The Continuity State Speaks. Forget Golfgate. Fear The Shinners!

The journalist John Lee has taken to the tabloid website Extra.ie to admonish Micheál Martin, Leo Varadkar and Eamon Ryan not so much for the dire performance of their shotgun coalition and the subsequent undermining of public confidence in the integrity of the government parties but rather… Well, can you guess the chief concern of the senior political editor at the conservative DMG Media group in the wake of the so-called Golfgate scandal?

…Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are bound together in a death pact in Government Buildings, where they will hunker down for as long as they can to stave off a Sinn Féin sweep.

Anyone who admires the achievements of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments of the past, and who values democracy, should want these parties to reform and prosper. The alternative is Sinn Féin, which springs from a Communist tradition, and operates an autocratic, democracy-free organisation.

Since 2008’s bank guarantee, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have separately and together allowed the long tradition of centrist consensus in Irish politics to erode – and slowly ceded the ability to be in tune with the average voter to Sinn Féin.

If they continue performing the way they have been, the centre simply will not hold.

And the terrible beauty of a Sinn Féin government will be born.

Ah yes, the breaking of the crony duopoly-and-a-bit through votes at the ballot box. What a horrendous thought. Enough to have the average right-wing Irish journo shivering in his boots. Especially one married to an up-and-coming Fianna Fáil politician. Albeit a formerly scandal-hit pol who has never actually succeeded in being elected to anything but somehow managed to gain a place in the upper house of the Oireachtas. What was that about “democracy-free” politics from the SF-abuser-in-chief at the Oirish Daily Mail?