There is work to be done: it’s time to end the political games

The one-upmanship and tomfoolery have to stop — and politicians must focus on the realities of people’s lives, writes Jody Corcoran

IN the middle of the last Dail, I had occasion to discuss with Leo Varadkar the precipitous decline in Fine Gael public support, which I had written was evident from around June 2018. It was obvious in those conversations that he did not accept the fall was longterm damaging to his party’s chances of re-election. But he was concerned enough to wonder aloud what he should do to boost Fine Gael’s opinion poll figures.

At the time the housing crisis was raging, homelessness was growing exponentially and the health service was going from bad to worse.

What was striking was that in these brief conversations none of Varadkar’s solutions to Fine Gael’s political problems focused on the centrality of these issues, but more on massaging the message.

The message was that the economy was sound and growing and that, at the end of the day, all would be fine. The end of the day, at some point in time, was to coincide with the markets doing it job: houses were being built, homeless numbers were falling, problems in the health service were cyclical and, anyway, it was complicated, but all would be OK, eventually.

What Varadkar had to say was true in terms of the overall picture in theory — but entirely false in the reality of people’s everyday lives and shared experiences. Housing was still unaffordable; people were still becoming homeless as quickly as others were finding hotel room accommodation and a bad bout of flu nationwide, or even the common cold, and trolley count numbers would explode again.

Varadkar keeps an app on his phone, colour coded green and red, which shows him when and which hospitals are over-stretched. Or at least he used to. It was not as if he did not care. It was not as if he was not bothered to find out why. He did care. He did want to know why. Indeed, he implied he knew the intricacies of the problems, and how to fix them, too, if only others would play along.

What seemed to matter most to him, however, was how to present his message to the public, not the underlying problems. The market would fix the underlying problems in housing; and with a little tweaking in hospital consultant rosters, seasonal weather systems would solve problems in hospitals. What mattered most to him was how to ‘‘spin’’ this story, that everything was or would be well.

In the middle of it all was Brexit. What Varadkar discovered around the time of the crisis surrounding his then Justice Minister, Frances Fitzgerald — who resigned her position — was that the public was greatly encouraged by his taking the cudgels to Britain on Brexit.

By any normal turn of events, the controversy around the forced resignation — albeit a tad unfairly as it turned out — of a government minister should lead to a fall in a government’s opinion poll ratings.

But what Varadkar discovered towards the end of 2018 was, in fact, the opposite. Fine Gael soared in the public’s estimation, if not well-grounded approval, such was his level of Brit-bashing and consequent general nationalistic fervour dangerously let loose.

This newspaper frequently criticised the Taoiseach for the tone and manner of such attacks. He was releasing the gremlins. At one point I analysed an opinion poll and predicted that, at the end of the day, there would be no Brexit bounce for Fine Gael.

It was around then that Varadkar ended communications. He believed he knew best. Brexit was the issue.

But to my mind, it was only the issue to him because every time he kicked the Brits Fine Gael soared in the opinion polls. So Brexit and the handling thereof, became central to the Fine Gael election message.

Never has a message fallen so flat. (Well, actually it has: ‘‘Let’s keep the recovery going’’ was also a humdinger.) But Brexit was not an issue in this election, save for the nationalistic fervour let loose by Fine Gael’s rhetoric. The problem, as it turned out, was that that fervour found public favour in Sinn Fein.

Having been given licence by Leo to bash the Brits, people who never before would have contemplated voting Sinn Fein, now felt safe to vote for the greatest Brit-bashers of them all — and not only that, but for the party that was also making the right kind of noises about housing, homelessness and the health service, too, promising to spend €22bn where €11bn scarcely exists.

Fianna Fail must take its share of the responsibility for this fine mess we are in, too. For many, myself included, the assumption was that the underlying, falling like a stone Fine Gael support would revert to Fianna Fail, or enough of it anyway, for it to lead a new government.

Few if any— nobody in fact — had predicted that the land would slide in Sinn Fein’s direction in the election. Certainly there were those who felt that party would do well. I recall predicting it would win around

20pc of the vote, but no more; stating that it did not have enough candidates in the field to capitalise on this swing, and that one of the conversations after the election would be just how many seats Sinn Fein had left behind.

Those most critical of Micheal Martin now within Fianna Fail should have a good look in the mirror. It was left to the leader to do most, if not all of the heavy lifting — not just during the campaign itself but for most of the past three years. In this regard, during the campaign, Martin was, if not found wanting, then not as strong as he was before. Early on, it was becoming clear that the people did not want more Fine Gael. Change was the buzzword. It was just that Micheal Martin did not manage to represent change — the opposite, in fact.

His determination to present Fianna Fail as the responsible party, after the ruinous economic crash of the late Noughties, and the banking collapse which followed, manifested itself in Fianna Fail aligning itself too closely to Fine Gael on the Brexit issue, and therefore on just about everything else.

What was Fianna Fail’s position on housing, on homelessness, on health? Nobody could be sure. The party issued press releases, and occasionally gave out, but repeatedly voted confidence in Eoghan Murphy and Simon Harris — the bete noirs of the voting public.

In retrospect, what transpired in the election was apparent for all to see, had we not allowed our general assumptions to get in the way. Every time Fine Gael went up in the opinion polls, so, too, did Fianna Fail — and every time Fine Gael went down, Fianna Fail followed them there, too.

And yet, I thought to the end that enough of the public would shy away from voting for Sinn Fein to allow a Fianna Fail-led government to be formed. That they did not is as much the fault of Fianna Fail as it is to the credit of Sinn Fein, which turned out to be as perplexed as the rest of us as to why the public would collectively move in such numbers the way it did.

Political theorists and scientists will analyse this election for decades to come and there are any number of answers which contain a measure of validity that when added together will give us the whole story. At one point in the final week I said the real question was not how well Sinn Fein would do, but how badly Fine Gael would perform. Not badly enough was the answer, in a curious sort of way.

For my part, one aspect of the campaign has not yet been fully illuminated, and that is Leo Varadkar’s performance in the final week. It was a masterful performance, particularly in that last debate on RTE. Up to that point, I fully expected Fine Gael to drop below 20pc of the popular vote. That was the trajectory. But Varadkar managed to turn it around, primarily by emphasising the success of the economy. In that debate alone, I now believe, he not only drew a line under Fine Gael’s fall, but restored around two points to its vote.

A significant group of voters, entirely middle class, did not want to risk it, and felt Varadkar deserved another chance, so they went for Fine Gael. I suspected they would eventually go to Fianna Fail. If they had, we would not be in the position we are in now, struggling to form a government and Fianna Fail would be putting together a coalition of all the colours, shades of green, purple and maybe red, and many would be wondering ‘‘what if ’’ Sinn Fein had run more candidates, relieved that it had not.

His convincing performance in the final week now places a responsibility on Leo Varadkar. In a way, he did so well in that final debate and afterwards that he has a duty to get over his great sulk and form a government with Fianna Fail. He needs to take away a valuable lesson, too: it was never about the message, or the “spin”, but about the reality of people’s everyday lives and shared experiences.

Fianna Fail has a duty, too. First of all, to realise that the calamity visited upon the nation on its watch is not something that can be managed away with time, or even with a measure of responsibility as the party showed during the Brexit process. It must be earned the hard way — at a minimum, now, by putting country before party. The responsibility which rests with Leo Varadkar also sits with Fianna Fail. They owe it to the country to put things right. If they are unable, or unwilling, then they can hardly blame people for turning to a party like Sinn Fein.

This is no longer a game of one-upmanship, or one over the other. There is a job of work to be done, on housing, health and making better the reality of people’s lives. If they cannot do it then they should get out of the way. If they can — both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael — then they should, and do it now, not next month or the month after.

And Leo Varadkar, in particular should stop tomfooling around with his instinctive attempt to gain some measure of advantage that nobody else can be bothered to see and cares even less about. It is time for him to grow up, form a government and get the job done. Who knows, he may even learn something about real life along the way.

‘People felt safe to vote for the greatest Brit-bashers of them all’