It's been my experience that people up here don't know as much about Dublin politics as they should.
Oh sure, they know the Taoiseach, everybody knows Bertie. But I
guarantee you that you'd be lucky if one person out of five could tell
you who the Tanaiste is; or the leader of the Labour Party; or the name
of the second house; or the name of the first house, come to that.
So here's a little question: what percentage of the popular vote
in Ireland do you imagine that the Progressive Democrats – coalition
government partners and the party of Justice Minister Michael McDowell
– commands?
Given the arrogance and hubris with which Michael goes about his business, you think it's pretty high, don't you?
You probably think they're up there challenging Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. Twenty per cent, perhaps. 25 even.
No?
More?
Do you suspect that that premier league self-righteousness, that Olympics-level tub-thumping must be worth 30%?
Well, no, actually.
Michael and his chums may be in government, but in the 2002 Dáil
elections they claimed just 6% of the vote, which, for a party
which includes such heavy-hitters as Mary Harney, the boul' Michael and
Liz O'Donnell is not good; not good at all.
For a party which was founded by Des O'Malley in 1985 and which
presented itself as a new and thrusting alternative in an era of
Charlie Haughey, tribunals and brown envelopes, pathetic might be a
better word.
Which you would think puts the PDs in that political ante-room where gather the Alliance Party, the UKUP and the PUP.
Yet low and all as that figure is, the PDs have Mary as Tanaiste
and Michael as Minister for Justice (oh, and Equality and Law Reform as
well).
Which is a kind of long-winded way of saying that a relatively few votes can get you a very long way these days.
But I bet you look at Michael in a different way next time you see him on the box.
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With ten weeks to go until the local and Westminster elections,
and at least a year and probably two before the next Dáil elections,
you have to wonder whether Sinn Féin's detractors may not have peaked
just a little bit early.
If republicans have an ounce of sense, they'll sort the Robert
McCartney thing out post-haste – whether at this stage they are capable
of doing that is open to question; if not, they've nobody to blame but
themselves.
But gradually, there's a growing sense among nationalists that
Sinn Féin are being put to the wall in a way that is both hysterical
and unfair, and if most think that it would be a very good idea indeed
if the IRA folded up its tent and went away, they also think that
venomous ad hominem attacks on senior Sinn Féin figures is rather a
cack-handed way of going about it. That's if this is about the IRA at
all – something about which increasing numbers are deeply suspicious.
