The end of FF dominance marks a new beginning in Irish politics

HISTORIC is a much over-used word. Only the passage of time confers that status on an event. Will we look back then on June 2009 as a turning point in Irish politics? We just might.

In 1998, Ireland — the southern part – became a normal country. All sense that it was in any way a provisional state – that there was unfinished business — was removed with the Good Friday Agreement and the amendment of Articles 2 and 3 to remove the claim on the north-east. The Constitution caught up with the political reality that territorial change would only come — and was only desirable — with the consent (preferably overwhelming consent) of the people of the North.

Time will tell, of course, but on Friday we might have witnessed the beginning of normal politics in Ireland too. No longer is the automatic dominance of one party over all the others a given, even if that party cannot always form a government.

Of course, Friday’s elections had almost zero to do with different interpretations of nationalism and everything to do with economic management but, at last, the possibility is out there that support will swing between two main (admittedly both centre-right) parties. So Friday must rank alongside Charles Haughey’s decision to break FF’s no-coalition rule in terms of importance in the development of FF into a normal political party, not a national movement.

After 1998, FF won great (deserved) respect for its role — alongside others — in bringing the Troubles, that ghastly scar on the face of humanity, to an end. But, in the process, it lost something of its raison d’être, to be — in Garret FitzGerald’s words — the main receptacle of peaceful nationalist feeling.

Before 1998, FF liked to think that not being one of them was somehow to be less than truly Irish. Now the North is as good as resolved, though (for this generation at least), and without fantastic never-to-be-repeated growth rates to point to, FF has lost its mystique.

Its reputation for competence, for offering something to everybody (especially its own), can be clawed back but it will take time and probably a period of opposition before that happens. Hopefully, its reputation for occasional venality is forever a thing of the past.

This development is good for democracy, even if it is intensely painful for Fianna Fáil. It feels its back is broken, especially at local government level, but it will live to fight another day. If these elections had been fought three months ago, their results would probably have been even worse.

The same probably cannot be said for Libertas. With Ganley missing out in Connacht, and just one European seat to point to — won by an affiliate in France — its dreams of becoming a truly pan-European force are over. Even the Poles let Libertas down and it came only 13th — unlucky for some — in notoriously Eurosceptical Britain. Its moment has passed.

Another victim of the recession would appear to be concern for the environment. The Greens had their worst election in two decades, in Ireland at least. Across Europe, they did slightly better. They have no option but to cling to office and, slightly ironically for greens, pray for economic growth — or some ghastly Fianna Fáil scandal to emerge.

Again in a reversal of the trend across the EU, Labour did spectacularly well. Elsewhere, social democrats are in crisis, from Britain to France to Germany to Italy — but not in Ireland.

Three seats mean they did as well, if not better, than they could have hoped. This is a real platform to build upon. Add in Joe Higgins and that takes the left’s share of Ireland’s representation to a third: not bad at all in traditionally barren territory.

Fine Gael, meanwhile, was unlucky — or careless — to drop a seat in Leinster. It took the edge off an otherwise perfect few days for them. With the Government’s majority falling — and set to fall further, probably, after the Donegal by-election, its frustration that this Dáil has three more years to run is palpable.

To recover so much ground in Dublin after the rout of 2002 when the party’s very existence was being questioned is a tribute to Enda Kenny. In the last election when asked what he had ever done, Kenny had little to say while Bertie Ahern could point to his achievements on the world stage. Next time, Kenny will be able to say that at least he didn’t screw up the economy. Previously always the nearly man, Kenny is growing in stature almost by the day.

That’s not something you could say about Gerry Adams. The first rule of spin is to emphasise the positive.

Adams did so, remorselessly, on his blog. The achievement of Bairbre de Brún in topping the poll in the North (on a reduced share of the vote); the overall improvement across the State; the council seats in virgin counties; and, so on.

But when it came to the real news — losing the Dublin Euro seat — not to the once-mighty Fianna Fáil, but to a fringe party should have been a wake-up call. Instead, Adams pronounced himself “philosophical”. Philosophical? What happened to the days when the republican movement got its own back? “Sin é,” says Adams, to use his favourite expression. Oh, the luxury of it all, to sit up in glorious Donegal philosophising, some of the backwoodsmen must be thinking.

“The fact is we are still building capacity and organisation in the South. There are no short cuts.” Excuse me, isn’t that what Sinn Féin has been doing ever since Adams launched his much-vaunted southern strategy on the back of the hunger strikes the best part of three decades ago? Isn’t capacity-building the stuff of community groups, not (pseudo) national liberation movements?

As each rotten election passes, isn’t it obvious the SF leadership’s strategy of milking the IRA decommissioning/disbandment issue for every last ounce of sectarian advantage in the North — at the cost of all credibility in the South — was a mistake? Sinn Féin is the fourth party in an increasingly competitive three-party system in the Republic. In the North, it prides itself on its “achievement” when everyone knows topping the poll was a fluke caused by having three strong unionists in the field instead of two.

And, in the North SF might find it even harder than before to point to any substantive progress on its lengthy agenda. The DUP vote has collapsed, coming in third out of three, when it has always previously romped home well over the quota.

Yes, they had a poor candidate and a formidable opponent in Jim Allister but their hypocrisy over power-sharing and their dynasty-building at the taxpayers’ expense has cost the DUP dear.

Unable to provide a compelling narrative for their policy reverses, the coalition between rural fundamentalists and urban loyalists has broken apart without the rambunctious personality of Ian Paisley to bridge the gulf in their respective outlooks. Expect a drift back to the right from them and even more begrudging cooperation with the other parties in the Assembly.

On 4FM last week I complained that opinion polls have taken all the fun out of elections as voters congregate around candidates they think will win. I was wrong. These have been fascinating elections, even historic ones — possibly.