Colm O'Regan: Along with funerals, hurling and crisps, our voting system is something that we do spectacularly well

Every so often, to paraphrase the poet Robert Burns, we get a chance to see ourselves as others see us. When an Irish person does well, we realise that the British press see us as a small quasi-independent principality (though they can’t remember which prince) but still part of Britain. Brexit revealed they saw us as independent but uppity for wanting to defend our interests. Saoirse Ronan’s Oscar nomination meant they saw us as being back to British. And the recent election revealed that people in other countries really didn’t understand us at all.

First of all there were fools who didn’t understand our Single Transferable Vote system. A young lad called Darren Grimes was on the BBC a lot talking about Irish politics. I think he was there on TYO work experience. He said in a tweet “Thank god for first past the post, Ireland’s electoral system is bloody confusing.” Imagine celebrating chewing the joyless Ryvita that is FPTP instead of glorying in the endless buffet of STV.

Hush child. Adults are talking. Along with funerals, hurling and crisps, our voting system is something that we do spectacularly well in this country.

There were polcorrs who thought Leo Varadkar had lost his seat because he didn’t top the poll. “Pfff!”, we said. “Look and learn”. And our system hummed along with bundles of paper and people eating sucky sweets and shivering in sports halls up and down the country. I imagined my little vote zipping around from pile to pile carrying my fervent ideological beliefs, my sympathy vote and my “ah gwan sos”. It meant whoever was elected reflected me and all my contradictions. If you measure the proportion of seats versus the proportion of first preference votes it roughly matches. It works.

Then there were the august commentators from abroad who didn’t understand why Ireland voted the way it did. Lord John Simpson of Journalismshire said that Ireland had finally succumbed to populism. As opposed to ya know, voting out the government who couldn’t fix a homeless problem or a health service, and didn’t vote in a party that helped us ‘recess’ harder than most other countries and voted a bit more for other parties who promised to try and fix things. I understand this is quite common in elections.

The Atlantic Magazine, which has a lovely logo and you’d really love to write for it because you’d be very clever, said that Irish nationalism was inspired by English nationalism.

Lemme tell you what doesn’t inspire Irish nationalism: English nationalism.

Irish nationalism is inspired by English nationalism in the same way that fish are inspired to breath by seeing hamsters at it as well. (I’m talking ordinary Irish nationalism, not the loolahs who got a few hundred votes for promising a return to an Ireland of the Tuatha De Dannan and kicking out anyone who can’t Who Do You Think You Are back to Art O’Laoghaire)

Reading foreign views on a news story we know well is like looking at a film set in an Irish location that takes a weird route, going to the Giants Causeway from Ballymun via the Cliffs of Moher. It makes you wonder what stuff we are being fed about countries we know nothing about.

So next time you see a swanky-voiced correspondent reporting on Bhutan or Nagorno Karabakh or Moate, remember how they often get us so wrong and maybe get a second opinion.