We need authentic politics to get through unnatural times

World of Politics with Harry McGee

There will be few years in lived experience that will feel as weird and unnatural as 2020. The pandemic just coloured everything, turned everything upside down – but we were already on a different path with politics too.

We came into the year with Brexit breathing down our necks. Then we had an election that was not contested on the economy – but on change, driven by issues like housing and health.

Then the first cases of the new coronavirus started filtering in at the beginning of March before Leo Varadkar announced a two-week lockdown as dawn broke over Washington DC. Little did we know that this would become the new normal.

But as is customary at this time of year, let’s take a step back and look at 2020 through the party-political prism to see how all of them performed.

The locals which preceded the general election six months earlier suggested that Fianna Fáil was poised to become the biggest party and –after a decade of meaningful gains – it looked like Sinn Féin would slide back.

The electorate wanted change, though – and when they looked to Fianna Fáil as a party of change, they just could not see it. The party’s identity had been melded into that of Fine Gael by the confidence and supply agreement – and its leadership just did not realise that impact.

Also, its general election campaign was just appalling. It was slow to cotton-on to the big issues as they arose.

Sinn Féin was also much more nimble at picking up on issues like the proposal to increase the working age to 67. Fianna Fáil instead made the moronic decision in mid-campaign to withdraw a promise for a rent freeze. That only made the party look like it was preserving the status quo.

Sinn Féin went into the campaign with no great expectations and some of its candidates who became TDs were clearly not ready for it, and – in some cases – not really up to the job. But everything went in its favour.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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