Micheál Martin must take a couple of crucial decisions, political and personal, in the next six months.
Will he hang on and lead Fianna Fáil into the general election, widely expected after another give-away budget next autumn, or will he try to go to Europe after next June’s Euro elections?
He’s 63 now. He led the party in 2011 to the biggest defeat in its history, losing 57 seats and winning only 17% of the vote. Martin brought the party back to government in 2020, though in much reduced circumstances and beholden to Fine Gael and the Greens. Nevertheless, FF is still sitting in the polls at 18-20%, not much up from when he took over.
Would a new face give its ratings a boost? Many of his TDs think so, but Martin is still more popular than his party and no figure has emerged as the likely challenger. Still, there’s a view Martin has been around too long, a minister since 1997 and stuck in the old FF ways. He dithers, he’s boring, his speeches sniff of the past. His constant attacks against Sinn Féin don’t win him any votes. He sounds as if he’s fighting old battles from a generation ago.
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It's certainly changed times. The next Dáil will have 174 seats so a party needs 88 for a majority, a total no party is likely to come near. The question then arises what type of coalition will there be?
Opinion polls have been remarkably consistent, predicting Sinn Féin will be the largest party, so the real question is which, if any party, will SF persuade to be their minor partner in government? It couldn’t be FF if Martin stayed as leader, so in reality his strident obsession with SF has closed down his party’s options. He sounds like Arlene Foster.
Polling repeatedly at around 34% gives SF 60-65 seats. The latest poll has Fine Gael on 18%, meaning about 31, with Fianna Fáil on 20% suggesting 35 seats. Independents are on 19%. You can see the problem straight away. If FF and FG win the same or nearly the same number as SF, which way will the Independents jump? An action replay of the current coalition or a completely new look?
There are some straws in the wind pointing at that completely new look. First, SF are likely to win more seats than a simple percentage calculation suggests. That’s because the party didn’t field enough candidates in 2020 to use up the unexpected landslide they won. Several Green, Social Democrat and Trotskyists were elected on SF coattails. SF won’t make the same mistake again.
Secondly, the new boundaries have a large number of three-seat constituencies which favour large parties and will likely provide a bonus for SF.
Third, the Greens will be massacred for policies they have pushed through the coalition on transportation, energy and environment.
However, there is another factor at play. People are fed up with the present personnel in government. Recent polling shows an extraordinary 89% of voters want change – different kinds of change, but change. That’s not on offer if Martin is leading FF. Ominously for the civil war parties, nearly 40% of voters favour radical change and that means a SF-led government.
Mary Lou McDonald is top pick for Taoiseach. More than 30% of voters back her and, significantly, not just SF voters. SF are also ahead in every demographic, astonishing in that a few years ago their voters were mainly under 30 and from lower socio-economic categories. Now, incredibly, they’re ahead of Fine Gael in Dublin and among ABC1 voters. Both FF and FG are running at about 12% among voters under 25 compared to SF’s 44%.
Next summer will tell the tale. If SF maintain their present level of support in council and Euro elections in June then it will become well nigh impossible, even politically suicidal, for FF to prop up FG in another coalition.
Martin faces an unenviable choice. Prop up Fine Gael again and go into terminal decline, prop up SF and go into terminal decline. He might be better going for European commissioner. It’s impossible to envisage him as Mary Lou McDonald’s second fiddle.
What will it mean for here? Let’s hope our proconsul is right about one prediction he made in his one-sided speech last weekend, that Keir Starmer “will take a sledgehammer to the union”. There’s you thinking Boris Johnson and the proconsul’s ERG did that.
