Objective judgements - It’s time for honesty, not tribalism

If each of us stepped away, even for a few moments, from our tribal, almost genetic, political or trade union loyalties, and considered two issues objectively, we might have to ask questions that would, if we could sustain that novel level of detachment, have chastening answers.

The answers to the political element of those questions would show that old, patronising guffaw about Irish people being one of the most sophisticated electorates in the democratic world up for the cynical stomach-tickling it really is. Those answers would also show how short our memories are and how unrealistic our expectations, especially in terms of how long it might take to turn the economy around, are.

It would tragically suggest, too, that political loyalties are sustained by an emotional, rather than a rational, process. After all, how else could Fianna Fáil, despite the U-turns and poor performances of the incumbents on some issues, once again be the most popular party in the Republic they and their banker/developer friends bankrupted and all but destroyed? How could a turnaround like this — Fianna Fáil topped a second opinion poll yesterday — take place just two years after the most humiliating election in Fianna Fáil’s history? That question is especially pertinent in the immediate wake of the bank debt deal, one almost universally recognised — even by Fianna Fáil — as being as good, as extensive, as we might have hoped for.