Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Meet Micheál Martin, Ireland’s new Taoiseach

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, Ireland’s new Taoiseach. Photo: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

Four months after the election, Ireland finally has a government and a prime minister, Taoiseach Micheál Martin. The country has since independence been governed by the two old Civil War parties – a conflict without any resonance whatever in contemporary Ireland – and, surprise surprise, it still is. The difference now is that whereas previously, Tweedledum and Tweedledee took it in turns to govern, now they’re doing it together, with indispensable help from the Greens.

The remarkable performance of Sinn Féin under Mary Lou McDonald in the February elections when the party won more votes than any other was traumatic for the Irish political establishment. It brought home that in the Republic now, the divide isn’t between the two old parties; it’s between them and the Momentum style left – Sinn Féin with its Corbynite economic agenda and toxic IRA connections – and smaller parties such as People Before Profit which together have pretty well seen off the old Labour party. Socialist TD Paul Murphy is perhaps typical of that bit of the spectrum, not least when he condemned the new government as a ‘last ditch attempt’ by the political establishment to hang onto power, a coalition that would represent the rich, the landlords and big business. It sounds like same-old, class war stuff, but it was resentment of the old order that nearly brought Sinn Féin to power in February.

That sense that no matter what the government, things would remain the same made for dull politics, but gave Ireland a certain psychological stability

There have been endless attempts to define the differences between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. There are umpteen tropes – Fine Gael is the party of big business and big farmers; Fianna Fáil the party with stronger Republican credentials and more upfront nationalism, of small farmers and clericalism. But essentially there wasn’t, isn’t, a difference.

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