A Fianna Fáil mudguard…

SonofStan brought up a thought last week about the present government, that perhaps Fianna Fáil in its current much reduced state might provide the mudguard to both Fine Gael and the Green Party. And it makes sense. Fianna Fáil is under serious pressure at the polls. It has arrived at the head of the government within a bizarre self-inflicted cloud of disgruntlement, and given the broader circumstances of pandemic and economic crisis, unappealing entitlement. The sense of a steady hand on the tiller is all but absent. Worse again this stands in stark contrast to the example of Fine Gael (at least up to the last month or so when business and media interests appeared to be placing huge pressures on the administration to reopen). Micheál Martin is a curiously anonymous figure, telling to hear on a recent IT podcast after he had become Taoiseach, someone mentioning the Taoiseach in relation to the former incumbent, and then having to hastily correct themselves.

All this will pass, no doubt. But pass to where? What new troubles will appear for Fianna Fáil? And some of it won’t pass – ambitious and thwarted figures on the back benches are going nowhere, the sense that the party is in government by the skin of its teeth may not dissipate. The unsteadiness of the first weeks may come to characterise matters.

And there’s that fundamental political weakness. I referenced this last week in relation to polling research by Kevin Cunningham which shows that Sinn Féin primarily, and Fine Gael to a lesser degree, have appropriated much of Fianna Fáil’s vote. Putting aside unwise and avoidable slips like the Storey funeral where a certain partition mentality may in fact work to SF’s benefit, how much of that vote is likely to return to FF? This FF?

Which leads one back to SoS’s point about FF being the mudguard. Fine Gael appears to have found a larg(ish) and broad based vote. The Green Party has the numbers to emerge from government with TDs remaining in situ unlike 2011, particularly if it can demonstrate that it has succeeded in implementing core areas of its programme. But Fianna Fáil is in a much more perilous situation and even having the position of leading the government may not do it much good. After all Fine Gael didn’t exactly excel earlier this year. There’s a long way to go. But add to this one other aspect. Fine Gael, all things going to plan, return to lead the administration halfway through its term. What is the psychology of that, in political terms, with FF now the subsidiary entity in the government? Two or more years so for FF to sharpen up its act. The start hasn’t exactly been great.