Opinions may be divided, but the Establishment is definitely poleaxed

WEREN’T we given a great choice by those two opinion polls, all the same?

Faced with their contradictions, we can say “A plague on all their pollsters”.

Or we can see the fascinating underlying significance of those contradictions.

They proved two things, did Millward Brown and Red C. They proved that Fianna Fáil can’t fall off the floor. And they proved that the Labour Party can fall off the ceiling.

It’s not much of a comfort for the Taoiseach to realise that his party has hit rock bottom. All it has left now is the immovable core vote. Somewhere in the mid-20s, the statistic is made up of voters who believe they’d be struck dead if they voted for any party other than Fianna Fáil.

It’s small but solid as a rock, that cohort, and it’s also – sensibly at the moment – not that vocal, so it may be under-represented in opinion polls. Saying out loud, even on the phone to a disinterested poll-taker, that you’re going to cast your vote for a phenomenally unpopular party, requires a courage better mustered and deployed for other purposes.

So the bottom line is that Fianna Fáil, were a general election to be held tomorrow, would not do quite as badly as extrapolation from these opinion polls would suggest. They would still be demolished with politically dead bodies everywhere, but perhaps a few bodies less than might currently be expected. No consolation to the dead ones. Small consolation to those who survive by the skin of their dentures.

That’s what was behind the finding in the TV3 poll that the Taoiseach’s Morning Ireland foray hadn’t changed the voting intent of many of the people interviewed.

The majority of those voters had already decided to dump Fianna Fáil, and when they were in that position, the early morning performance of Brian Cowen would do little other than confirm a decision already made.

The Soldiers of Destiny are thin on destiny right now. The Labour Party, as of yesterday, had the slightly wrinkly look of a balloon that’s been blown up too far and had a little of the air squeezed out of it.

Fine Gael must feel they’ve been involuntarily engaged in a game of musical chairs, ending up in a reasonably good seat at the end but fearful of what will happen when the music strikes up again.

The temptation for Fine Gael is to do a yah boo sucks to the Labour Party, particularly on the basis that Eamon Gilmore’s troops have damn all in their policy knapsack.

If Fine Gael throws shapes and snideries at Labour, it would be a big mistake for two reasons. They wouldn’t gain from it and Fianna Fáil would gain from it.

Journalists coming up to an election all sing off a hymn sheet headed “What Would Your Party Do?” The main theme of the hymn, thereafter, is “and what would it cost?” This is believed to carry interviewers beyond style to policy substance, although I haven’t noticed any of them getting particularly ratty with Eamon Gilmore because of his demonstrable lack of said policy substance.

This is because policies are like balanced diets. We’re all for them and none of us stick to them.

Those studying politics in university, who emerge rich in theory, poor in practical understanding of the tawdry quotidian, would no doubt hold that people vote on policy. Yeah. Right. Same as people buy new cars for their safety features and petrol consumption stats. Car salespeople know we buy cars (although that perhaps should be in the past tense) in order to have a fast growling, sexy, shiny, colourfully enviable extension of the self we wish we were.

We vote for precisely the same reasons: to justify ourselves to ourselves. To prove how loyal or defiantly maverick we are. To get the sense that because we go with one party we are by reference cooler and more sophisticated. To stick it to the other lot in letters a foot high. We all claim to vote on a policy platform, but we don’t read policy documents in bed and if others do, let them stay away from us.

Fine Gael love policy and regard any party that isn’t turned on by policy-construction as lacking in moral tone. The Labour Party believes in rhetoric and ethos. Attacking Labour for not having any would be like attacking a page three model for not having a bra. The rush of moral justification to the head might be pleasurable, but the efficacy would be questionable. It’s hardly going to make voters smack their foreheads in shock at their own naivete in favouring a policy- free political party.

THE other reason to avoid hurling verbal grenades at Labour is that it would hand Fianna Fáil not a lifeline but a wedge for hammering between the two potential parties in government after the next general election, and if FF are good at circling wagons, they’re even better at hammering wedges.

The strength of the anti-Fianna Fáil drift is unmistakably clear. What is not so obvious is that the drift is broader and more promiscuous. It is a shift away from everything to do with the Establishment.

We in media forget that nobody out there remembers individuals in political parties as much as we do. Labour, as far as the general public is concerned, is basically Eamon Gilmore and Joan Burton, and an impressive pair they are.

Fine Gael has a few more faces recognisable from TV, but most of those faces carry the downside of having been seen in close proximity to Government faces for the last decade, and the fact that they were accurately predicting disaster or excoriating the Government doesn’t matter that much to the grievously disaffected non-political voter. I know that sounds like a contradiction in terms, but let’s define a non-political voter as one who, while they don’t follow politics or take an interest in political communication, is nonetheless mad as hell about what has happened to their lives thanks to political decisions and is eager to give a good thumping to the whole lot of the middle aged men (for the most part) they lump together under the unjust but deeply-felt statement: “They’re all the same.”

We don’t have the floating voter this time around. We have the “Frig the Establishment” voter. The only consistent thing about that voter is their anger. One day their saviour is the Labour Party, the next Sinn Féin. The Labour Party can’t be happy with having their majority slide from under them in a matter of days, but they also know that many of the “Frig the Establishment” voters will slide towards them in a real election because Sinn Féin and others won’t have a meaningful presence in all constituencies and because they’ll pick up second preferences – even from Fianna Fáil voters – that’ll never be available to Fine Gael.

For Fine Gael, the urgent task is differentiation, and they need to get on with it. As soon as they get over the shock.

Finding themselves lumped together with Fianna Fáil as the unpopular Establishment must feel as bizarre as being run over by an ambulance.