Micheál Martin’s political enemies have been waiting to move. They may have to wait longer

In recent weeks, rumours have been swirling around the political world that an internal cabal in Fianna Fáil was plotting to make a move against Micheál Martin next month based on the assumption that the outcome of the local and European elections will be bad news for the party.

The plotters have been set back on their heels this week by the findings of the latest Irish Times opinion poll which shows that Martin remains easily the most popular party leader in the country and that party support is holding up reasonably well in advance of the elections due on June 7th.

The chatter among Martin’s opponents in recent weeks has been that the change of leadership in Fine Gael, with the emergence of Simon Harris as the youngest Taoiseach in history, has exposed the dangers of persisting with a leader who has now been in position for 13 years.

While it is certainly likely that Fianna Fáil will lose seats in the local elections, and could struggle to hold on to its two representatives in the European Parliament, the poll indicates that the Coalition is in a strong position to retain power after the next general election

However, the poll demonstrates that the public continues to have confidence in Martin and he is well in advance of Harris in terms of leader satisfaction rating. The combination of Martin’s experience and Harris’s fresh face and enthusiasm appears to have put the Government in a strong position to retain power at the next election.

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European elections

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While it is certainly likely that Fianna Fáil will lose seats in the local elections, and could struggle to hold on to its two representatives in the European Parliament, the poll indicates that the Coalition is in a strong position to retain power after the next general election. In the last local elections, Fianna Fáil did remarkably well because of the unexpected collapse of Sinn Féin whose vote dropped to just 9.5 per cent in May, 2019, even though opinion polls had been putting it on 20 per cent or more just a few months earlier.

That poor performance prompted all of the parties to misread the mood of voters in advance of the subsequent general election when, in a dramatic reversal of fortune, Sinn Féin stunned the political world by winning 24.5 per cent of the vote. Sinn Féin ran too few candidates to capitalise fully on the wave of support that lifted it in February 2020. A few more and it would have been the biggest party in the Dáil, as well as the largest in terms of the national share of the vote, and subsequent history might have been different.

Poll suggests Sinn Féin support is still in decline

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Since the general election, Sinn Féin’s poll rating has risen as high as 37 per cent before falling back significantly to 23 per cent in the latest poll. By contrast, Fianna Fáil has remained at about 20 per cent which is significantly lower than the 27 per cent it won in the last local elections but solid nonetheless.

Sinn Féin will have a difficult call to make on whether to run two candidates or one in several key constituencies in the general election. The outcome of the European election in Dublin, where the party is running two candidates in the hope of two seats, should give a good indication as to whether that is a feasible option in the city come the general election.

While there is a lot of campaigning still to go in the coming weeks, Sinn Féin can be expected to do better than in 2019 and the main loser is likely to be Fianna Fáil. In anticipation of this Martin’s internal enemies, who have never gone away, planned to make their move when the votes were counted. Some of them were hoping that a really bad outcome would force him into taking the European Commissioner post to avert a serious leadership challenge.

Some of those plotting his downfall have made no secret of their belief that Fianna Fáil should abandon its alliance with Fine Gael and agree to a Coalition deal with Sinn Féin

What the poll demonstrates clearly is that regardless of the outcome of the June 7th elections, it would be a big blunder for Fianna Fáil to force Martin out. He is widely respected by the public for his recent performance as taoiseach and has every chance of gaining that office again after the next general election. The fact that there is no obvious successor as leader makes his position even stronger.

Some of those plotting his downfall have made no secret of their belief that Fianna Fáil should abandon its alliance with Fine Gael and agree to a Coalition deal with Sinn Féin. This is a minority view in the parliamentary party and successive polls have made it clear that the party’s voters are overwhelmingly in favour of the alliance with Fine Gael.

Even if Sinn Féin manages to do better than the latest poll suggests, when the general election comes around in the autumn or the spring, the Coalition remains in pole position to form the next government. As long as Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens stick together, they have an excellent chance of winning another term.

Mind you, what happened five years ago means that it might be a big mistake to extrapolate the outcome of the next general election from the results on June 7th. The main lesson for the Government is that if the results on June 7th are anything like The Irish Times poll it should call a general election as soon as possible, before the public mood changes again.