Leo and gang lost contact with reality. What’s Micheál’s excuse?

NOW they all look like dopes, Micheál Martin included. We’ve all known for years that the trendy, woke mafia who are currently in charge of the place have in recent times skipped out of sync with the majority of ordinary people who manage to get up early in the morning and re-engage in the relentless battle to keep it all together.

And fair play to the right-on trendies who didn’t put a foot wrong during the same-sex marriage referendum of 2015 with a simple proposition whose time had come. Signs on, the wording of the amendment to allow marriage between two people without distinction as to their sex went through on the nod with almost a two-thirds majority.

It was the same story in 2018 with the abortion referendum. After years of bitter skirmishing interrupted by full-blown hand-tohand combat, people had grown weary of that interminable dispute. The zeitgeist facilitated a stunning victory for the pro-choice side, with another two-thirds majority voting Yes.

AGAIN, however, the distinguishing feature of that referendum was the clarity of the wording. The amendment simply sought permission to allow the Oireachtas legislate for the termination of pregnancy. Whichever side you were on, there was no doubt about what the amendment wording actually meant.

In the intervening period, most people – and rightly – considered that the main social issues that had caused such division and turmoil over the decades had been put to bed. It was time to move on, until it became clear that momentum was building again for another dismantling of traditional, conservative oddities in the Constitution. The targets now were recognition of the family as founded on marriage and the clause on ‘women in the home’.

The fact that these provisions had little or no impact on lived experiences – due to legislation such as the Cohabitants Act 2010 and the reality of women being forced out of the home for economic reasons for decades, the direct opposite of the supposed intention – indicated that the trendy elites, bent on social engineering, were back for second helpings. Thing is, most people hate gluttons, especially when they start licking the plate.

Last week’s referendum results show how much ordinary people mistrust current political elites such as Leo Varadkar, Eamon

Ryan and Roderic O’Gorman, who seem more interested in boxticking ideological goals rather than delivering on real bread-andbutter issues such as health, housing and living standards.

The referendum results amount to one of the greatest political bollickings ever handed to an Irish government. As they witnessed Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s utter humiliation after last week’s emphatic thumbs-down, traditional Fine Gael supporters around the country must have wondered what has become of the party they once swore by. Where has that party gone? And for what?

WB Yeats reckoned that too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. Last week’s rebuke by the electorate shows how too long in power, too long being chauffeured around in State cars and too long living the high life on massive State salaries turn political brains to mush, and political ears to ones that only hear internal thoughts informed by hubris and a great welcome for themselves.

Leo and the gang have lost contact with reality, a trend that has been getting worse for years. But Micheál Martin? Really? From down the country? What’s his excuse?

We saw for ourselves how his heart wasn’t really in it during that referendum debate on Prime Time with stay-at-home mother and barrister Maria Steen a few days before voting. Martin was particularly unconvincing on the meaning of a ‘durable relationship’, simply because none could be provided – and he knew it.

FIANNA Fáil emerges from this punishment beating, which the party itself helped to arrange, even more damaged than either Fine Gael or the Greens, because Mr Martin was supposed to be that reliable adult in the room. And the party’s credibility has been further undermined by the political duplicity of the likes of Lisa Chambers, who canvassed in support of the referendums on just one occasion and then voted No and No herself. Ah here.

Chambers is one of Fianna Fáil’s candidates in the Midlands-NorthWest constituency in May’s European Election. She’ll now be well able to recognise those voters who tell her she can count on their support and then promptly vote for somebody else entirely.

At least Willie O’Dea, who also voted No/No, had the good manners not to canvass support for the proposed amendments.

Meanwhile, this week hundreds of very ill people were left on trolleys and chairs in hospital corridors and waiting rooms all over the country. Another 13,500 people, including over 4,000 children, are in emergency accommodation, and tens of thousands of young people in well-paid jobs are facing years without the prospect of ever being able to own their own gaff.