Political campaigning - We should be far more questioning

As the European and local elections draw nearer, and as the anticipated summer Cabinet reshuffle approaches, political managers are taking stock of their objectives and how they might realise those ambitions.

The coalition parties, especially Labour, cannot but be concerned by the polls, all of which show them losing significant ground. These figures lie behind the growing pressure for Labour leader, Tánaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Gilmore, to take a portfolio that might allow him and his party to make a greater, more positive impression on domestic issues and hence in voters’ consciousness. The party faces an uphill battle to hold even one of the three European seats it won in 2009. It also faces the chastening prospect of losing multiple seats in local elections. It is, it seems, going to pay a very heavy, disproportionate and unfair price for supporting what were challenging but essential measures to try to stabilise public finances.

Fianna Fáil can take some comfort from those polls, especially as they suggest that the party has more than a fighting chance of retaining three European seats. However, their position in Dublin remains so very marginal that its relevance in the capital remains an open question. Only 14% of Dublin voters — less than two-in-10 — say they would support Micheál Martin’s party, hardly a credible improvement on the chastening 12.5% it secured in the election of 2011.

Polls suggest that Sinn Féin will take a seat in each of the sweeping European constituencies but that assertion must come with a health warning — Sinn Féin have not been as successful as they might wish in turning opinion poll support into votes.

There is the factor too that seems to favour candidates from the fringes, either right or left, in the European elections. Some voters seem to regard this a consequence-free opportunity to voice their displeasure with Government but return to more centrist, less radical candidates when domestic issues are at stake.

As these are the first elections since Government introduced what are described as austerity measures, it is certain that they, especially Labour, will feel the brunt of an angry sector of the electorate. This prospect is made all the more inevitable as those politicians who did not have to make the kind of decisions years of mismanagement made unavoidable, will avidly stoke the fires of discontentment.

And therein lies the perpetual problem of Irish politics, one that every single party contributes to enthusiastically in turn. We seem to pass judgement without context, we seem to condemn a policy without considering what the alternative might have been. Those parties who supported the infamous bank guarantee were criticised for all sorts of reasons, some of them more than justified, but their most strident critics always fail to suggest what might have been a viable alternative, one that would have avoided social or banking calamity.

Prior to the 2011 election, political parties — as they always do — promised a new kind of politics, a new way of doing business and that the days of Punch and Judy knock and drags were over. The next six weeks will test that assertion and we will see if the leopard has managed or even tried to change its spots. How we respond, how we question and how we filter the possible from the fantasy or the plainly bonkers will define the kind of politicians we get — deserved or not.