Under starter’s orders…

And they’re off! About lunch-time today, Enda Kenny will, in the words of sweet little middle-class Frances Fitzgerald, “throw the ball in” for the south’s general election. So which parties will be the winners and which the losers?

If we go by the polls, Fine Gael will be the winners. Astonishingly, after five years of to-the-bone austerity, the people of the south will return Enda Kenny’s party with an increased mandate, just as David Cameron’s Tory party was rewarded with a similar majority after their term of cutting and slashing in government. Fine Gael’s mates in government, the Labour Party, will take a near-fatal pounding. Fair? Who ever said politics was  fair?

But the two parties that will, in the long term, affect the shape of the south’s politics, are Sinn Féin and Fianna Fail. The last poll taken before the election showed Sinn Féin on 19% and Fianna Fail on 17%. In the coming election, Sinn Féin almost certainly will do remarkably well. They’ll go some way to doubling their present total of 14 seats. Or even better. So the party looks set to have a good election.

Provided, that is, you’re not thinking long-term. Because one of the key questions, again if we judge by the opinion polls, is which party will perform best, Fianna Fail or Sinn Féin. The Sinn Féin story has been told many times. From the turn of the century they’ve come from a party with less than a handful of TDs to one which can reasonably expect 25 or more seats. They clearly are doing something the electorate like and their march forward will surely continue on 26 February.

But their progress is as nothing compared to that of Fianna Fail. Five years ago, politicians were almost afraid to admit that they belonged to the party. They experienced a drop in representation that must have made their eyes bleed: from 71 seats to 20. In contrast, Sinn Féin went from 5 seats to 14. But now the bookies predict that Fianna Fail will emerge with more seats than the Shinners. What has happened to change the public’s deeply- negative view of Micheal Martin’s party?

Search me. Being very much in opposition, they haven’t done a great since last time out. Micheal Martin was thigh-deep in the Fianna Fail party that the electorate turned out into the howling gale in the last election. Yet here they are, with bookies predicting they’ll take over 30 seats. How can that be?

Maybe it’s Micheal Martin’s little-boy smile or Cork accent. Maybe it’s that Fianna Fail has maintained its electoral machine in working order, even when it wasn’t producing the usual number of TDs. Or maybe it is that the electorate, prompted by the media, forget what once made them near-apopletic with rage. Micheal Martin’s party was the one that plunged the south into an appalling abyss of debt, yet it’s as if that had never happened. Enda Kenny’s government was the one that brought in water charges, with the attendant public rage; yet it’ll have an increased number of Fine Gael TDs elected.

It’s depressing to think that the public have such short-term memories, that parties which have made the public suffer are rewarded with even more votes. If the polls are right, the big question of the election will be, who will come in second, Fianna Fail or Sinn Féin, and form the main opposition to the new government.  And even that, the polls suggest, won’t really be a contest.

But before you run the bath and take out the razor, a ray of hope: remember Donald Trump? The polls said  the Donald would romp home in Iowa even were he to produce a gun on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone. Then the people spoke and kicked Donald’s broad backside.

The next three weeks in Irish politics could be longer and less comfortable than some expect.