Somebody in Sinn Féin has a sense of humour. The party launched its election campaign in Dublin's Royal Irish Academy, otherwise known as the RIA. A lovely venue on Dawson Street.
When the time comes to tell the story of election 2016, will Gerry Adams deny having ever been there? Will the initials lead to confusion?
“Mr Adams, have you ever been in the RIA?” “I have never been in the RIA. I was never a member of the RIA.
“But let me say this: I will not condemn RIA volunteers who have done so much for the humanities, not just in this State but on an all-island basis.”
“Yes, I was in the IRA, but everybody knows that. It’s a great place for launching campaigns.”
But the choice of venue played second fiddle to Sinn Féin’s sense of achievement in showing up its political rivals in an area where the party has long struggled for credibility – economics.
Constantly fighting charges that its policies amount to an unrealistic, populist offering of “fantasy economics”, the party enjoyed the view from the high moral ground for a change yesterday.
The early stages of the campaign, when parties should be setting out their stalls for the contest to come, have been completely overshadowed by a tussle between the frontrunners for ownership of “the fiscal space”.
This phrase – people are heartily sick of it already – describes the amount of money the next government might have for tax cuts and spending increases by forecasting how much should go into the national piggy bank over the next five years. Barring accidents and the like.
Outside of the bickering politicians, voters hoping for some early guidance to inform their intentions have been steered into a confusing clash of the calculators.
Twelve billion? Ten? Eight? Some would say the argument firmly belongs in “how long is a piece of string?” territory, but for the moment, the lower, space-saving figure advanced all along by Sinn Féin appears the most accurate.
The other parties have been scrambling to adjust and justify theirs. When they rolled out their "Fine Gael Figures Don't Add Up" billboard last week, Sinn Féin couldn't have hoped for a better result.
And Gerry Adams also proved more adept than Enda Kenny at avoiding questions involving hard sums and difficult mathematics when asked the "fiscal space" question.
Instead of trying, unconvincingly, to talk around it, he smoothly deferred to Pearse Doherty, his finance spokesman.
After all, that’s what he’s there for. Gerry is good at the tweets. To be fair, he answered when pressed again later on and managed a halting and somewhat tortured response.
F-word
The
Labour
Party had its launch in the afternoon at the Bord Gáis Theatre in Dublin’s docklands.
Joan Burton
declared she was banning the “F word” and wouldn’t be subjecting people to any more about the “fiscal space”.
Damned maths. That’s actually two words. The Labour leader was all fired up for the launch.
She stood in the middle of the platform in the foyer with her deputy leader, Alan Kelly, to her right and Expenditure and Public Reform Minister, Brendan Howlin, to her left.
The box office was to her far left, an image neatly explaining one of Labour’s big problems in this election. “Balance” was the buzz word of the day.
In Labour’s vision of “shared recovery,” the party offers a very necessary balance to their preferred partners, Fine Gael, said Joan.
Although they could just as easily have offered themselves as ballast. Either would do, if it gets Labour aboard the ship of state again.
“Balanced and brilliant,” announced Brendan Howlin, with no small amount of modesty. He said it twice.
But he wasn’t being big-headed. He said he was quoting EU economics commissioner Pierre Moscovici’s verdict on Ireland’s economic growth.
There won't be much balance from Sinn Féin or Fianna Fáil, warned the Tánaiste. Sinn Féin can't be trusted and Fianna Fáil made a pig's ear of the economy the last time they were in power.
“Beware of Sinn Féin creeping in in the night and raising taxes for those earning over €100,00 by a swingeing 6 per cent,” quivered Joan, like she was reading a Scare at Bedtime.
Balancing act
Brendan Howlin also put the frighteners on with Fianna Fáil. He’s old enough “to remember the last time they inflicted carnage on the Irish people in the 1970s and 1980s. They are serial offenders. They can’t be let back.”
The trio on the platform made for an unusual balancing act. Joan Burton in the middle – the fulcrum – with Howlin the see and Kelly the saw.
If they don’t make it back to government they won’t be able to run away to join the circus.
Thanks to the presence of Alan Kelly, their balance was way off-beam. The Minister, yet again, managed to derail a Labour set-piece event.
As a result, Joan and Brendan’s professional and well-argued performance slid out of the carefully set-up PR frame.
Once more, the exploits of AK47 – an unfortunate moniker for a man who keeps shooting himself in the foot – thrilled the media.
This time, it's the Bust-up on the Battle Bus. Kelly was closely questioned on reports he had a row with broadcaster Chris Donoghue of Newstalk in their mobile studio in Tipperary before taking part in a panel discussion with two other local politicians.
Donoghue, who was in the audience, is making no comment, but Kelly looked very unsettled after he denied launching a "verbal assault" on the journalist because he was annoyed Donoghue recorded a one-on-one with Michael Lowry while he – a Minister – was relegated to a discussion with Cllr Michael Smith and Mattie McGrath.
This yarn may have legs. As for the brash Minister? He agreed he wasn’t happy. But that was all. And as he’s never shy about pointing – nobody puts Kelly in the corner.
