Coalition flirting may cause seismic change

Flying kites, like kissing damp babies and going to strangers’ funerals armed with a green biro, is part of our political culture. So, too, is the idea of clinging to, or achieving, power at any cost. Those habits came together this week when Taoiseach Enda Kenny refused to rule out an alliance between Fine Gael and Sinn Féin.

Ordinarily, a statement of the obvious like that could be dismissed as a wily politician ruling nothing hypothetical in or out. However, remarks from Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald, declaring that Sinn Féin might consider a coalition role as a junior partner, suggest some sort of Montague-and-Capulet matchmaking may be a possibility.

That feeling is strengthened by Gerry Adams’s declaration that Sinn Féin’s veto on entering coalition as a junior partner could be overturned.

Should this idea even be discussed seriously it would represent a significant policy change — capitulation? — for Sinn Féin. Their haughty ourselves-alone policy would be set aside for something far more pragmatic, but hardly plausible. It would, more than likely, represent something far more unpalatable for those who see themselves as right-of-centre, law-and-order, traditional Fine Gael supporters.

That likelihood was confirmed yesterday, when at least three Fine Gael deputies stridently opposed the idea. More may do so in the privacy of Fine Gael’s Leinster House rooms, and sanity seems to be on their side.

Even the most determined attempt at partnership with what was once untouchable seems an exercise in, at best, romance, and, at worst, the kind of cynicism that has done so much to eat away at the credibility of our body politic.

Even if all of the usual charges laid against Sinn Féin are set aside, it is hard to think of even one issue on which they and Fine Gael have a common position. They seem diametrically and culturally incapable of becoming one, of working together in an effective way. Of course, time could prove that judgement wrong, but, by today’s terms, it is hard to think of any other response.

Of course, as always, there is a subtext, but, in this instance, there are at least two. Sinn Féin might have accepted that their growth has reached a plateau and that the only way they might enjoy power is as a junior partner. That may change, but it is hard to see it doing so soon.

The second difficulty for Sinn Féin has come home to roost with the forced resignation of Martin McGuinness. The next generation of party leaders simply does not have the charisma, the street cred of the Adams/McGuinness axis and, because of that, the path to power has become more problematic.

The most intriguing subtext, however, is how the discussion will be received by Fianna Fáíl. All of a sudden, their refusal to even consider entering a coalition with Fine Gael offers little more than the frustration of a life of hectoring from the opposition benches.

What a beautiful irony it would be if a change of heart by Sinn Féin was to, finally, at long last, be the catalyst for the most obvious of all Dáil coalitions.

There is, of course, the possibility of a coalition of Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin, but Micheál Martin has set his face against that. How likely is it that that policy might be reviewed?