Varadkar & Martin Will Be Cautious Of Green Pact

 

Varadkar & Martin Will Be Cautious Of Green Pact

 

In the lead up to the 2020 General Election, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were neck and neck in the polls, both vying for the leadership of the nation, hopeful that it would not require the other to do so, not in terms of a coalition at least. That did end up playing out, with Fianna Fáil narrowly beating Fine Gael in terms of seats. What was unanticipated however, was that Sinn Féin would elect the most TDs.

The hopes of another ‘confidence and supply’ agreement, possibly with the reversal of roles, were dashed, and FF and FG were forced to go into government with each other for the first time in both of their histories. They didn’t exactly form a government based on leading parties, with the role of Taoiseach rotating between the two party leaders.

There was a minor party in government with them though, the Green Party, who look set to face the ‘smaller government party’ slump in the next general election, possibly only returning its leader and deputy-leader to the Dáil. There is hope that they will return a third or fourth TD in the Dublin area, but outside of the capital, it appears that the party is done for. For a decade at least anyway, until people forget that they were in government and vote for them again, as seems to be the cycle with the party.

Should the electoral map remain the same for the next election (it very well may not), then Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will be 10-15 seats short of a governing majority, and even at that they’ll want a buffer of 5 TDs or so to account for rogue backbenchers and political scandals. With the Greens hovering around the 4% mark in polls, they’ll be lucky to return 4 TDs , far from what will be needed by FF and FG to bring them into a government, unless it is a rainbow government that would include Social Democrats and Labour also.

So will they risk aligning themselves to a lost cause, particularly when they are already trying to keep a good distance between the minor government party? Environmental measures are left for the Greens to deal with, Éamon Ryan and co. are left to deliver their own announcements, they operate almost like a separate government, and that’s not accidental.

Varadkar and Martin know that the Greens are politically toxic outside of certain metropolitan areas, but that they are needed to keep the show on the road. They don’t want to be associated with discarded infrastructure plans, the rise in fuel costs, the banning of turf, the almost dictatorial imposition of unused cycle lanes, the prospect of the culling of the national herd, the threat to the national food and energy supplies, leaving homes cold and fridges without food.

But they are associated with it, because they are just as responsible as the Greens for these measures, they are the government. They may not want the public to perceive this, but many now look at the planned annihilation of living standards, and see all three as the culprits.

As desperate as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are now to stay clear of their Green colleagues, wait until election time, when they will be even more desperate for rural votes. With Sinn Féin polling stronger in urban areas, they know that electing TDs in rural constituencies will be crucial for them to retain power, and they know that the Greens will be tallying zero votes across many rural boxes.

They also know that the Rural Independents could be set to benefit from their alignment with the anti-rural policies of the Green Party, a party whose leader wants entire villages to share a handful of cars while offering no public transport services, a leader who is trying to decimate rural communities by restricting the ability of people to build homes, while former Junior Minister Damien English is given a slap on the wrist for questionable practices to secure planning permission for his own rural home.

It will be interesting to see how the party leaders handle the cross-party strategies of the next general election, given the history of partners in government generally sticking together throughout the campaign. But how will rural TDs and candidates for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael canvass constituencies like County Limerick, Clare, Mayo, and Kerry, when their parties are intentionally hurting these areas with their partners, the Green Party? It will be interesting to see if the distance between them that they are trying to portray, will widen even more over the coming months.