They’re less like two big beasts and more like two cartoon heavyweights, all scars and patched-up wounds from old battles, circling each other, terrified of being caught by a sucker punch, hoping against hope they can get out of this looking good.
With Fine Gael, it’s personal. Enda, the simple primary school teacher from Mayo, is hoping that somehow he’ll be able to do what no other Fine Gael politician has ever done: climb to the top of the Taoiseach pole two times in succession. There are three obstacles to this. One is getting enough Independents, Greens, Labour and anyone else with TD after their name to support a discredited Fine Gael government. The second is that many power-hungry hyenas in his own party, who tried to pull him down before the last election, will have another go a couple of months after the most recent election. The third obstacle for Enda and the Blueshirts is Fianna Fail.
Not that the Soldiers of Destiny want to get stuck in and try to land the knock-out blow and seize the prize themselves. That’s the last thing the SoDs want: it’d leave Sinn Féin as the republican voice in opposition, and who knows where that could lead? No, what Fianna Fail want and may very well get is control of the trapdoor. They want to be in a position where Fine Gael is allowed to blunder on in government until the electorate is totally sick of their incompetence and austerity. At that point, Fianna Fail will pull the trapdoor, there’ll be a fresh election, and the natural party of government, the SoDs, will parade around the ring with the ‘Natural Party of Government’ placard held high.
Sinn Féin, meanwhile, have been taking the SoDs and the Blueshirts at their word. Before the election, both main parties couldn’t be emphatic enough about how they would have no hand, act or part of working in co-operation with Sinn Féin. Now that Sinn Féin is in a position to prop up one of them in government, the SoDs and the Blueshirts are accusing the Shinners of …That’s right, not co-operating in forming a government.
How will it end? Probably with Fine Gael and its rainbow hangers-on planting their bums in the Mercs. What happened to the Greens last time they supported a bigger party in government? They were atomized at the polls. What happened Labour last time they supported a bigger party in government? They were atomized. With BREXIT coming down the line, with storm clouds gathering in the EU, China, Brazil and even India, Labour and the Greens are due to discover that being atomized isn’t as bad as being vaporised.
Which leaves the SoDs as the only party sitting pretty at ring-side, their fist wrapped round the trap-door lever. Except, of course, for the ghastly unpredictability of what lies ahead – what MacMillan called ‘events, dear boy, events’. Fifty days of cartoon boxing with nothing happening may seem to you a long and ludicrous time. Think how long and ludicrous three more years of the Blueshirts and their accomplices will seem.
If people get the government they deserve, the people of the south have been very, very bad.
Ah stop. Sure wasn’t RTÉ grand last evening. Meself and herself sat gazing at the television for an hour or two and then we decided to turn it on for a bit of late evening spirituality and politics.
Your man was in fine fettle talking to your wan about her band and growing up in a bandit town. It was a good job herself was out making the tea when he started talking about the caretaker in the school. “What is coming next?” I sez to myself. I did not know where to look. Hadn’t the nice man been storing the guns in the roof space. We will pass no remarks about the conversation over the TD and his suit.
I love the bit where they do be talking about He, She or it and the entrance exam at the Pearly Gates. Bedad, if it comes to a handshake for some, well say no more. As it turned out I missed that bit as the phone was after ringing and herself was still busy in the kitchen.
Well it was me oul friend, Ger. He has been resting a while since RTÉ lifted Section 31 but fair play, there is no keeping Ger down. Didn’t he go and get himself a job on the Daniel Day. That is the Luas for youse who live beyond the Pale. Ger was telling me about the situation. You are standing the odd day waiting on the Luas and bedad you would have to wait until the day after for the next one. “Good luck,” sez I, I wanted to watch the politics on the TV and the tea was getting cold.
Well I could not believe it, wasn’t your one on the politics programme talking about the “Dts”, as I took a mouthful of the tea. Sez I to myself, “she has let the cat out of the bag now. This could be worse than the Panama Papers. Say no more about the Doyle Bar and the unpaid bills,” sez I. Thanks be to He, She or It, wasn’t she just after talking about the TDs. It was just a quick flash of a Freudian slip and it was quickly covered up with the normal decorum one expects after the watershed. Well the morning comes early and so does the bus. Your man in the bus does not like notes of a Monday. He likes the right class of change.
‘Atomised’ is a daaaarlin word, Esteemed Blogmeister, and precisely describes the ‘Hold me Back and Let me At Om’ non-event currently being staged and non-waged in the Free Southern Stateen.
Or, Dance Mac Abre as it has been described.
So also is the Buzz Word of the moment down here south of the Black Sow’s Dyke, the not at all inappropriate: Pork Barrel. One understands that the aptly named Harris whose own tweedy island is now at last his oyster, even as he pulls the ripchord of FF, dropped a few, erm, Pork Barrel bombs from his lofty window seat yesterday in the Sindo.
This passive glaring at each other across the ring by the dabblers in the sock exchange has even been described as:
-Joined up blinking.
It is considerably easier than thinking and comprises the crucial element in the wider scheme of things:
-Keep the Shinners in their place, at all costs !
The suspense is killing us all softly with its song. A class of game of cat and mouse, even cops and Roberta, with SF, naturally, copping most if not all of the, erm, Flack.
Yet, in fairness, going f., this very suspense does lend a cross-border dimension, even a Carrick-a-Rede vibe to the ongoing non-event. As cinematic cliché number 297 will bear out:
-If some one is crossing a suspension bridge, the pursuing villains will never cut both of the ropes at the same time. Instead, they will cut each rope separately, causing the bridge to lurch dramatically, thus giving the hero just enough time to reach the other side.
And here’s the killer:
-The heroine will at some point nearly fall off and have to be pulled back up by the hero.
Eh ?
The heroine ? In an endgame of Enda and House-trained Martin, who could she possibly be?
The clue may lie in the corporate topography of Carrick-a-Rede. Which new model topography is less top down and more bottom up, containing as it mainly does, a, erm, yawning chasm.
Correct, first time.
Enter, stage left, at the eleventh hour:
-The Yawnaiste!
Ce eile? / Who else?.