Election results - Delusional, dysfunctional and defeated

THIS morning battered, bruised, rejected, angry and facing a new and reduced reality, Fianna Fáil will feel like so many of those whose lives have been changed completely by that party’s appalling economic mismanagement and magisterial indulgences.

Some party figures are running a pathetic rearguard action offering delusional blather – in public at least – about this being a protest vote because of the “hard decisions we’ve had to make because of global economic circumstances.” It is unimaginable that even they believe that. Can they, as they consider their worst election in 70 years, really believe that this humiliation, this resounding rejection, is because of events outside of their control?

Certainly international events played a part, but the anger, the visceral venom, behind last Friday’s scathing assessment was to do with broken promises, a litany of botched budgets, an undeniable impression that ordinary families and workers are to pay – with their jobs, and sometimes their pensions too – for the recklessness of our unfettered, untouchable developers, bankers and failed regulators. It had to do with the realisation, reached after years of exposure, that far too many of the constant Cabinet are not up to the job.