The Politics Fix

Count weekend excitement gives way to slow bicycle race of government formation

Your essential end-of-week politics catch up: While the overwhelming likelihood is the next government will be based on FF and FG, there are wheels within wheels

The Politics Fix
The Politics Fix: Simonn Harris didn’t become Taoiseach to hold it for seven months, or for two years and seven months, and he is nothing if not a strategic player. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA
Jack Horgan-Jones's picture
Jack Horgan-Jones
Fri Dec 06 2024 - 12:57

Story of the Week

A week since the country went to the polls, the sprint finish of count weekend is receding in the collective memory of the political system to be replaced by the slow bicycle race of government formation.

There is impatience in some quarters – one Fianna Fáil backbencher this week remarking privately to The Irish Times that he sees no reason that there can’t be a government before Christmas. And maybe it will pick up pace – but there doesn’t seem to be any rush among the head honchos, who are gingerly feeling each other out when it comes to the shape of the next coalition. This much is clear – the overwhelming likelihood is it will be based on Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. But there are wheels within wheels – the rotating Taoiseach position is certain to be on the table, but how will Fianna Fáil extract a price for its 10 seat lead that avoids irking Fine Gael? And what shape will the centre left bloc take when it is finished chin-wagging internally and between its various constituent parts? If there is to be no third party, but a gaggle of Independent TDs, what will be the arrangement governing their participation? And how would such an arrangement work in practice? Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs could think of no shortage of reasons why it would suit them to have another party formally in government – the problem is finding a set of reasons that might suit Labour, the SocDems, or both together.

One particular observation stuck with us while chewing the fat with a Fianna Fáil TD, who argued that at leader level, three people in the room was a good balance, a collective bargaining process that foregrounded government stability rather than a binary win/lose dynamic. If it’s just Micheál Martin and (for the first part at least) his tánaiste Simon Harris eyeballing each other in the room, it will inevitably become more competitive. Harris didn’t become Taoiseach to hold it for seven months, or for two years and seven months, and he is nothing if not a strategic player. He knows that if he leads Fine Gael into the next election after a full term government, he will be asking the electorate to keep his party in power for a total term of up to 24 years – a staggering length of time. This will inevitably frame part of the overriding dynamic for the next government’s term.

Bust up

“We actually ran out of seats with the numbers that we now have,” Micheál Martin told reporters after coming from the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday. Football managers would say that falls into the category of “a good problem to have”. Turns out the Tánaiste was hinting at a wider kerfuffle playing out behind the scenes, with his footsoldiers planning to seize the Fine Gael parliamentary party rooms – formerly controlled by the soldiers of destiny until their electoral defenestration in 2011. The Fianna Fáilers have a grá for these rooms, which they had since the 1960s and bore witness to infamous heaves. After taking back the mantle of largest party in the Dáil, they now want the old rooms back, as Cormac McQuinn reports.

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This isn’t a big national story – nor will voters care about it. But when establishing who is top dog in Leinster House, these are the little proxy wars that tap into deeper cultural memories for the political class.

Banana skin

Mercosur, the EU-South America trade deal, is rearing into view as the first significant post-election political story. The deal looks to be moving up through the gears just as the parties get their teeth into government formation. The crafty Europeans may be engineering a way to get the trade aspects of the deal approved without being put to parliaments – which might avoid it coming to boiling point – but expect the pressure to come on, and from, the Independents, which the two big parties will have to respond to.

Winners and losers

Winners: It was noteworthy how many former TDs did manage to catch the wind and get a return to Dáil Éireann: Paul Gogarty, Boxer Moran, Seamus Healy, Pat the Cope, Jerry Buttimer, Ruth Coppinger and Malcolm Byrne all made it back in. A good day for the comeback kids.

Losers: This wasn’t perhaps the Independents Day election that some were expecting midway through the campaign, when the lacklustre stumping from parties seemed to be driving voters towards non-party candidates. A rake of high profile Independents fell short, including Kate O’Connell, Alan Shatter, Mick Wallace, Clare Daly, Thomas Pringle and of course Gerry Hutch (and we may be forgetting some) didn’t make the grade.

The Big Read

Pat Leahy will have a big read on Micheál Martin – the man who timed his electoral run perfectly, and now stands in a position nobody could have imagined when he took up the reins of a broken Fianna Fáil in 2011.

Harry McGee will have an in-depth piece on how government formation talks happen.

And Jennifer Bray will have the final installment of election takes from our brilliant panel of readers who have been giving feedback across the campaign

Hear here

Farewell to Election Daily – and despite rumours to the contrary, we will not be starting up a government formation daily podcast. But our normal diet of Inside Politics resumes. Listen to Gerard Howlin below on Labour’s rejection of Fianna Fáil’s advances.

I did think the wooing of Labour [by FF] in public, it was a bit like the last half hour at the disco before the lights went up

—  Gerard Howlin