Martin must bide time and not jump gun on election calls

Fine Gael enjoys watching Micheál Martin hop on hot coals, and foolishly he gives it the pleasure, writes Gerard Howlin.

Opinion polls aside, and I will come back to that, a colder view is needed to understand who is more constricted in the straitjacket of confidence and supply. It discomfits both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil for sure.

But for now the limitations on Fianna Fáil are all tactical. Rightly or wrongly, and I am of the latter view, Leo Varadkar may be convinced he is in a strategic bind from which he wants to escape.

It is hard to otherwise explain his persistent goading of the other party he is dependent on for power. The leaking of what was said to Martin by Varadkar, from last week’s meeting in Killarney, rubbed the smaller party the wrong way.

Following rapidly on that was last Sunday’s opinion poll which put Fianna Fáil on 21%, 13 percentage points behind Fine Gael on 34%. Adding insult to injury Sinn Féin was on 22%, one point ahead. Armageddon, it seems.

Well if you are unseasoned perhaps. And perhaps things will end up there in the end. The thing about polls is never the numbers. It’s the direction they travel over time. I’d give a little time, and wait to see some other polls before I’m panicked.

The balance of power within confidence and supply will only ultimately be understood after the next election. The passing of time is a critical factor in changing the dynamic, and so too is the fact that Fine Gael inside it, and Sinn Féin outside it, have changed leaders, sharpened definition, and attracted more of the spotlight.

The danger for Fianna Fáil, and Martin shows signs of succumbing to it, is to be rattled by events into tactical responses, while forgetting the strategic reasoning for confidence and supply in the first place.

After the last election Fianna Fáil, surpassing all expectations, including its own, secured 45 seats. Only five behind Fine Gael, it gave the party three choices:

It could have, as asked by Fine Gael and demanded loudly by most commentators, gone into coalition as a junior partner. Wisely it didn’t.

It could have balked at entering into any arrangement, and brought the people back out to the polling stations. Wisely it didn’t. It did enter into an unprecedented confidence and supply arrangement.

Whatever about specific issues, people are not unhappy with present arrangements. There is no demand, for now, to change them.

The strategic advantage, however, is that if not as far ahead as suggested in last Sunday’s poll, Fine Gael is nonetheless ahead. In the circumstances, not least of which is inexperience, Varadkar may believe this is his moment.

The pressure on any Taoiseach to calculate correctly when calling an election is intense. For Varadkar, who has never led his party in an election, and was chosen by his parliamentary colleagues in the aftermath of the 2016 debacle, it is more so.

What Fianna Fáil seems to have an infinite capacity for forgetting, and Martin should know better, is that it in fact holds the trump card. Its best course of action, for now, is crystal clear. It is masterly inactivity.

Leo can’t bolt without breaking down the door. That, as the premise to any election, risks a lot — not least the final outcome.

Upcoming discussions, after the budget and then conducted only slowly, shouldn’t be, as Varadkar suggested, based on one more budget and an agreed election date in 2020.

It should be based on a hypothecated agreement of one more budget in 2019, followed by the agreed political facility for another in 2020 if certain terms and conditions are met.

Paradoxically, if the anxious in Fianna Fáil really believe the tide is going out, then the longer they put off the evil day, the better. More to the point, having an election while Leo and Mary Lou are on their respective honeymoons is preposterously stupid.

Martin is disadvantaged by comparison with newly elected leaders who enjoy novelty status.  It is too soon to say what the ultimate consequence for Fianna Fáil will be of the overwhelming majority of its TDs and senators being on the wrong side of the abortion vote.

It is that underlying dynamic rather than last Sunday’s poll number that will count most. The decision to sit out the presidential election will come at a cost, especially via Sinn Féin.

The manner in which Martin took his decision on abortion and the presidency points to a clear weakness in his leadership.

He calls the big issues well usually. He is more popular than any of his party colleagues among the public, but, among his parliamentary colleagues, he has few enthusiasts. His newly acquired Napoleonic verve is actually the weakness of a general who cannot rely on his troops obeying orders.

The thing now is to hone in on essentials. One is that a strategy was mapped out in 2016: Its fundamentals were correct then and, in changed circumstances where Fine Gael and Sinn Féin are under new management, it is still correct now.

The strategic response required is not to become hot under the collar, and react to taunts.

It is to be ice cold and unblinking in the face of the clear limitations of Fianna Fáil itself and facilitating Fine Gael or Sinn Féin banking their current advantage. There is no surer way to perdition than reacting to your opponents.

Time may or may not ultimately be of use to Fianna Fáil, but it is the single political variable it is most in control of.

His constitutional prerogative aside, it is ultimately the Taoiseach and Fine Gael who are most constricted by confidence and supply. A lack of imagination and too much mediocrity has left Fianna Fáil’s view of the future seem like looking out from a dirty windscreen.

Party members, a little like Brexiteers, are dislocated by the passing of a world that will never return. Resentment at seemingly enforced servility to Fine Gael runs high in the ranks.

But office and power are different things. In the best of times, most ministers enjoy little of the latter.

What goads Fine Gael, though it cannot admit it, is that it presides over a permanent government that is seldom bidden, and now sits atop an Oireachtas that can’t be commanded.

One humiliation deepens the others. There is a recurring temptation to bring the Fianna Fáil cattle to the market and allow the stupid beasts be bid for. Foolishly the barely contained contempt of one is felt by the other.

What is required by Martin is unblinking clarity about his own weakness and chilling certainty about the only possible riposte which is time. The prospect of indefinite house arrest under current arrangements will prove trying for the Taoiseach.