So, what next? - ‘Trust us’ won’t win an election

NOW that the winners’ euphoria is being tempered by a sense of the size of the challenge ahead; now that Fianna Fáil and the Greens have had a few days to come to terms with the depth of the disenchantment expressed by an angry and betrayed electorate, it might be time to consider what the results mean.

Or, indeed, what it would mean if the same uncompromising mood prevails when, sooner or later, a general election is called.

It is appropriate to ask if politicians will consider the implications from any perspective other than what they mean for their party’s prospects. That may be the hardest question to answer, but it may, too, be the most important.

The “historic” results must surely mean much more than swapping Dick Roche for Michael Ring, or maybe even replacing Mary Coughlan with Olwyn Enright or Joan Burton.

It must mean something more substantial than changing a few personalities. It must mean a lot more than heralding the next warm-place-to-sit game of Leinster House musical chairs.

If last Friday’s vote has little enough impact on the insular, circular arrangement that has done so much to encourage public disenchantment and desperation then we are in even more trouble than we feared.

Are we really going to continue to pretend that there are significant policy differences between the two centrist-right parties that dominate, or at least dominated, our political life?

Are we really going to persist with the dishonest, vacuous charade that, when the general election is called, that Fine Gael and Labour will campaign as independent entities? Each insisting that they have a viable future in government without the other, and that when the voting is done the talking will start?

It may sound simplistic but it is undeniable that if Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore cannot present a unified programme before a vote is cast then they are asking for us to vote for that great, age-old saviour of Fianna Fáil: the political pig in a poke.

If they cannot agree a manifesto before voting they hardly deserve to be taken seriously even if the alternative is the same as it ever was.

Neither Enda Kenny nor Eamon Gilmore have all the answers – who has? – but together they may have enough to offer a programme to confront the awful realities facing this tottering country.

They must realise that the ever-growing majority of people don’t care who is in government as long as it is equitable, efficient, transparent, honest and recognises the inherent decency in the great majority of people.

They cannot, as Fianna Fáil did for generations, advance the “trust us” argument. Well, they could but look where that got Fianna Fáil and the country.