Kenny cost Fine Gael its best ever chance at single-party government

A WEEK after election day here are some final thoughts on the conduct of the campaign and of the results.

1. Enda Kenny may have cost Fine Gael its best ever chance, possibly its only ever chance of forming a majority, Fine Gael only government. This may seem churlish given what he has achieved. After all, the party had just 31 seats when he became its leader and he has rebuilt it to win 76, its largest ever total. He stuck at it and deserves great credit as leader for that political achievement. But Fine Gael did not press home its claim to be a single-party government in the last week of the campaign. Indeed, it seemed scared to do so.

How many of the people who voted for Fine Gael really want to see its policies diluted by involvement with Labour? (And indeed, visa versa). Labour’s campaign against single-party government seems to have worked in that it convinced some voters who intended to vote for Fine Gael to come back for it: how else can a 36.1% first preference vote for Fine Gael be explained after successive opinion polls up to the Tuesday before the election indicated that Fine Gael would get between 38% and 40% of the first preference votes? It may have been less Labour’s campaign than Kenny’s less than sure-footed performances in the closing days of the campaign that swung some people back. He gave two poor television interviews in the closing days and many Today FM listeners — the largest under-44 audience in the country and voters less set in their ways — seemed angry that Kenny refused to do any interview during the campaign with me or Ray Darcy. It may not have been single-party government that certain voters rejected, but single-party government with Kenny at the helm.