Politics is colourful with lots of grey

OPINION polls, like the Late Late Show, tend to have one for everyone in the audience.

So we bozos look at the findings of the latest Irish Times poll and conclude: it’s looking as bleak as November for that party.

No, no, they will protest as they busily spin the unspinnable into the beautifully-spun. Look at how popular our leader is. Or, you have to take into account that we have gaps in some areas of the country. Or, the underlying long-term trend makes us unbeatable. Or, black is white.

Great news for the Labour Party.

The fact Sinn Féin is within a single percentage point of the Labour Party is neither here nor there. Don’t worry that the party’s ratings graph is beginning to look like a flatliner on a cardiac machine. No, that’s not a disaster. Let us direct you to statistics showing Pat Rabbitte’s only marginally less revered than Daniel O’Connell was just after emancipation.

Ditto Fine Gael. The party seems to be stuck in the doldrums of the low 20s and never looks like getting out. But never mind, Enda is soaring in the ratings and isn’t that more important. It’s like Mayo losing the All-Ireland but Kieran McDonald getting the man of the match. We are made to ignore the war has been lost and glory in all the petty battles one.

And as for Fianna Fáil, have they really bounced back? A couple of their TDs were openly gleeful yesterday saying two good giveaway budgets will make the next election a gimmee. But they got such a trouncing during the summer that they had to make some recovery from that thrashing. Okay Bertie has bounced back too. But is a two point recovery for FF a comeback? No matter how they dress it up, if yesterday’s support levels were to be repeated on election day, they would be Salamandered. On these figures, how many seats will they lose to Sinn Fein in North Dublin - three? Four?

The really interesting findings of the TNS mrbi polls relate to the long-term tracking of support and the early opinions of the electorate on possible coalition arrangements. The Labour Party, for all its protestations, will be deeply disappointed it has not made any significant headway under much-vaunted leadership of Rabbitte.

The Labour leader is the political equivalent of a house angel, street devil. A formidable presence in the House, he is not street popular in the way that Ahern is, or that Kenny is shaping out to be.

Anyone who looked at the US vice-presidential debate this week could not but be impressed by the intellectual freight Dick Cheney carried with him, and his steely superiority in dismissing John Edwards.

But Edwards’ pleasant demeanour and his up-front sincerity won him as many votes as his thorny adversary.

Yes, Rabbitte’s popularity ratings are high. Maybe the hames the party made of handling Michael D Higgins’ presidential ambitions damaged them a little in September. But in our increasingly presidential style of politics, leaders are beginning to increasingly personify their parties. Since May 2003, when the party hit a high of 22%, Labour has been on a slide and you no longer hear they will snuff out FG. And now, worse than that, SF are breathing down their necks.

After the ructions of the Bruton and Noonan eras, Fine Gael seems to have done what the Tories in Britain have failed to do and found a party leader who can be put forward as a credible alternative Taoiseach.

Enda Kenny was a virtual unknown outside politics in 2002. The 13% jump in popularity in this poll is indicative of growing confidence within FG that, irrespective of the question marks over his mettle or his decisiveness, they have a leader who might out-Bertie Bertie in the ‘nice guy’ and ‘of the people’ stakes. Still, there’s a big chunk who have no opinion about him, which shows that what Frank Flannery calls a “work in progress” still has a long way to go.

Labour is the only party that has shown any big up-and-down fluctuations in support level. There has been a gradual down-slope of support for the PDs and the Greens and Sinn Féin continuing its incremental - and inexorable - rise.

The overall picture is a subdued one, reflecting no great change - a stagnant political scene allied to a vague sense of public indifference.

Both coalitions attract a dead-tie 31%. It seems all we will be doing over the next two weeks is giving them enough rope to hang the Dáil.