What verdict will the voters pronounce on the tri -party alliance?

DUBLIN Bay South is no ordinary constituency, and this is no ordinary by-election.

Not since the Second World War and the ‘Emergency’ – no, not even austerity – has our society faced a greater existential challenge. Dublin Bay South will provide the electorate with the first opportunity outside of opinion polls to cast a verdict on the Government.

As the Dublin Bay South jury prepares to cast a verdict, what are the key issues and challenges for the political parties?

Leo and the ghost of Kate

IT is a measure of the fickle nature of politics that Dublin Bay South could represent the beginning of the end for Leo. Leo was a great Covid-19 wartime premier, but his electoral record is frail at best. The leader is especially haunted by Kate O’Connell (the candidate who would have won, pictured) and her query of ‘what has Leo’s leadership done for Fine Gael’, as distinct to Leo.

If Dublin Bay South falls to Sinn Féin, Leo will, like Bertie in 2007, for the first time find himself at the mercy of events, as distinct to being their master, which he has been able to feign until now.

Ivana’s choice - but will it save Alan Kelly?

FEW politicians who share the same party are more different than Ivana Bacik and Alan Kelly. Ivana, the former Student Queen and founding sister of Repeal and Yes Together is the epitome of Portobello-style rightthinking bohemian chic. She is the creation of Trinity, the law library, and the dusty splendour of the eternally sleeping Seanad chamber.

Her leader, by contrast, was chosen on a similar principle that governed the selection of the old-fashioned Tipperary full forward.

AK-47 may lack a bit of finesse, but the theory was that if he raised enough dust in the political square, some semblance of life might return to the sleepy Labour dinosaur.

In fairness, the Labour leader has been flailing away with great enthusiasm, but all of the shouting and the dust has yet to raise a single green flag.

Amidst the chaos theory of Dublin Bay South there is one certainty. As Labour flatlines in the national polls, no leader – not even Leo, and definitely not Mary Lou – needs a victory more than Alan Kelly.

Fear and loathing in Fianna Fáil

FIANNA FÁIL, whose campaign is being led by Jim O’Callaghan, left, is in a full-blown state of fear and loathing. The fear was summarised by the concern of one grandee that Dublin Bay South may ‘become our Meath East’. This refers to the spectral 2013 by-election that still inspires a shiver in Labour where, in a clear prediction of its fate in 2016, the party crashed from topping the poll in 2011 to ending up with 4.3% in 2013. Fianna Fáil squawks about not being Fine Gael’s ‘voting pact mudguard’ are informed by similar fears that, according to one source: ‘We are about to find out what is Fianna Fáil’s core vote in real time. It may not be pretty.’

A soft Sinn Féin surge?

DUBLIN Bay South is the first ‘live’ test of the opposition too. Should Sinn Féin’s Lynn Boylan, pictured, even come close to taking the Fine Gael ‘Stalingrad’ then Ireland has returned to twoparty politics... with Sinn Fein replacing Fianna Fáil.

Should they stay in the low teens, people will ask, is the Sinn Féin surge more of a passing political fad like ‘the Gilmore Labour gale’ of 2011 and the 2019 Green ‘tsunami’.

If, however, the electorate wreak a terrible vengeance on James Geoghegan, will the message be that Sinn Féin is preparing to kick the door down to power via our eternal housing crisis?

The Dublin Bay South battle of the apprentice leaders

LIKE the play within a play in Hamlet, a second political game is afoot in the by-election hustings.

The leading men, when it comes to directing the fate of their parties in the Dublin Bay South ‘Mousetrap’, are the openly declared alternative FF leader Jim O’Callaghan and

Simon Harris. ‘It will,’ one FG source notes, ‘be quite the feather in Simon’s cap if he wins a by-election for a Government party and if we lose… well that will be Leo’s fault. Happy days. Well, for Simon, anyway.’

Things are more equivocal within FF. One source noted: ‘This is “Big Jim”’s chance: a lot of people are looking very carefully to see whether Jim is the saviour... If things don’t go well, Jim may find himself answering, rather than asking, questions.’

The Decider Claire Byrne (no, not the RTÉ one):

HAPPY indeed are the days for the Green leadership when they can say ‘Hazel Who’ of Hazel Chu. But Eamon Ryan’s political ‘carer’ Claire Byrne, pictured, previously best known for not being the RTÉ one, appears to be faring sufficiently well to have the big three looking anxiously in their rear-view mirrors. Her performance may indicate that, like ragwort, the Greens are harder to eliminate than one might think.

THE VERDICT: Out for the count

THE difficulty in picking a winner was summarised by one party mandarin: ‘The problem with Dublin Bay is that 70% of the voters are too posh to vote and 30% are too poor to bother so it comes down to a ground war of who turns their voters out.’ Should Fine Gael even maintain its depressed 2020 vote of 27.71% it will be enough. The cunning plan will, though, not be helped by the collapse of reopening. If they don’t, Bacik hopes to annex the vote of those who are not prepared to go all the way with Sinn Féin just yet.

But how many voters saying they will vote for Bacik but opt for SF on the day? We will only find out when we are out for the count who will prevail.