REALPOLITIK SUGGESTS THAT FRANCES WILL OFFER TO QUIT

WE’RE exactly where we were 36 hours ago – the country stands on the very brink of a Christmas general election, unless Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald steps down.

Fianna Fáil tabled its motion of no confidence in her yesterday, and the Taoiseach cancelled an African trip scheduled for next week as a sign that he too is ready for the fray.

Leo and Micheál have marched towards each other and are fully squared up, eyeball to eyeball. Meanwhile the panicking you can hear in the background is coming from Shane Ross.

And Frances Fitzgerald ponders what to do – in private. She has been ordered away from the airwaves as the First World War tumbling-domino mobilisations unfold.

There is even fired-up Fine Gael talk that if she were to submit her resignation, the Taoiseach would refuse to accept it. This, of course, is sheer arrant nonsense.

To refuse a resignation and go to an election anyway would be an extraordinary experiment in kamikaze aviation. And Leo’s middle names are not Theresa May.

There is also the fact that Leo enjoys being Taoiseach, while the country faces a monumentally important EU Brexit summit in the middle of next month. There is zero reason for him to voluntarily roll the dice.

No matter who is in the right, incidentally, an overriding factor is the Christmas context. It could destroy all logic – no matter what the political polls might say, the Season of Goodwill would seem certain to be turned on its head, with no room for canvassers on the doorstep as heat is allowed out of the house. Turnout levels would be anyone’s guess.

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan called on both Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin to postpone their motions of no confidence until the New Year, and to put the national interest first during critical Brexit negotiations.

His role is that of the cameo do-gooder, dancing about the two belligerents, begging them to put their jackets back on.

But behind all the hysterical shrieking about the need for cool heads, there is a cold political logic about the likely endgame here.

The very individual who gave us Christmas also provided Pontius Pilate with his opportunity to set out a political template that has largely held good for the last 2,000 years.

The Roman pro-consul for Judea, confronted with someone even more innocent than the saintly Frances the Forgetful, offered the famous dictum that it is ‘better that one man should die for the sake of the people’.

THE necessary adjustment makes it politically clear that one woman must fall on her sword for the good of the electorate. And that will be it – the sacrifice will have been made.

Arguments about her being unfairly blamed are themselves unfair to the sensibilities of savvy adults. When has politics has ever been about fairness? It is an arena, a bearpit, a bloodsport – which is the very reason it attracts its legion of gladiators.

Frances’s political future is all behind her. Leo has been looking daggers at her in the Dáil for the past fortnight. The first thing he did when he became Taoiseach was to move her out of Justice.

The logical is absolutely inescapable, unless Leo really is so callow and inexperienced to allow mere anger and vanity to cloud to his political judgment. Frances Fitzgerald will offer her resignation. In the national interest.