Election fever has swept the corridors of Leinster House as the omens begin pointing more clearly to a November contest. While nobody knows for certain when Enda Kenny will name the day, the arguments for a post-budget election are beginning to look irresistible.
While the Taoiseach has consistently repeated the mantra that the Government will run its full term to spring 2016, most politicians have always taken that with a grain of salt, on the basis that Kenny can’t say anything else until he makes the decision to go to the country.
The arguments for November have now been well rehearsed. The central one is that it will provide an opportunity for the Coalition to keep the debate on the economy and the need for political stability to underpin the recovery.
In the past week, the capital programme was launched with great fanfare and the extremely positive exchequer returns for the first nine months of the year were unveiled yesterday by Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin.
The monthly exchequer returns press conference is usually given by Finance officials and attended mostly by financial journalists. It was notable that the Ministers took the stage yesterday and the media was present in full force.
The 2016 budget, to be presented in 10 days, will keep the focus of the Dáil on economic issues for the next two weeks – and the legislation to underpin it will ensure that it remains there for the rest of the month.
The argument for delaying is that the impact of the budget measures will not be felt in people’s pockets until the spring. Against that, there is the fact that a range of potentially negative issues is almost certain to dominate the headlines in December and January, once the budget process is out of the way.
The seemingly intractable problems of the health service usually come to the fore in mid-winter and could dominate a campaign if a vomiting bug or, worse, a flu epidemic strikes in the New Year, leading to chaotic scenes in our hospitals.
The other point is that once everybody knows the date will be in February or March, the Government’s political opponents will have a huge incentive to grab the headlines by fair means or foul.
Some of them may try it by making all sorts of claims and allegations under the cover of Dáil privilege. The experience of the past year shows how easily that can come about and how difficult it is for those in authority to respond, no matter how wild and unsubstantiated the claims.
The key question for Kenny is why delay until February or March when things are unlikely to be any better but could be far worse. He still has the initiative, but the element of surprise will evaporate once Christmas has come and gone.
Flood and fortune
This week more than one Government TD has been heard to mutter the well- known line from Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar
: “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Brutus’s conclusion, that “we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures,” is equally to the point.
One of the arguments cited in favour of holding on until spring is the result of last week's Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll. It showed the Coalition parties had failed to make significant gains over the summer, with Fine Gael static on 28 per cent and Labour up one to 8 per cent.
The important point is that the election campaign itself will be the critical factor in deciding the outcome. In any case, last week’s poll can be read by all parties as the glass being half empty or half full.
Fine Gael and Labour only need to gain a few points each to be in with a great chance of winning an historic second term. The converse is that power could easily slip from their grasp if they wage a bad campaign. But that will only be determined in the red heat of battle – regardless of what the polls say in advance.
The conventional wisdom for some time, based on the record number of voters who tell pollsters they intend to vote for Independents and small parties, has been that a hung Dáil is the most likely election outcome.
The possibility of a second election in a year or so to sort out the mess has been widely spoken about by politicians of different persuasions.
Remember, though, that at the beginning of the year the overwhelming view in the UK was that a hung parliament was the only possible outcome of the May election there. The polls right through the campaign up to the very last day reinforced that view.
In the event, the Conservatives confounded all of the forecasts by winning a small but decisive majority. All of the speculation about how long a minority government could survive and what tactics might be employed in parliament to avert chaos proved to be so much hot air.
National issues
The Irish electorate may well respond in a different fashion to the prospect of political instability. The natural tendency to localism, encouraged by our proportional representation system, could blunt national considerations. But the challenge facing the established parties is to force voters to confront national issues.
The searing experience of the crash, and its impact on communities and individuals the length and breath of the country, may ultimately trump more parochial considerations in the minds of many voters.
Whether that means voting for the parties who have steered the difficult course out of recession or for those who have railed against “austerity” is something that every single citizen will have to weigh up.