It is a fairly accurate, if somewhat high-minded, view of popular politics and one barometer by which the Government failed on both proposed amendments to the Constitution.

At Dublin Castle, both Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Children's Minister Roderic O'Gorman accepted that the levers of persuasion pulled and pushed by the Government had failed.

Mr Varadkar said that the Government had failed to do enough to counter misinformation, Mr O'Gorman said that the two amendments had become somewhat skewed by what he felt were misplaced concerns. Tánaiste Micheál Martin said that "the majority were not persuaded by the arguments for changing the Constitution in this way". 

All three men, and many others in Government, said that the losses could not be put down to one single factor. A lack of clarity, to a groundswell of an anti-Government sentiment, to a lack of information, all mattered, they said.

But if a Government announces it will hold two referenda, which it then delays and produces wording that differs from the Citizens' Assembly, and then runs an anaemic campaign that gets comprehensively beaten despite the backing of nearly every political party in the Dáil and a decent swathe of NGOs, then there must be a large, large amount of introspection in Government quarters in the coming weeks.

Lack of public appetite

The Government will — and has — argued that it did what it could, that it tried to counter the narratives it felt didn't reflect the reality, but most people will know that this campaign was lacking in any real enthusiasm. 

Mr Varadkar made the argument that these will be the 12th and 13th losses for governments in referenda and that in his time as Taoiseach, votes on repealing the Eighth Amendment, removing the criminalisation of blasphemous materials, and changes to the separation period required before a divorce is allowed had been won. 

The differences with those campaigns are legion, but one major difference is public appetite.

Repeal was the result of a years-long civic society campaign that saw activists take the lead, not politicians. Blasphemy had been thrust into the spotlight by an investigation into English comedian Stephen Fry's comments on an RTÉ show, and the divorce waiting period was seen as too long at four years.

Those campaigns also had tangible benefits — abortion access, freedom of expression, quicker access to remarrying. They were not based on the constitutional vibes of the day. Mr Varadkar admitted himself that the questions put to the Irish people this week had "nebulous" answers to questions about benefits in the event of a yes/yes vote.

With plenty of blame to go around, Mr Varadkar cited that old adage that success has many fathers, and failure is an orphan — watch as the Opposition moves to pin the blame on the Government, despite not exactly sounding the public apathy alarm itself — but he did not shy away from his own responsibility as head of Government. 

Calling a referendum at a time when parties are gearing up for European and local elections left a plethora of vacant lamppost space which was quickly filled by the no campaign which were more succinct, and more easily understood, than party logos urging double yes. This, largely, was the Government's issue — everybody seemed to agree that there should be a yes vote, but nobody seemed to be able to articulate just why.

And it was in that vacuum that the Government lost this argument. An inability to put forward a benefit of a yes, in the face of an argument that women would be "cancelled", "forced out to work", or deleted from the Constitution, was one which neither side could win. 

In the end, the Government found a public that didn't really want these referenda utterly bereft of a reason to pass them.

Mr Varadkar was asked if he personally is on "a losing streak", having lost five by-elections and the 2020 general election. He dismissed the question by saying he wasn't, "but that's the article you're going to write anyway". 

That is the party-political dimension to the fallout of today's results and it will give Fine Gael much to ponder — particularly given the Taoiseach's appearance on the Six O'Clock Show which became a feature of the no camp in the closing days of the campaign.

But the bigger questions will be why a Government facing into a year of elections staked political capital, time, energy, and money into a referendum which senior members admit had an unsatisfactory wording, a weak campaign, and a stubborn resistance facing it when nobody was demanding it.

Those are the questions which will have to be asked in the Coalition this week.