Mick Clifford: What will spark this election to life?
Picture: Eback Sam Photos Lou Big The Boal/collins In Mcdonald's sinn General Mary Féin A Election? Could Make
The election campaign was two days old when Bertie Ahern stepped forward like a man about to face a firing squad. The scrum of reporters closed in. Shoppers on Dublin’s Henry Street stopped to see what the commotion was about. It was Tuesday, May 1, 2007. Reporter Scott Miller fired the first shot.
“Taoiseach, Padraic O'Connor says he's not your friend, and yet you say he's a close personal friend who gave you money to help you out in hard times. What have you to say about that?”
Bertie fixed a smile on his face and gazed off in the middle distance. A tense silence descended on the gathering, persisting for over seven seconds, an eternity in this kind of event, leaving open the possibility that Bertie had no answer. Was he going to stay silent till polling day? “Next question,” his press handler said to end the agony.
Two days later, Fianna Fáil launched the party’s manifesto in the Mansion Hall’s Round room. Veteran journalist Vincent Browne got to his feet and ignited what can only be described as an eleven minute fussilade about what was emerging on Ahern’s personal finances.
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Browne told Bertie that his story “just ain’t credible”. As everybody filed out afterwards the consensus was that the Taoiseach, the great campaigner, was in serious trouble.
Roll forward two weeks to the night after the final campaign debate between Ahern and Enda Kenny. The Bert glided around Wilton Shopping Centre in Cork like Jesus in a homecoming gig at the Sea of Galilee. He had, with plenty of help from Brian Cowen, taken the campaign by the scruff of the neck and turned it to his advantage. What started out with all the appearance of an ignoble ending to his career had morphed into his greatest triumph.
At some point early in that campaign the public got fed up of hearing about Ahern’s finances. They wanted to hear about “the issues”. That steadied the ship and saw Ahern do his thing with growing confidence. Fianna Fáil returned to government with an increased share of the vote.
The money woes came back to haunt Ahern within six months but he had marked down for posterity the achievement of winning three general elections. More than anything, he had demonstrated that an election campaign can turn everything, received wisdom, polls, media narratives, upside down.
Today, with a very volatile electorate, campaigns matter even far more than they did in 2007. A survey by the electoral commission in the wake of the local and European elections last June found that half of all voters made up their minds in the last week of the campaign. To that end, the campaign is everything.
So it will go in the coming weeks. We have opinion polls, most of them showing trends. We have a Taoiseach who is en route to win the Duracell Bunny Of The Year accolade, whatever about the election. We have a bruised Sinn Féin, a Green party in trepidation, Labour finally believing that it has been forgiven for perceived sins when last in government. We have a feeling that there will be far more independents. All of that can, and quite possibly will, change. The issues will be crucial but, beyond that, known unknowns will undoubtedly explode and cackle.
Small things and big characters can make all the difference. In January 2020, a few weeks before the last general election, plans were announced to commemorate the RIC as part of the decade of centenaries. The notion stirred up old grievances reaching back a century. A Fianna Fáil councillor in Clare, Cathal Crowe, hit out at the plans. Opposition spread. The Fine Gael minister overseeing the issue, Charlie Flanagan, was cast as a Black and Tan sympathiser. Crowe was elected to the Dáil but it was Sinn Féin that reaped a considerable electoral reward.
Mary Lou McDonald was the big character of that election. She campaigned well and opened up the possibility of voting for Sinn Féin to a whole new audience. Her leadership was further boosted by a brilliantly inclusive election slogan — “Give Workers And Families A Break”. (Who doesn’t have family or isn’t working in some capacity. Give us all a break.)
Voters identified with her. “I’m giving Mary Lou a spin,” was a typical refrain from some voters, indicating they were opting for her brand rather than that of her party.
One of the big questions this time around is whether McDonald can repeat her performance. Such a feat would render her the second best comeback kid of the year, bettered only by Donald Trump in the USA.
One early indication that Sinn Féin is hoping to use history again this time around is the repeated reference to the longevity of the other two big parties in government. “One hundred years of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is enough, it’s time for a change,” is the preferred slogan that has been popping up in recent weeks.
On last Friday’s , party supporter and millionaire actor Colm Meaney, who flew in from his mansion in Spain, told viewers that Sinn Féin held the secret to ending the housing crisis in this country. He was on message to reference the “one hundred years” of the other two parties as well.
The Shinners might want to give this one a second take. An obvious reposte would be that while the civil war parties spent much of the latter half of the last century attempting to build houses and infrastructure, the Shinners’ affiliates in the Provisional IRA were blowing them up north of the border in an effort to subvert democracy on the whole island.
A direct link can also be traced from the party’s history after it was formed in 1970 as a Marxist entity all the way to the kind of problems that have arisen in recent weeks concerning how it deals with the nefarious conduct of members in one form or another. Maybe they might be better served to park the past for the moment and concentrate on the issues.
On the other hand, who knows what will chime with or repel voters during a campaign? Who knows what will be the tenor of receptions on the doorstep, the look on the faces within as doors swing open and chances of a scratch on the ballot paper are quickly evaluated? It’s all to play for in this wondrous exercise affirming democracy every few years, a privilege that we should remember is denied huge swathes of the planet’s population.