Election 2024: Mick Clifford — Only real loser from leaders' debate was the undecided voter
Harris Mary Mcdonald Maxwell’s And Simon Lou Picture: Tuesday's Martin, At Micheál Debate
So it turned out that the leaders' debate didn’t live up to its billing. Nothing unusual there.
The occasions when such an event exceeds expectations tend to come unexpectedly. This time the anticipation was built up for two separate reasons.
Fine Gael’s slump in weekend polls, allied toSimon Harris's nightmare in Kanturk, meant that he would be under pressure, adding spice to the contest. The second reason is simply that the whole campaign has been flat and hope was invested in the debate to lift things beyond the mundane.
Instead of fireworks we got a few sparks, a fizzle here and there and by the end of it all not an awful lot of light. The quip of the evening came from Mary Lou McDonald when the subject of the financial crash and bail-out was raised by Harris.
“You brought the crash,” she said to Micheál Martin. Then she turned to Harris. “And you brought austerity.” Martin came back. “I was in government for the crash.” “I know,” McDonald replied.
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“I’ve learned from it, I’ve learned from the experience,” he said.
If her objective was to conjure up choice clips for social media portraying her as socking it to the two lads, then she succeeded. She was good on the attack but weak when questioned on the detail of her own policies and plans. That of itself raised the nagging question of credibility.
Harris did enough to recover from his recent travails. He did not, however, come out with all guns blazing in an attempt for the kind of big win he would have needed to get back serious momentum. Expecting him to come in as a new leader, ship the loss of over half his incumbent TDs, and return the party to power for a fourth term was always a big ask. Should he do so, irrespective of his most recent fumbles, it will be a major achievement.
Micheál Martin was in the debate as he has been throughout the campaign, measured, low key and giving off the aura of the old dog for the hard road who is warning that the road ahead may turn out to be very hard and you know who want in charge for that.
Overall, it is unlikely that many voters heads were turned by what was effectively a score draw. The only real loser from the 90-minute gabfest was the undecided voter who tuned in looking for a decisive reason to vote for the next taoiseach.
Some who were wavering on whether to make the effort to vote for one or other of the three parties may have been sufficiently impressed to resolve to do so. The debate may had had the opposite effect on others who are similarly ambivalent at this stage.
Very little emerged that was new. The most insightful segment was at the end when discussion turned to potential coalitions options. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael both ruled out Sinn Féin, but it was Martin’s positioning that was most notable. “We’re not getting into government with Sinn Féin after this election,” he said, repeatedly citing incompatibility on policy grounds.
McDonald trotted out her hackneyed “Tweedledee and Tweedledum” line, which Harris pointed out was five years old. (Actually Mary Lou first used that line during the 2016 election). But the certainty of Martin’s positioning on the matter does give rise to a new issue at this stage of the campaign.
In reality, there is no ocean between the respective platforms of Martin and McDonald’s parties. Sinn Féin is not People Before Profit, which does operate in a different political ecosystem. There are many within Fianna Fail who could see themselves coalescing with the Shinners. Far closer to the truth is probably that Martin’s principal objection is based not on policy but on cultural and historic reasons, all related to trust and credibility.
He is of the generation and politics that saw what Sinn Féin was during the Troubles and looked on skeptically as the party claimed to repurpose itself into a full democratic party. He has made no secret that he doesn’t believe that the party is transparent or that it fully accords with the democratic norms of all other parties. His position on these matters is not unreasonable and neither is it based on conspiracy theories nor simply a lingering historic resentment.
Right now, however, it would be politically unwise to express himself in those terms. He would stand accused of resurrecting the past, of putting his own personal issues ahead of the greater good of his party. And to anybody under forty he would appear out of touch. So he cites policy as the be all and end all of his opposition to any such coalition.
Until a year ago, as Sinn Féin soared in the polls, the sage opinion was that the next government would be led by that party with Fianna Fail as a junior partner. Those projections dissipated as Sinn Féin’s polling plummeted. Prior to the calling of the election, and for the first ten days at least, there was general consensus that the next government would be a coalition of the civil war parties with possibly the necessity of AN Other to prop it up.
Now there has been further carnage in the polls, this time for Fine Gael. As a result there is a possibility – still slim but growing - that Friday will throw up a seat allocation in which the most stable and numerically sound coalition could turn out to be that of the parties led by Martin and McDonald.
If so, Micheál has a big problem. He will come under pressure to reconsider, but can be credibly do so? Far more likely that should the pressure build he may do a Moses on it and depart the scene while his party shuffles off into the promised land of government once more, attaining far better terms than they might have on projections from a year or two ago.
Martin has had a solid campaign, performing much better than he did in 2020 and even 2016. He was solid in 2011 also, but under entirely different circumstances. There is still every chance that he will emerge from this election as Taoiseach elect with his outgoing FG partner and probably a smaller entity. But if McDonald’s mantra of change continues to build momentum over the next forty eight hours, the tables will be completely overturned. In such an event, it might be a case of the Corkman wistfully declaring, “Sure there’s always a shot at the Aras”.