WHAT A WEEK it’s been for the World News vertical. Joe Biden pardoning his son Hunter Biden for gun and tax crimes? The short-lived French government collapsed after the ouster of Prime Minister Michel Barnier? A health insurance CEO gunned down by a masked assassin in broad daylight on the streets of New York City? South Korea in revolt for five hours after its president went on a solo run and announced martial law before seemingly realising that declaring martial law isn’t the kind of thing you can do just because your wife illegally accepted a Dior bag?

These are chaotic times we live in, my friend, and we in Ireland are now mired in the chaotic business of government formation. 

Writing about a coalition mid-coalescence is sort of like trying to take a picture of the moon on your iPhone. It’s hard to capture the beauty of the thing, and by beauty, I mean the inscrutable cosmological horror. After some early indications that Labour or the Soc Dems were readying their mudguards and preparing to get 10% of their agenda over the line in exchange for being inevitably wiped out in five years, it now seems more likely that FF/FG will form a government with the kind of Independents who probably would have voted with them on virtually every issue anyway. 

As for any reorientation of the power dynamic between Ireland’s two establishment parties – who are now so close that they share an acronym more than half of the time – one phrase that has been bandied about is ‘parity of esteem.’ This seems to refer to the idea that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael should be equals in the latest iteration of their coagulation. The basis for such an arrangement is questionable, seeing as the country at large self-evidently does not hold the two parties in parity of esteem. Fianna Fáil outperformed their rivals-turned-conjoined twins to the tune of 10 seats, a margin that makes up more than 25% of Fine Gael’s total. Indeed, for the second election in a row, Fine Gael are not even as popular as Sinn Féin, who will resume their place as leaders of the Opposition.

One might think this means that the two would-be rotating Taoisigh should be on a crash course, spinning at each other like two little Subbuteo men out of control. Given how badly each party now needs each other, however, it seems as though they now exist in a state of giving each other whatever they want. It all works out in the end, since they both want the same thing: to be in charge of Ireland, forever. As such, it is anticipated that Simon Harris will spend some unspecified amount of this term as Taoiseach even though the electoral justification for such an arrangement doesn’t really exist. 

While the parties on the left might not like to hear it, any break in this status quo will take more than a #VoteLeftTransferLeft hashtag emerging on social media the week before the public goes to the polls. It’s been over one hundred years now. It no longer seems controversial to say that a left-wing government will not materialise by chance in the aftermath of an election, trying to turn 61 seats in 88 by sheer force of will, and may actually demand some degree of cohesion between the centre-left and left over the next five years.

That will require common ground and concessions, and if Sinn Féin are truly serious about leading a left-wing government rather than a partnership with Fianna Fáil – whose leader openly hates them – then they will have to lead the way on this. In the last two years, Sinn Féin pivoted to the right, perhaps most notably on immigration, and it did them no favours whatsoever in the polls. As it stands, therefore, the left remained locked out. Jim Larkin would be proud. That’s a joke, I’m not saying Jim Larkin would be proud of the state of left-wing politics in Ireland. Actually, he’d probably be really cross.

Here in 2024, though, the symptoms of Ireland’s disaffection are clear to those with eyes to see. With 10 parties returned to the Dáil, plus Independents, the electorate remains highly fragmented. The notorious Gerry Hutch came within touching distance of a seat in inner-city Dublin. The Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly and Minister of State for Disabilities Ann Rabbitte both lost their seats, as did outgoing ‘Father of the Dáil’ Bernard Durkin. Between them, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil took in their lowest share of the first preference vote ever, signalling that they have not succeeded in arresting their collective decline, only in buying themselves more time. 

The whys and the wherefores of the election will be pored over ad nauseam by the pol corrs who live for this kind of thing – trying to discern the desires of an electoral climate wherein Holly Cairns can receive 51 transfers from an eliminated Aontú opponent – though one suspects that none of our politicos will be brave enough to say what truly needs to be said: it’s time to retire the tradition of hoisting our successful candidates up like children at a Bar Mitzvah for between five and ten seconds to celebrate and indeed symbolise their ascension to public office. 

If you were glued to the televised coverage of this year’s election results, and I’m sure you were, you will have noticed some especially painful moments of two candidates getting in on the same count, meaning that the RTÉ camera would capture one sad little king’s chair celebration that would last for only the briefest of moments before panning about ten degrees in another direction to capture the very same thing happening again, just with a different group of flat-capped, jersey-wearing middle-aged men.

Ireland once again returned a paltry number of women to the Dáil, a trend that must be reversed if for no other reason than the women seem much less likely to participate in this otherwise seemingly mandatory contrivance. At the very least we’d surely like to see our elected officials switch it up a little, perhaps with a knee-slide along the floor of the secondary school gymnasiums where most counts take place, or a triumphalist cupping of the ears at their silenced opponents and the journalists who doubted them.

At the risk of overanalysing a trivial detail, one might say that this culture of rehearsed and joyless hoisting is reflective of a political culture that lacks invention, incapable of conjuring anything other than the traditions that have defined us since the founding of the state. It’s an imperfect analogy of course, I don’t think Kevin O’Higgins ever carried Willie T Cosgrave around on his shoulders, but there’s something in there. Such a rote form of celebration, laced with no shortage of machismo is, at best, a bit tired.

For now, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have once again been hoisted back into government. With their vote share in decline and the opposition parties making sturdy gains, it may only be a matter of time before they are hoisted by their own petard.