Throuple trouble for indifferent Coalition
REFERENDUMS are like catnip to politicians. They can’t resist the intoxicating prospect.
The Coalition, or probably Roderic O’Gorman on his own, may have dreamed of recreating the Rainbow warrior delights of the balmy 2015 Gay Civil Marriage Mayday result.
But it’s March, there’s a chill everywhere, and Leo is ruefully reflecting that ‘defeat is an orphan’.
It is worth remembering the unknown referendum began with a comical flap over ‘throuples’ – that is three people who are engaged or married to one another, or involved as romantic partners
Ironically, as the wheels began to come off the referendum plans, the political throuple of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens was in trouble.
In fairness, even prior to the referendum, many, especially in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, believe the Coalition throuple to be an unnatural relationship.
That has only been intensified by what Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael called ‘Roderic’s referendum’
By the close of the campaign, this throuple had been so inept it managed to unite both Alan Shatter and Rónán Mullen on the No side. In Dublin Castle, the scene, except for 20 celebrating Aontú enthusiasts, was desolate.
Instead of ministers and crowds, spectators of Roderic’s rout were a few puzzled tourists and disconsolate seagulls.
Fianna Fáil slinked off to the shadows and embraced invisibility in the manner the party only manages in difficult times.
Leo and Roderic faced the media ducking stool before flitting swiftly away.
The desultory ending was a mirror of the campaign.
No matter how hard the Government tried (which wasn’t very hard), rarely has a referendum been so neglected.
The public was not hostile to the political changeling, but indifferent.
Historically, though, an indifferent electorate is more lethal than a hostile one because while the latter can be debated with, the indifferent do not move from their icy palaces.
The referendums on Family and Care will provide future politics students with a lesson in the danger of analysis-free virtue signalling.
Having taken too long to conceive over the first four years it was – in the dying months of a Coalition scratching around for legacies – gestated, and delivered too swiftly.
As a body of work, it left too much to chance.
It was unhelpful that Michael McDowell leapt into the fray to take on a lazy Government strategy predicated on pigeonholing opposition to referendums to the Catholic right.
McDowell, who has now collected the heads of three misguided referendums, is not one for pigeon-holing
Fianna Fáil slumped from indifference to disastrous interventions by Thomas Byrne and Micheál Martin.
It is famously said of university spats that the ferocity of exchanges was accentuated by the Lilliputian nature of the prizes. But these exchanges weren’t even ferocious.
However, the afters, especially within a Fine Gael becoming ever more nervous of Leo’s limping electoral track-record, may be far more so.