Martin thrives – but only as the rest of FF continue to sink
THE consistent, overall accuracy of political opinion polls here, for the past two decades at least, establishes beyond reasonable doubt that Fianna Fáil’s goose is well and truly cooked. In the 2007 general election, Bertie Ahern attracted quite astonishing support, with 41.6% of the first-preference vote. From then on the party has been headed for the intensive care department, their feverish decline hastened by the financial collapse which came wrapped with their fingerprints all over it.
Facing into Christmas 2010, the party had slumped to 17% in the opinion polls and this was reflected, almost perfectly, in the general election vote (17.4%) they received the following February.
This week, the Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll puts Fianna Fáil at 14%, a pale shadow of a once unbeatable national movement. Fianna Fáil is now ready for a ventilator in the hope that time, combined with whatever will they may still have to survive, may prevent Labourstyle ruination.
That’s the first of three key takeaways from the latest poll.
THE second is that Sinn Féin’s ambitions to become the lead partner in government are likely to remain frustrated beyond the next general election. They’re now on 28%, well behind the combined support of 44% for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael (30%), which, interestingly, is the same as they achieved in last year’s election.
So, in effect, Fianna Fáil’s losses since the election have transferred almost entirely to Fine Gael. What reason could there be, therefore, for a Sinn Féin-led coalition after the next election if the main parties now in government achieved the same combined vote as they did last year?
Mary Lou is likely to be left cooling her soup for another term, at least.
The most difficult, but potentially the most rewarding, message to emerge from a Fianna Fáil perspective is that Taoiseach Micheál Martin is not to blame for the party’s critical state of ill-health.
Family needs to be called in and given the bad news – people like Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, Young Dev Éamon Ó Cuív, Barry Cowen, Big Jim O’Callaghan and a few other uncomfortables, whingers and snipers.
Martin is entitled to take some satisfaction from 39% of people thinking he’s doing a good job on the pandemic (with the exception of Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, who has?), and from his personal approval rating of 42%, up three points from the last poll. All that while his party as a whole lies prone on 14%.
It hardly needs explaining that as far as the public is concerned, Fianna Fáil – apart from Martin – is toxic, with the smell of death in the air. The party can no longer rely on an image that comes with assumed authority and the presumption of government. Instead, it’s characterised by anti-team cranks and carping fault-finders who seem content to have the entire temple fall down around their ears.
Fianna Fáil has now emptied its stores of political attractiveness by manifest displays of incompetence, most notably in recent times from Health Minister Stephen Donnelly. He proves the aphorism that the best way to finish off a bad product is by advertising it well. The pandemic has put Donnelly out front and centre and the public, even in lockdown, aren’t buying it.
BUNGLING dysfuntionality this week required Mr Donnelly to clarify remarks he made that suggested negotiations between teacher unions and the Government on reopening schools were continuing when, in fact, they had already concluded. In circumstances where mental health is on a knife edge, when many are enduring sleepless nights over livelihoods that have evaporated, where effective house arrest is to go on for weeks to come, the public is all out of patience.
Fine Gael are the big beneficiaries of their coalition partner’s incompetence and disorder. Which is why this week’s attacks on Fianna Fáil by former Blueshirt ministers John Paul Phelan, Regina Doherty and Michael Ring, run counter to their own interests – stupid is another way of describing it.