Irish Examiner View: Balancing patience and urgency - Agreeing a new government

Next weekend, EU leaders meet in Brussels for what, in the lexicon of diplomacy, is expected to be a four-shirter — a streetwise description of a meeting unlikely to conclude quickly. Whether discussions to form a government here become as bitter remains to be seen.

Next weekend, EU leaders meet in Brussels for what, in the lexicon of diplomacy, is expected to be a four-shirter — a streetwise description of a meeting unlikely to conclude quickly. How could it?

The meeting will try to tweak post-Brexit budgets reduced by around €75bn between now and 2027. “And, now, we are fighting like ferrets in a sack,” said one careworn diplomat, trying to identify possibilities.

The haggling will cover farm subsidies and cooperation on science and climate collapse. Coronavirus may be mentioned.

Despite that complexity, a multi-annual financial framework must be agreed by leaders and the EU parliament before the end of the year. That, adding a dash of Worcestershire sauce piquancy to the mix, is also the timeframe set for Brexit trade negotiations.

French foreign minister, Jean-Yves le Drian, has predicted these talks will become a bitter battle, warning the two sides would “rip each other apart.”

Whether discussions to form a government here become as bitter, or rip parties apart, remains to be seen.

However, the Brussels talks underline how time, tide, and the greater world wait for no man or political party.

If any EU leader, who, as budget talks open, adopts positions as absolute as some offered by our parties, then four shirts will not suffice. After all, the last time our politicians were in this position it took 70 days to reach a conclusion.

A wider perspective, one with a deeper grasp of our split-ridden history, suggests it took almost a century.

It must be assumed that our parties understand the weight of obligation on their shoulders, but one statement after another suggests a version of blind man’s bluff is in play.

Sinn Féin’s assertion, incredibly believed in some quarters, that it “won” a three-way tie was a bid to set the mood.

Fine Gael’s insistence it would be happy in opposition is another. It may just be that after a decade in power, they have forgotten the stultifying pointlessness of opposition.

Galway West TD Éamon Ó Cuív beat his old war drum, when he said he and “significant people” in FF are opposed to coalition with FG.

As if on cue, FG’s Richard Bruton said, apparently, he thinks government with FF might damage FG.

Maybe he, and Mr Ó Cuív, and others of a like mind, might give a moment’s consideration to the suggestion that this is the very party-before-everything blindness that voters rejected.

Though FG met yesterday, anything announced before Thursday’s voting on a Taoiseach is grandstanding.

Éamon Ó Cuív: among the 'significant people' opposed to a 'grand coalition' within Fianna Fáil.

This seems a doomed process, unless the ghost of Tony Gregory intervenes. Nevertheless, Leo Varadkar has left open the possibility of participating in government. But only, he said coyly, “if we are needed.”

FF and FG are very happy to watch as others try, and probably fail, to form a government.

Maybe they have learned from SF how to play the long game and are happy to wait for the mood, public and political, to change — a tactic underpinned by the risky belief the mood will change in their favour.

They may also realise that the prospect of a second election troubles them far more than it troubles the electorate.

They may also realise that a post-election honeymoon should be nothing more than a brief interval.