Magic of politics is all sleight of hand

IRISH politics has resembled a magicians’ convention over the past 10 days. All the party heavyweights have been waving their magic wands to show how — hey presto! — they will make rival TDs disappear from the Dáil next year.

Enda Kenny went one better in Sligo this week and enthralled us all with his ability to pull a Rabbitte out of a hat. And of course the PDs finally acknowledged they would need the services of the world’s most famous escapologist, Michael McDowell, to Houdini-them out of the dire straits the party has found itself in.

I did a tot yesterday of the seats that the party number crunchers have conjured up. And like laying odds of 7/4 for Michael McDowell for PD leader, there is something dicky in the numbers. Yerra, they are all making a fine case for themselves. Fine Gael thinks it can win at least 58 seats. Labour is thinking along the lines of 27 or 28. McDowell predicted the PDs would double their seats to 16. The Greens are hoping to win eight. Sinn Féin’s Pat Doherty says his party will come back with 10 seats. Even the independents are pointing to the opinion polls and talking about a possible 15.

And as for Fianna Fáil. Well, it’s not really saying anything yet. But despite the fact that a rake of its backbenchers have been biting their nails down to the quick, party strategists are far more sanguine. Privately, TDs will tell you that 10 or a dozen of their seats are vulnerable. But those overseeing the campaign are saying: “Hang in there because it’s too early to make a break from the peloton. We are biding our time, knowing we can come through in the bunch sprint.”

And the FF prediction for itself? It’s hard to say. They know in their hearts they will lose a few but they hope they can keep the losses down to five or six.

If Fianna Fáil dips to the low 70s, we would still have more than 200 TDs returning to the 30th Dáil if you were to follow the logic of each individual prediction. Something is going to have to give — it’s like trying to squeeze a dozen Sumo wrestlers into a Smart car.

It was plain as a pikestaff at its think-in in Mayo that Fianna Fáil has decided it’s too early to get stuck in. Bertie Ahern gave a hint of what his party’s strategy was last week when he warned the incoming PD leader that the coalition must last its full term. Ahern is not possessed of the impetuosity of Albert Reynolds and Charles Haughey and calling a snap election goes against all his instincts. He will wait until the last possible moment; perhaps even run the election as close to the time limit as he can.

That can be partly explained by the Government’s need to show that it has ticked off the biggies from the Programme of Government by the time it prostates itself before the electorate.

There is the feelgood factor of the maturing SSIAs but I sense that their impact on voter intention has been overstated.

My own hunch is that the FF campaign will start late for other reasons. My instinct is that it is planning a short, sharp, high-impact blitzkrieg. It will crow about its record in a brash, direct way. Equally it will try to maroon the Mullingar Accord with a relentless bout of negative, scare campaigning, the intensity and fury of which has become standard in the US. The opposition have also hired in campaigning advice from Stateside — they will not be found wanting when things begin to heat up.

The thrust of the campaign will be negative. On one side, we will have an opposition warning us of two things — the democratic perils of a Government being in power for a continuous 15 years; the instability that will be caused when FF and PD numbers don’t stack up. That will also include a ‘Provo scare’.

The coalition’s message will be that the other crowd are amateurs and bunglers who can’t be trusted in the Garden of Eden we have created — as soon as they get in, they will take a bite out of the apple and cast us all back into the purgatorial darkness of the 1980s.

And the magical wands will be working overtime. You suspect the master illusionists of Government will wait a while before revealing the show-stopper trick it has up its sleeve, otherwise known as more tax cuts. McDowell will fight harder for no other thing in Government. FF may also be forced to conclude it also needs them. In its cold calculation, it will know it can get away with it. The magical deception of having more money in your pocket will make concerns about hoodwinking the electorate, well, vanish into thin air.

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