An election that no one wants but the country truly needs

GARRET FitzGerald was once supposed to have said that a particular policy sounded fine in practice but how would it work in theory. That thought comes to mind when we try to decipher how and why the country is on the verge of a general election that nobody seems to want – but seems destined to happen as the country is faced with the increasingly important issue of Brexit.

That election will happen, however, and very quickly unless either the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar or the man who desperately wants his job, Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin, steps back from the precipice of electoral uncertainty.

It’s very difficult to see how Martin can walk away, given that his has been the proactive move in calling for the head of Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald, and then going through with it by seeking a motion of no confidence in her.

But by not acceding to Martin’s demands, at least in the immediate term, Varadkar has made life very uneasy for Martin, who faces into a career-defining election.

If he loses, he’s gone. While Varadkar doesn’t want to go down in history as the country’s shortest-serving Taoiseach, he could well come back from an election defeat. Martin can’t.

The looming election is the entirely predictable consequence of the confidence and supply agreement that, while it sounds great in theory, is proving extremely difficult in practice.

It’s the Garret FitzGerald antithesis and it’s over now. Even if Frances Fitzgerald falls on her sword and the Government limps on into next year it can only be a matter of time before a vengeful Fine Gael pulls the plug.

After the unprecedented results of last year’s general election two schools of thought dominated the post-electoral landscape.

One suggested that stable government could only be provided by the coming together, in a grand coalition, of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

Both parties would have to cross their own Rubicons, put Civil War politics to bed once and for all, and govern in the interest of the country.

There were two big drawbacks to this. One, it had never happened before and both parties insisted, prior to the election, that they would not coalesce with each other.

Two, both parties had the very real, visceral fear that by coalescing they would be leaving vast swathes of opposition votes available for Sinn Féin to swallow whole.

This was made more likely by the fact that Gerry Adams and his gallant band of accountability seekers had conveniently stepped off the government-formation pitch.

The second post-election scenario, beloved, in particular, of those who worried about governmental dominance, was that, finally, parliament would assert itself in Irish politics and article 28:4:1 of our Constitution would become a living political reality. That article simply says: ‘The Government shall be responsible to Dáil Éireann.’

Ever since Bunreacht na hÉireann was passed in 1937 it has been routinely ignored by all governments, whether led by Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael.

After the mammoth 70-day talks eventually produced the minority Fine Gael-led Government, backed by various independents, the advocates of parliamentary supremacy sat back and waited for the confidence and supply agreement, otherwise known as ‘new politics’, to work.

The brutal truth, however, is that since the government took office in May last year the arrangement which keeps it in office has become increasingly taut, and the political environment ever more fraught. New politics is basically a charade. The problem is twofold. Fianna Fáil has never really liked the idea but signed up to it, both in the national interest and in the realisation that it allowed them continue their successful rebuilding programme after surprise gains last year.

In reality, however, Fianna Fáil desperately wants to be in power and it must pain them something awful to, in their view, see the well-meaning but ineffectual amateurs of Fine Gael hold the great offices of state. It’s just not in Fianna Fáil’s DNA to be propping up Fine Gael. For its part, Fine Gael doesn’t really like the confidence and supply agreement either and has for the most part tried to govern without paying it too much attention, in the hope that it suits Fianna Fáil to put up with it.

But Fianna Fáil has clearly had enough. The appointment of former attorney general Máire Whelan to the Court of Criminal Appeal in June was bad enough for Micheál Martin and Jim O’Callaghan to suffer, but the party has become increasingly antsy about what it sees as being taken for granted by Fine Gael. This is even more the case for its grassroots.

Fianna Fáil has to have something to show for its patience in putting up with the confidence and supply agreement and that something is the head of Frances Fitzgerald.

No one should be surprised at the cheering in the Dáil bar from the Soldiers of Destiny when O’Callaghan declared on Thursday’s Six One News that Fianna Fáil no longer had confidence in the Tánaiste.

This is a high-stakes gambit by Fianna Fáil and particularly Micheál Martin, who knows that the election is his last chance to be Taoiseach. If Fianna Fáil is not the largest party after the election and he doesn’t get to lead a coalition or minority government then Micheál Martin is done. It is as simple as that.

Fine Gael must still be wondering how it ended up in this situation in the first place.

As Leo Varadkar ponders whether to go all-in on a pre-Christmas general election campaign the thing foremost on his mind should be how campaigns go wrong, as his predecessor Enda Kenny can testify to.

The lessons of last year will loom large for Varadkar and his advisers, in advance of the coming no-confidence motion in Frances Fitzgerald.

The old certainties of Irish politics vanished with the economic crash. Fianna Fáil, the great behemoth was on life-support during the 2011 general election campaign. It just about survived. That it did and came within five seats of Fine Gael last year is testament to not only its political resilience, but to the fact that there is a very large centre in Irish politics, which has long resisted the snake oil charms of the radicals on both left and right. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are both the architects and beneficiaries of that centre ground.

The other lesson of last year’s election is that campaigns matter. In November 2015, when Enda Kenny’s instinct told him to go to the country, Fine Gael was ten points ahead of Fianna Fáil. Kenny was talked out of calling an election then by Labour’s Joan Burton.

By the time the votes were counted in late February last year, the gap was just over one percentage point and the result has been the chaos of the confidence and supply agreement and the failure of new politics.

From housing and homelessness, to water charges, to the gardaí, Fine Gael in government has been limping on in office but not in power.

Fianna Fáil has some power but no office.

A general election will give the country a chance to reexamine what it wants from its politicians and that might be no bad thing.