Reports of the centre’s death being greatly exaggerated

THE round-up of St Patrick’s Day parades from around the country is one of my television highlights of the year.

It displays us at our best – ingenuity and a sense of fun from people who appreciate life and enjoy entertaining others.

It is also an excellent opportunity for us to prick the pomposity of those who are prone to excessively admiring themselves.

The proliferation of ridiculously coiffed Donald Trumps was the most common running joke in this year’s parades.

My favourite was a re-enactment of Tánaiste Joan Burton’s falling into a knee-deep river on a canoe trip in Thomastown.

And it was a joy to witness the Grand Marshall of the Dublin Parade, disability rights activist Joanne O’Riordan, who lifted all of our hearts.

W.B. Yeats was a mighty poet but not a reliable political philosopher – particularly when a poem written in 1919 is resurrected to explain last month’s general election results.

His ‘centre cannot hold’ line in the Second Coming is usually muttered by a disappointed conservative railing against the rise of the left after sharing a case of Burgundy.

It is also a cliché of convenience used by politicians with literary pretensions – and academics with political ambitions.

And the poem’s apocalyptic message was wedded to leftist crowing after last month’s election results:

‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

‘Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed…’

There has been a rearranging of the seats by the parties in the middle but one study of the election results will reassure anxious moderates.

For this survey, the author depicted Fianna Fáil as centre-right although Micheal Martin now views the party he leads as centre-left.

Anyway, it concludes that the centre-right (defined as Fine Gael, Fine Fáil and like-minded independents) secured around two thirds of the seats, and the left in its various guises took up the remaining third.

In fact, more TDs from the centre and fewer leftist deputies were returned to the Dáil in 2016 compared to the 2011 election.

In 2011, there were 166 seats on offer and 102 were claimed by centrist TDs; 76 to Fine Gael, 20 to Fianna Fáil and six to Independents. The centre-left took the other 64 – Labour 37, Sinn Féin 14 and 13 other leftists.

There were fewer seats, 158, in the 2016 election, and the centrists took 106, that is four more than 2011. And the centre-left secured the remain- ing 52, that is 12 less than in 2011.

An overview shows that the centrist vote fluctuates between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil while the left is more volatile.

In 2012, the left vote was split three ways: Labour had 37 seats, Sinn Féin 14 and other 13. Now there are six leftist groupings: Labour, Sinn Féin, Social Democrats, the Green party, AAA/People Before Profit and Independents.

If you are not too dizzy after de-clenching all that information, I would like to thank my man with the abacus in Leinster House who prepared it. (He is not a Fianna Fáiler yet he eats an ample dinner in the middle of every working day.)

Everyone is watching and waiting: Enda Kenny and Micheál Martin are

canvassing support to be elected Taoiseach from other parties and independents.

Micheál Martin is confident enough to stay out of sight while the private politicking, or horsetrading, proceeds.

Alas, there is no hiding place for Enda Kenny, who gets publicly chastised for his blasphemy in the US while privately admonished at home by disappointed ministers.

A Fine Gael-led minority government, a Fianna Fáil-led minority administration or a grand coalition and a rearranging of the officer class?

No one really knows, but nobody I trust sees a government being formed before May. And remember that May Day is also an international distress call…

Either way, the centre will hold.