Election 2011 - New EU deal needed to rebuild hope

THREE weeks from today it will be all over bar the counting. The country will have voted and unless our pollsters are as divorced from reality as Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s Government seemed to be a Fine Gael/Labour coalition will assume power.

Though that prediction has not been seriously challenged by anyone, not even the old, omnipotent Fianna Fáil under its new leader Micheál Martin, it would be foolish to write off the most powerful, the most influential and most deeply entrenched political movement in the history of this Republic.

History provides a recent parallel and stark warning for our would-be government. In the three years leading to Britain’s 1992 general election Labour, under Neil Kinnock, consistently topped the polls to the point that they developed a swagger that often slipped into premature triumphalism. This counting-your-chickens delusion reached a high point at an infamous rally in Sheffield which, though some analysts still debate this, must have cost Labour the election.

The Conservatives under a new leader John Major — another parallel here — defied the odds and were returned with a 21-seat majority, though with the help of an especially virulent campaign by Rupert Murdoch’s News International Newspapers.

Who can say with absolute conviction that Fianna Fáil, the most focussed, ruthless and feral political organisation in our history cannot emulate, at least in part, John Major’s Lazarus act?

Irrespective of who is elected — and it must be assumed that the polls, so consistent for so very long are right — the next Government inherits a terrible situation. The determination and optimism that will be necessary are not of the ordinary kind for either those who will govern or those who will be governed.

International economic commentary and our lack of real, irresistible clout at the highest levels in Europe point to prospects so grim they could be overpowering.

The unprecedented flight of capital, domestic and international, from Irish banks suggests that investors are not convinced, despite the occasional moderately cheering indicator, that we have reached the darkest days of the crisis just yet.

The Central Bank confirmed in recent days that international depositors withdrew 35 billion from Irish banks in December, more than a third of the total withdrawn for all of 2010. Even Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams must see that this is unsustainable.

So is the suggestion that a solely domestic solution to our crisis can be found. March 24 and 25 will be at least as important to the future of this small island as February 25 will be. That is when the revisions to the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) will be announced and these will influence our medium term future far more than the next Government.

If that announcement does not offer the prospect of restructuring our debts, and it is not at all certain that they will despite interventions from Ireland, then we will probably require more optimism and good luck than it is rational to expect.

There is an alternative though: we, through our next leaders, could take the initiative and demand a deal that recognises our obligations without pawning our future.