From burning bondholders to leather, goods, it’s all laid bare in manifestos

YOU thought Fianna Fáil weren’t listening. You were wrong. Back in 2007 — two weeks before the last general election — I wrote, “Charles Haughey was on to something when he claimed election manifestos had a ‘Marxian ring about them’.

Thirty years on from the first (disastrous) Fianna Fáil manifesto, the 2007 edition stretches to 153 pages. There are policies on this and policies on that, all in the most mind-numbing detail — for a country of only four million people.”

Fast forward to 2011 and … honey, they shrunk the manifesto. It’s just 34 pages in three sections — the public finances, a jobs strategy and political reform. You couldn’t even light a fire with it. There are no pretty pictures — just a mug-shot of a rather pained-looking Michéal Martin. As for the cover, it’s a study in minimalism, albeit in a suspiciously Fine Gael shade of blue. Perhaps it’s Freudian.