Opinion

Deaglán de Bréadún: Politics turning into a less funny version of Fawlty Towers

Deaglán de Bréadún
Deaglán de Bréadún Deaglán de Bréadún

Politics has rarely been in such a mess on this island – certainly in recent times.

The absence of the Assembly and collapse of the power-sharing administration in the north have raised concerns for the long-term survival of the peace process. Across the water, the lack of an Irish nationalist or republican presence at Westminster, when crucial decisions are being taken that will affect the future of this island, is simply crazy – but I won’t spoil your breakfast by dwelling on Brexit.

More and more when you switch on the news, there is yet another episode that could have come from Fawlty Towers – but without the same degree of solemnity. The list that includes “Basil the Rat” and “Waldorf Salad” should now also feature “Box-ticking Exercise”, the label attached to last Thursday’s farcical encounter between party representatives and Secretary of State Karen Bradley.

South of the border, down Leinster House way, things are also passing strange. The arrangement whereby the main party on the opposition benches, Fianna Fáíl, has been keeping its Fine Gael rivals in power recalls the phrase uttered in another context by the late Charles Haughey: “Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented” - which became GUBU for short. The Soldiers of Destiny in bed with the Blueshirts: Eamon de Valera must be turning in his grave.

To continue in John Cleese mode, one is starting to wonder if Irish politics has now become a dead parrot. Certainly the northern scene has all the elements of a long-drawn-out funeral, except that the MLA mourners aren’t under pressure to get back to work because the factory is closed and they’re getting paid regardless.

In the other jurisdiction, with a phony war going on in the Dáil, we thought last month’s presidential election might at least provide some enlightenment and food for thought. However, things started to look a little crazy when it turned out three of the six candidates had been panellists on the Dragon’s Den television series. You couldn’t help wondering initially if this was some kind of old pals’ act, but it soon became clear it was just a coincidence.

Sinn Féin at least deserves credit for running a candidate, although Liadh Ní Riada’s posters curiously did not include the party label. When the position of head of state is up for election, you might expect Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would also field a contender. The reason they didn’t, one assumes, is that the incumbent, Michael D Higgins, was a racing certainty to win by a substantial margin. But time was when parties felt the need to put forward “the vision thing”, regardless of their election prospects, although there isn’t a surfeit of vision in Irish politics these days.

The presumed benefit of Sinn Féin participation was to raise that party’s profile in a positive way, but it turned out to be a bit of a disaster. It wasn’t really the candidate’s fault. Ní Riada ran successfully for the European Parliament in 2014, securing the second-highest vote in the state. In the latest battle, she didn’t handle media questions well, but she’s not the only Sinn Féiner who has problems in that regard. Some of them behave like republicans in former times who stared at a point in the wall at Castlereagh holding centre and refused to give away anything under police interrogation.

Ní Riada managed to give a fairly good account of herself in the TV debates apart from one serious gaffe where she said that, if elected, she would wear a poppy on Armistice Day. That helps to explain why the Sinn Féin core-vote wasn’t reached: anything to do with the British army remains highly-sensitive.

In the 2011 general election, Fine Gael got 36.1 per cent of first-preferences and in the same year’s presidential race their candidate got only 6.4 per cent. The latter figure is exactly what Sinn Féin received in the presidential race, so it might be wrong to assume the party is going to collapse in the next Dáil contest. Nevertheless Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill must be concerned at the high proportion of voters who opted for Independent contender Peter Casey after he made sharply-critical remarks about the travelling community and social welfare recipients. There is a feeling that the kind of neo-conservative politics epitomised by Donald Trump and Europe’s hawkish right could become part of the Irish mainstream.

In another development, the Fianna Fáil row over the attempted nomination of a local election candidate in Omagh was very interesting. That party has been delicately dipping its toe in the northern water for so long now that it has become embarrassing. Finally taking the plunge could generate some excitement and prove that the parrot which is Irish politics hasn’t died but, as Michael Palin suggested in the Monty Python sketch, is merely “resting”.

Ddebre1@aol.com