Bad Politics is like Bad Sex
Sinn Féin backs Catherine Connolly for President
“I think Sinn Féin’s participation will be a game-changer. It will be very much game on”. - Mary Lou McDonald
Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of Sinn Féin, promised the assembled press corps a “game changer” at the ploughing championship in County Offaly on Thursday, triggering a tsunami of speculation as to who they might nominate for the upcoming Irish presidential election. Sinn Féin tantalised and teased us; they dropped the hand, the Presidential race was coming alive. Things were heating up! Social media was abuzz, ready for fireworks—a presidential candidate to sweep across the bedsheets of the nation, leaving democracy moaning “yes” in six different Irish dialects. But the crescendo? It’s over before it started. Sinn Féin backed someone already in the race. How is that a game-changer?
Much like that infamous night we’ve all experienced, the build-up from Sinn Féin was a masterclass in seduction. Sinn Féin hinted at a presidential revolution, but what they delivered was tepid small talk and a deep, uncomfortable sense of regret. It’s the democratic equivalent of “should I fake it?” Only the sound of snoring voters punctuates the night. Sometimes, the next morning, nobody even remembers it happened or wants to—least of all the ones who promised so much pleasure, yet barely managed a handshake and not even in person. Sinn Féin didn’t endorse Connolly in person. Connolly was in Galway while Sinn Féin announced its endorsement of her in Dublin. Long-distance relationships never work.
The political and media classes started shooting off texts, “Was that it?” There was the textual postmortem of Sinn Féins endorsement, comparing it to other big political announcements and wishing Sinn Féin had a bit more stamina or even just a hint of imagination. What we got was the political equivalent of “It happens to everyone”—except in this case, it happens with alarming regularity in every election for Sinn Féin. How many times under the leadership of Mary Lou have Sinn Féin botched an election? Promised so much but failed to deliver.
Connolly, for those who don’t know, is Ireland’s self-declared moral compass; she’d cross-examine the weather if it were bad. This grand coalition of the left is the political equivalent of a teenage garage band convinced their three-chord routine is a revolution—they’ve cobbled together Connolly’s candidacy: a little bit of hope, a dash of sentiment, and a heavy dose of “well, she’s not one of them.” The unspoken problem with Connolly is not her links with Russian-aligned politicians or junkets to Syria while the dictator in situ was committing war crimes, but that she has been a politician for over 20 years with no significant accomplishments. Sinn Féin’s endorsement is not an embrace, it’s a reluctant handshake at the end of their own tedious search for a realistic left-wing candidate, a desperate attempt by a party long addicted to rage cosying up to something that won’t scare the middle classes too much and offers the party enough distance if Connolly’s campaign goes badly awry.
Mary Lou McDonald’s philharmonic leadership of left-wing leaders’ backing of Connolly looks less like a triumphant alliance and more like an exhausted choir singing the same tired protest song for the hundredth time. If Connolly wins, it won’t be a thunderclap of change. It’ll be a polite cough in the corner of a crowded room, a reminder that for all the bluster and promises, the left still struggles to move beyond its own echo chamber and deliver anything more substantial than a hashtag or a protest placard. But at least they’ll all have tried—again—because political ineptitude is like a bad night out in Temple Bar, and the Irish left has been nursing that hangover for far too long. After years of political half-measures, perhaps this is an entirely necessary one. A grand coalition of the left as an alternative to over a century of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil hegemony come the next general election.
Bad politics is like bad sex, both are grand rituals built on feverish promises that collapse into a sticky, unremarkable silence, where everyone involved ends up looking up at the ceiling searching for meaning in the mould spots. Ultimately, everyone is left feeling disappointed. Voters and lovers alike are left stranded in limbo, wondering if the problem is themselves or the system, searching for solace in the aftermath of a massive anti-climax.