You don’t have to look very hard to see that the sniping between the two old frenemies has gone up a notch or two as the election approaches. The dilemma about the end of the Coalition – how are Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil going to manage being partners in government and rivals for votes? – looks as unresolved as ever.
“Micheál Martin now looks quite old, doesn’t he?” Fine Gaelers suggest giddily.
Fianna Fáilers, for their part, say they are very confident in presenting their man as the “adult in the room”, in contrast to the “frightened little boy”, which they have been reluctantly reminding people was how the former Health Service Executive chief Tony O’Brien once described the current Taoiseach.
You’ll be glad to hear that there’ll be plenty more of this to look forward to.
Sniping and competition among party leaders will be central to this election
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Two signposts to an early election: Sinn Féin’s troubles and a glimpse of Micheál Martin’s election posters
The sniping is especially personalised because this looks set to be an election in which the competition among the leaders is central to the campaign. Fine Gael is clearly betting that Simon Harris’s “new energy” – and his popularity as attested by polls – compensates for all those retiring TDs who so clearly disadvantage the party in the constituencies.
The Fine Gael campaign will be very heavily Harris-branded; even the veteran Kildare TD Bernard Durkan is touting the new energy theme. Billboards hailing local candidates as the representatives of His New Energyship have appeared around the country; expect a kinetic campaign in which Harris hares around the country at a manic pace, pursued by the media, his own candidates and exhausted aides. Remember though: he hasn’t been through this before. His rivals have. A telling moment will come when he faces his first crisis.
The Fianna Fáil campaign is gearing up to be less leader-y, and more based around the “issues”, party honchos sniff. This may or may not be wise; its record on the issues is mixed. The old FF warhorse (and director of Bertie Ahern’s three election victories) PJ Mara once observed that Irish voters “don’t give a sh*te about ‘the issues’”; Micheál Martin begs to differ.
Martin has been tut-tutting about Harris’s incessant campaigning, while doing a fair bit of it himself. His lieutenants are quite comfortable with a head-to-head with Harris where they believe his “substance” (one of the Fianna Fáil leader’s favourite words) will count.
A campaign dominated by the contest between Harris and Martin about who should be taoiseach would suit both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael because it would keep the focus on them to the exclusion of others. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. This isn’t going to be Garret v Charlie; Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil between them have about 45 per cent of the vote; not 85 per cent. There are other things going on.
One of them is Sinn Féin. Mary Lou McDonald proved herself to be a truly formidable campaigner in 2020. It was through her that the surge for change – and remember, a surge one way or another manifests itself in every general election – was directed chiefly to Sinn Féin in 2020. Her “Tweedledum and Tweedledee” dismissal of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil were moments of cut-through political brilliance.
But the political landscape of late 2024 is a lot different from that of early 2020. McDonald is no longer an exciting, insurgent force; in recent weeks, she has been struggling and defensive. She has had a grim year, politically. If she fails to get into government after this election, questions will surely be asked about her future in the role.
How much will the leaders matter when people make up their minds how to vote? More than half of all voters in 2020 said the party leader was an important factor in their choice, with a further quarter saying it was “somewhat important”. But other factors influence choice too, including local concerns, candidates, “someone to represent the local area” and preferred government.
One of the reasons the leaders are likely to be especially important in the forthcoming campaign is because the campaign itself is so important. The 2020 exit poll showed that more than half of all voters made up their minds how they would vote during the campaign itself.
Back in the days of Charlie v Garret, the two supremos had most of their votes sewn up before the campaign ever started, because there were Fine Gael houses and Fianna Fáil houses, and their inhabitants did not step outside their tribal confines.
But years of social change and political dealignment have given us a political landscape in which there are vast numbers of votes up for grabs. So the campaigns matter more; and campaigns, by their nature, revolve around the leader. An immense challenge lies ahead for the leaders of all the parties. And so it should.
* One final thing. As you’d expect, we’re all up to our ears in preparation for covering the general election campaign, which we expect to begin next Friday. Over the coming weeks we’ll do our best to provide the most comprehensive, insightful, unbiased and intelligent coverage that we can, though irishtimes.com, the print edition, morning digests, video and podcasts.
The late Michael O’Regan had retired by the time we were gearing up for the 2020 contest but he contributed to our coverage in several important ways, not least by his encyclopedic knowledge of politics on the ground throughout the country. “There’s a parcel of votes out in Ballymacelligott and it could be the key to this entire election,” he would advise in those mellifluous Kerry tones. Michael was a part of The Irish Times coverage of the last 12 general elections. He will be missed, and fondly remembered.
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