So many fools from which to choose my SOTYs
( They are my sh**s of the year )
YET again, my annual Sh** Of The Year (SOTY) competition is oversubscribed, so readers will have to make their own selection from my suggestions. And by choosing their own SOTY (they can make multiple choices), readers will avoid grasping lawyers and their wretched clients knocking on my door.
YET besides defamation, selecting a lone individual as the undisputed SOTY would be unfair, even impossible, in a year when so many fools and knaves competed for the title. Two big international game changers – Brexit and the US presidential election – were mirrored by equally damaging domestic events: water charges and an inconclusive election. But only one candidate played a leading role in the water fiasco and the Brexit catastrophe.
Take a bow, Big Phil Hogan, who designed and delivered the crisis in Irish water supplies, is now an EU Commissioner charged with making sense of the Brexit fallout. So he is a contender for overall SOTY 2017 – as he has been every year since 2011.
Enda Kenny lost an election in March and then in April he delivered a blueprint for civil paralysis that he disingenuously named ‘new politics’. He thinks it is a great arrangement, assures us there will be no election in 2017 and he has no intention of stepping down. A convincing candidate for the ‘incorrigible’ division, as well as overall SOTY, after losing an election which he should have won.
Gerry Adams is Liar Of The Year after another season of pants-on-fire whoppers but he will not be eligible for the SOTY Party Leader sub-division in 2017 if Conor Murphy assumes the Sinn Féin leadership. And yes, the Shinners have been eclipsed by noisier lefties – and their radical chic is seeking to be rehomed in a political secondhand shop.
Micheál Martin is preparing to replace Enda Kenny after Fianna Fáil becomes the largest party in government, leading another mixum gatherum in the Dáil with an arrangement with Fine Gael. Maybe it will be an arrangement with a new Fine Gael leader but another inconclusive outcome, with Fianna Fáil having a few seats more, is the most likely outcome. After his expensive French lessons, Big Phil will understand this analysis: plus ça change. And then there are the Independents and their leader, Shane Ross, who has been unfairly lambasted by bad losers in Fine Gael; but be sure the Independent brand is now firmly established.
Expect more Independents representing local concerns and trying to make them national issues, after the next election. They are also most mollycoddled in the Dáil outside of the crèche.
Too many people cite Nigel Farage as a SOTY candidate for winning a historic double in 2016 – Brexit and Trump. But for him to win, other, more senior and respected public figures in Britain and the US had to fail, such as former PM Cameron and US President Obama. Under the rules, it is also possible for a SOTY candidate to be likeable, even admired.