How many of you now think this is the man to run the country?

After a week of apologies to angry passengers...

TWO weeks ago, Ireland’s right-wing think-tank, the Hibernia Forum, published its solution to the continuous and ever-lasting Irish economic and political crisis. It can be summed up in a single name: Michael O’Leary.

Entitled How Michael O’Leary Could Transform Irish Politics, the kernel of the argument was that Hibernia’s great hero had the ‘brains, balls and ability’ to make Ireland a land of milk and honey and leave a lasting legacy to a grateful nation.

Given that Ireland has a fractured electorate and O’Leary has both personality and vision, nothing, it seems, can stop Ryanair’s chief executive’s gallop to power. And if any of us were in any doubt that this can be achieved, all we have to do is look to France, where Emmanuel Macron has done it. All that is stopping Ireland’s ‘can-do man’ from reforming our benighted country’s economy and society is a little bit of reluctance on his own behalf that can surely be overcome given the inevitable glory that awaits him.

After all, we are told O’Leary oozes charm, is right even when he’s wrong and would annihilate average politicians in debate with his wit and snarl. Moreover, huge numbers of disaffected Blueshirts and Soldiers of Destiny will defect to his new party, which will then win most of the seats in the next election on the back of the floating Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil voters of middle Ireland.

ALL of this nonsense was almost inevitably penned by a business consultant. This is the ‘strong man’ view of political leadership. Every now and again, O’Leary pops up on The Late Late Show, gives out about public services and public servants, insists the latter should all be at their desks by 8am and should not be unionised. This is usually greeted with wild applause by the crowd enjoying their Friday night out but clearly not thinking too seriously about how the country should be run.

The problem for the ‘only O’Leary can save the country from going to hell in a handcart’ brigade is that founding a new party to run for office is a task of Sisyphean proportions.

This is particularly the case for amateur politicians.

Take the example of Democracy Now in 2011. ‘Democracy Who?’ you might well ask. Well in early 2011, as the Fianna Fáil-Green coalition was collapsing around itself in farcical circumstances, there was a brief flurry of excitement that Irish politics was about to be changed forever by the emergence of a radical and exciting new political offering.

In Troika Ireland, with the country badly bruised after the bailout, a group calling itself Democracy Now seemed all set to transform Irish politics. Or at least that was the narrative that it originally gave itself.

2011 was the ‘Ireland has failed’ election. The State basically could not run itself and had to be bailed out by a troika of international organisations. This was too much for various media observers commenting on the state of the nation.

Including several high-profile commentators, such as Eamon Dunphy, David McWilliams and Fintan O’Toole, Democracy Now publicly floated the idea of running as a specific party in the looming general election.

Then reality intervened. Ultimately, claiming lack of time and that the electoral playing field was skewed in favour of the established political elites, the brave new warriors of Democracy Now left the pitch and returned to the safety of their newspaper columns and broadcast appearances.

It is hard to blame them. Running for elected office is hard work, whether as a member of an established political party or as an independent. Trying to establish a whole new party or political movement is even more problematic.

This can be mainly attributed to the difficulties in attracting both candidates and canvassers and in financing and running campaigns. From Clann na Poblachta in the 1940s and 1950s to the Progressive Democrats in more recent times, the Irish voter, while occasionally happy to flirt with minor parties and independents, has pretty much always ultimately rejected the newcomer, forcing them to either disband or join with one of the larger parties.

The 2011 general election reinforced this view. With Fianna Fáil’s implosion, the only alternative was a Fine Gael majority government or a Fine Gael-Labour coalition. Only 24 years earlier, these parties had been ceremoniously dumped out of office by a vengeful electorate fed up with the recession of the 1980s.

IN 2011, these parties were being seen as political saviours. And despite all the bluster and rhetoric of a political revolution driven by a new party, nothing happened except the electorate replaced one tried-and-trusted formula with another. Last year’s election saw this trend copperfastened. Renua, with their own brand of rightwing zealotry, and the Social Democrats, offering a more left-wing hue, were both rejected. Renua were wiped out, while the Social Democrats were left hanging on life-support. The prospects for both look bleak in the extreme.

Solidarity are at 1% in the polls, notwithstanding the water-charges campaign and the oxygen of publicity that the Jobstown trial has given their de facto leader Paul Murphy. They are really going nowhere, and anyway, they don’t want to go to Government Buildings.

Sinn Féin have been playing a very long game, do want power, will go into coalition to get it but they are hardly political neophytes. And unlike Michael O’Leary, Sinn Féin are quintessential politicians.

In the real world of political analysis, rather than the fantasy world of dreaming of the Trumpian Michael O’Leary rescuing Ireland from the cockpit of one of his cramped Ryanair planes, we know that the next government will be led by Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. The Irish electorate is notoriously cautious with its vote. Yes, it’s fragmented and yes, it will vote for independents – but it wants to be led from the centre.

If O’Leary ran as an independent, he would clearly win a seat. But any thoughts of new parties, mass defections from other parties and overall majorities are beyond wishful thinking.

The lesson from America is that Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election because he had the backing of the Republican Party. If he had run as an independent, he wouldn’t have won a single state. Now that he is in office, he is coming to realise how difficult governing actually is. His wall is not going to be built and he is not going to be able to repeal Obamacare.

Michael O’Leary can’t get his rosters in order, tells his staff they must take unpaid leave, hates trade unions and cancels services affecting the lives of thousands of people with barely a second’s hesitation. This might work in the cut-throat market of aviation and be the dream of right-wing think-tanks, but it’s hardly a template for a modern society.

The simple solutions and slogans beloved of O’Leary and Ryanair belong in the air. Real politics needs action on the ground.