon the Independent Alliance which, in some ways, is that very group, albeit somewhat more nebulous. And there’s the small problem that ‘new’ parties of the supposed centre are conspicuous by their absence. Renua had many problems, not least its rightward tilt, but that wasn’t it alone. With FF and FG so close, he himself notes that, then what is the percentage in another party which is essentially them in slightly different garb?

Again we come back to the present arrangement. I’d bet that’s just hunky dory for quite a lot of people. At least so long as it persists and so long as FF is in government next time about. New party? Why they don’t want the competition. And neither does the electorate of this state, at least not at the moment.