Budget will be the biggest test for this New Politics

IF the Starship Enterprise had made an unscheduled stop at the Dáil on a time-travelling tour to 2016 last Thursday, the script would have been predictable. Captain Kirk: ‘What about the New Politics?’ Mr Spock: ‘It’s politics, Jim, but not as we know it.’

No government and no opposition, as we traditionally knew them, has been evident in Leinster House since the 32nd Dáil first sat on May 6. Instead of keenly contested policies informed by adversarial debate, we have a sort of cushy consensus where nothing is agreed until more or less everyone agrees with it.

Yet there is still a Government led by a Taoiseach and, in his absence a Tánaiste, plus another 13 Cabinet ministers.

There is also a super junior minister who is sitting at the Cabinet table, but is forbidden to speak unless spoken to, and a raft of junior ministers. The administration is nominally led by Fine Gael, but in name only, bolstered by Independents of various hues.

Since the new Government first took over, it has struggled to pass legislation.

Any proposed new laws must first be given the thumbs-up by the Independents propping up the Government, and then get the approval of the 43 Fianna Fáil TDs.

THAT is the New Politics and it seems to be based on The Late Late Show’s old policy of something for everybody in the audience, but it is more a recipe for administrative paralysis that will inevitably induce a political crisis.

A cheap joke can be made linking the nine-and-a-half week summer break for TDs, which began on Thursday, to the erotic film of a similar name. Yet those jostling for the Fine Gael leadership are showboating, and the impressive housing plan brought in by Simon Coveney, pictured, was trumped by Leo Varadkar’s double-whammy in social welfare.

First Mr Varadkar played to the traditional Fine Gael gallery with talk of cutting off handouts to the workshy, a reassuring gesture with no awkward details spelled out.

But then he balanced the ticket with a proposal to woo the new left-leaning Fianna Fáil: that social welfare payments should be indexlinked to the cost of living.

By Friday, Mr Varadkar admitted he had not discussed the proposal with his colleagues in Cabinet and gave a New Politics explanation: it was only oul’ summer school talk.

In other words, like most of what is said in Government or the Dáil, it is safe to ignore it.

We have the prospect of our first Budget by a cross-party committee to look forward to in October. And this one will be the ultimate test of New Politics.