Parties should watch out for an angry Moby Dick and a circling SF

SOME years ago, I sighted an elusive Irish electoral species whom I christened Moby Dick in honour of Herman Melville’s whale.

Like Moby Dick, this species lies deep, is hard to harpoon, and sometimes surfaces to kill those who ignore its existence.

Moby Dick should not be confused with its much smaller cousin, Middle Ireland, from whom it differs in many ways.

Moby Dick is a massive and silently suffering behemoth made up of pensionless, or badly pensioned, private sector workers, many with poor sick leave and working conditions.

Middle Ireland, in contrast, is made up of two groups: the struggling but coping class of the private sector and the comfortable public sector class.

Last month, Davy’s stockbroker revealed that the latter public sector class earned 40pc more than private sector workers.

And that shocking figure does not even take into account the public sector pensions which no private sector worker could fund.

This is as big an issue as Garda reform or water charges but is not being reported or discussed, certainly not by public sector RTE.

The four major parties, themselves part of the public sector class, ran from the report like scalded cats.

But I believe that Moby Dick, the mass of workers in the private sector, is subconsciously aware of this appalling social injustice.

Moby Dick instinctively links this injustice to Insider Ireland. That is why it sometimes surfaces to lash out incoherently and irrationally in populist rages on issues like water.

Sinn Fein is the only party which both escapes and exploits these electoral rages by Moby Dick.

One of the ways Sinn Fein does this is by making shrewd populist gestures, like giving up the €2,700 wage increases.

Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and Labour can flail around all they like, arguing they are entitled to the money.

The fact remains that Sinn Fein’s modest sacrifice of €50 a week per TD will get them thousands of marginal Moby Dick votes at the next general election. No pain, no gain.

Last week was a minor watershed in Irish politics for two reasons. First, it showed how Sinn Fein manipulates populism.

Second, it revealed the rival leadership merits of Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney.

By and large, it was a bad week for Coveney and a good week for Leo Varadkar — and Coveney has only himself to blame.

Coveney’s bad run began with a fundamental mistake by a potential Fine Gael leader — attending the Martin McGuinness funeral.

To rub salt into the wound, Varadkar followed up with a speech on Northern Ireland that gave no status to Sinn Fein.

Middle Ireland is not interested in Northern Ireland — but it’s very interested where politicians stand on Sinn Fein.

Sending out ambiguous signals, as Coveney did, is seen as a code to the character of the candidate.

But even if you dismiss this belief as an eccentricity of mine, Coveney still had a bad week as Housing Minister.

True, he turned in an assured performance on Claire Byrne’s TV show. But he did not dispel the belief that his first-time buyers’ grant is only blowing hot air into the property bubble.

Philip Lane, governor of the Central Bank, frankly confirmed as much, speaking to the Oireachtas Finance Committee.

“If you’re offering €20k rebate, is that the best use of that funding? But that’s for the Oireachtas to decide.”

In a refreshingly open contribution, Mr Lane continued: “Prices are going up to an extent that only people on high incomes can afford house prices.”

In contrast, Varadkar had a good week, doing what he does best, laying things baldly on the line.

He began by becoming one of the first politicians to show any concern for the private sector, telling Pat Kenny Tonight that his particular concern was pensions.

He said: “If you look at the private sector, they really are second-class citizens when it comes to pension provision.”

Leo laid it on the line again in Dail Eireann last Thursday, when standing in for Enda Kenny. Cooly invoking the sacred name of Sean Lemass, he lashed into Fianna Fail about its alleged populist policies.

As a bonus, his bravura performance should teach both parties two lessons.

First, Fianna Fail may as well face the fact that apart from Micheal Martin — who was absent — they have nobody else who could handle Varadkar if he were leader of Fine Gael.

Naturally, there are fine politicians in Fianna Fail who might fancy their chances. In a ruck, however, especially on television, I believe Varadkar is a Peter O’Mahony who will mostly turn over the ball.

But in charging Fianna Fail with being spooked by Sinn Fein on water charges, Varadkar’s victory was only verbal.

Because if Martin called his bluff — and a general election — Varadkar would have to go populist himself or go down.

True, he might get support from Middle Ireland on retaining water charges, but Moby Dick would surface and smash the frail FG craft into smithereens.

See, it’s easy for fatly-pensioned belly-rubbers in academe to wag the finger about Fianna Fail populism.

But Martin is quite right to make sure that the socialist Sinn Fein shark does not sneakily direct the rage of the populist Moby Dick down dark paths.

To my mind, there is nothing — not Garda corruption nor water charges — more important than stopping Sinn Fein from manipulating populist anger to promote its agenda.

This brings me to a deep delusion in Fianna Fail that could prove fatal in the near future — that in a coalition it could handle Sinn Fein.

It’s a delusion because Fianna Fail no longer has the quasi-military discipline it lost when De Valera stepped down.

Accordingly, in any coalition, Sinn Fein would teach Fianna Fail lethal lessons in senior hurling by continually pulling populist strokes like the one on pay.

There are those who take me to task for saying Sinn Fein is a serious threat as they feel it gives that party special status.

This is merely shoot the messenger stuff. It does not pay to despise or underestimate your foe.

Right now, in its struggle with Sinn Fein for the soul of Moby Dick, Fianna Fail has only one weapon worth a damn: Micheal Martin. Martin is the only one who seems to understand that Sinn Fein poses both a moral and a political threat, and cannot be defeated by confining criticism to making weak, mealymouthed digs about alleged “policy differences”.

Martin understands that Sinn Fein’s underbelly is the legacy of IRA crimes that lingers like a moral sarin gas — crimes that could surface at any time to choke a partner in coalition.

Martin is always ready to remind Middle Ireland and Moby Dick that every member of Sinn Fein sits under the same shadow.

Many joined Sinn Fein after Jean McConville’s body was discovered in 2003, after the murders of Robert McCartney, 2005, and Paul Quinn, 2007, after Mairia Cahill’s and Paudie McGahon’s revelations of rape and secret IRA courts in 2014 and 2015.

So far, no Sinn Fein TD has stood up in the Dail to unequivocally denounce that dirty past.

‘Sinn Fein has so far both escaped and exploited the populist electoral rage of Moby Dick’