By far and away my favourite bit of last night’s RTE debate amongst nine party leaders and Joan Collins was when they finally got around to debating housing at 11.10pm, long after anyone with a bit of sense had gone to bed.
What, asked host Katie Hannon of each of the leaders, should the price of a house be in Dublin?
They all looked flummoxed, as well they should. Was Hannon asking them about a five-bedroom house on Rathgar Road, one of which is presently on the market for about €3million? Or was she asking them about a dingy one-bed cottage in Santry, which you might be able to pick up for a still extortionate €250k? More to the point, did Hannon think that these people – a Muinteoir, a degree-free prodigy, a law professor, and a lifelong socialist activist amongst others – have the power to dictate the price of homes in Dublin?
It was an utterly stupid question, as most of her questions on the night were.
We began with a full half hour on who might get into bed with who after the election. This produced a truly hilarious spectacle, as the politicians tried their very best to deflect Hannon’s questions onto policy and were continuously rebuffed. Mary Lou wanted to talk about housing, but Hannon was having none of it. “We’ll get to that later”, she declared. And they did. Over an hour later, when everyone had gone to sleep.
Instead, Hannon, in the manner of nosiest and most prurient gossip on the morning after an office Christmas party, wanted to know who would be doing the walk of electoral shame from Simon Harris’s house on the Saturday morning after the big event on Friday the 29th, and who would remain chaste and pure. The answer to the latter question was, it turned out, Dicky Boyd Barrett. Nobody’s quite ideologically virginial enough to share his bed, it seems.
Elsewhere, Peadar Toibin won’t be eating breakfast with Simon Harris, that’s for sure. He won’t be doing any business with Fine Gael, says he – but he’s open to cuddling up to Micheál Martin and his “empty husk” of a party. Peadar’s rizz might need some work there.
It was, we should say, an assured outing for the Aontu leader, who took full advantage of his positioning close to the centre of the stage to get his spake in on almost every topic, and throw plenty of punches. He’ll have won some votes, I think.
In any case, Hannon was awful. I won’t harp on about it at length, but truly awful. Perhaps this was exemplified most in her question about Gaza, which was intended to give the ten stooges a minute or so each to state that each and every one of them agreed entirely with all of the others, but instead turned into a long shouting match where Richard Boyd Barrett was allowed to play the student politician and shout at everyone else, and Mary Lou McDonald and Simon Harris had the world’s most embarrassing row over which of them would tell more home truths to Donald Trump in the White House next year. The world awaits that spectacle, I’m sure.
We got about three minutes, right at the end, on immigration. Before that, we had a lengthy and sleep-inducing section on climate change, which per polling is the top concern of about 1% of voters, almost all of whom live in Montrose. There was little to nothing on crime. The economy section was a shouting match over who would spend most money.
As to who did well? Look, these are my verdicts. They might well be wrong. And I’m judging the party leaders here not by how much I personally agreed with them but by how much I think they helped themselves with their target audience. Marks are out of 10, with 10 being the greatest debate performance since Cicero denounced the Cataline conspiracy, and 1 being what you might get from a toddler if you asked him or her for logical arguments for being allowed to watch one more hour of Peppa Pig.
Joan Collins: 3
Said some things, but nobody really knew why she was there. Irrelevant to most voters since only voters in her own constituency can vote for her party.
Cian O’Callaghan: 2
Probably did more harm to the Soc Dems than good. Looked horrendously nervous all night, and didn’t manage a single memorable point.
Michael Collins: 4
The Independent Ireland leader was fine, but his competition on the night was Toibin, and Toibin comprehensively outshone him. He didn’t make any blunders, but he was very passive – rarely interjecting and thus fading into the background when not called upon. Needs a lot more practice if he’s going to perform as a party leader at this level.
Micheál Martin: 5
A par performance from the Muinteoir. If you were an FF voter going into the debate, there was nothing here to put you off. He annoyed me greatly with his spiel about how he “lead the country through the pandemic”, but you could feel FFers at home nodding with that patented FF pride in their man.
Simon Harris: 6
Look Harris’s performance will divide opinion, but the purpose of this debate was not to persuade people who hate him. It was to do two things: Keep his own voters onside, and make a pitch to the undecided. He had a wobbly and unnecessarily snippy moment over the Children’s Hospital, but otherwise he maintained his consistent pitch: I am young, have energy, and am in command of my brief – so why risk change?
Roderic O’Gorman: 4
Not great. Not terrible. There was nothing here to recruit new Green voters, but that wasn’t his objective. His objective was to position his party back in the left-wing sphere for transfers from the Soc Dems and Labour. He did that, and it was notable that he took very few blows from the left all night after spending years in Government with FF and FG. The Greens will be satisfied, if not thrilled.
Peadar Toibin: 7
There’s a fine line between being aggressive and turning into Scrappy Doo. I thought Toibin just about stayed on the right side of it, though there were a few close shaves. But arguably, he was one of the candidates with the most to gain, and he made very effective use of the time given to him. His was an ever-present in combat, drew clear distinctions with the other parties, and made an effective closing pitch. I think he’ll have added votes – and they need every vote they can get.
Ivana Bacik: 3
Look it’s important to be honest – I cannot judge Bacik objectively, since her voice and moralising tone make me want to mute the television every time she speaks. So perhaps I’m marking her a point or two too low here, or perhaps too high. A friend of mine says of the Labour Party that it often feels like they’d like you to fill out an application form before voting for them, to see if you’re sufficiently morally superior to be counted a supporter. I suppose that appeals to some people, but I hope it’s not that many.
Richard Boyd Barrett: 6
When judging Boyd Barrett, you have to remember that he’s not even trying to talk to 95% of the country. He’s going after that 5% of the vote to whom swivel-eyed shouting about the big corporations just seems to make sense. And he delivered a lot of swivel-eyed shouting, far more than anyone else. So he probably helped himself with his target audience.
Mary Lou McDonald: 5
There are two ways of looking at this. On the one hand, this wasn’t anything like the Mary Lou of 2020. The old “100 years of FF and FG” line seemed to fall a little flat, in part because she kept following it up with how much money the country has to spend, and how we’ve never been richer. So which is it?
The other thing was that she went in early on Harris with both feet on his “lack of compassion”, and he turned that back on her very effectively, forcing her into a retreat.
On the other hand, I thought she steadied the Sinn Fein ship pretty well. Like Meehawl, if you were a Shinner before that debate, you’ll still be one thereafter. So not a bad outing. It just feels to me like that 2020 magic is gone, though, and that last night was a tribute act to days of glory past, rather than a convincing pitch to the 2024 electorate.
Katie Hannon: – 40
Probably the worst performance by a debate moderator in living memory. A drink-addled giraffe would have done a better job, and a more entertaining one. The whole thing was a mess, and that’s entirely her fault.