If you didn’t tune into RTÉ’s Prime Time Leaders’ Debate last night, let me assure you that you didn’t miss anything likely to sway your vote. Rather, what you missed was defined by the incumbent leaders’ obligation to defend their questionable legacy, coupled with the opposition leader’s decision to set herself apart by attacking “these two guys,” rather than by offering substantive defence of how her party would govern the country.
In other words, Messrs Harris and Martin were once again constrained in their political promises, and in their attacks on one another, by the fact that they’ve been in Government together the past five years, while Ms McDonald and her party were defined near-entirely last night by the simple fact that they’re not those guys.
Still, bland evening that it was, and before over one million sets of eyes – many of whom seem to be politically dissatisfied to varying degrees – the confrontational approach taken by Mary Lou McDonald, and the fact that she represented the only untrodden path through what is an increasingly hostile living environment, probably saw her emerge the victor of the night.
If, indeed, there was such a thing. None of the party leaders emerged unscathed, for different reasons.
Hosts Miriam O’Callaghan and Sarah McInerney kicked off the debate by taking hold of one of the Simon Harris-shaped daggers with a question about his disastrous Kanturk encounter with carer Charlotte Fallon. While he manoeuvered past the incident without issue, he did stumble somewhat on the follow-up query about reports that Fine Gael members were in contact with RTÉ about the clip before it went to air.
Mr Harris’s insistence that it was nothing outside of the “normal contact” that happens between the media and political parties was limply intercepted by Mr Martin, who speculated aloud whether such contact “is normal or usual”.
Whether you’re of the opinion that Fine Gael acted improperly or not in acting so, damage-control optics are never ideal on the campaign trail, and this was yet another reminder that those have characterised much of the Fine Gael electioneering efforts this time around.
The Kanturk debacle was shortly followed by an obstacle for the Sinn Féin leader, who was asked to address once again her party’s pledge to commission an independent review into RTÉ’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict. Once again, she was unable – or unwilling – to identify any concrete examples that had precipitated the pledge. Far from it, she questioned why there had been such a “defensive” reaction to the suggestion, adding that “peer reviews like that are healthy” and that if she worked for RTÉ, she would “welcome mechanisms like that”.
Asked what would prevent Sinn Féin from instigating similar reviews into other media organisations, she said that they have “absolutely no intention of doing that”.
Fianna Fáil’s leader meanwhile took fire on his party’s economic record – inconveniently raised by his coalition partner, Mr Harris. Mentioning this fact that the day the public go to the polls happens to be the 14th anniversary of the beginning of the bailout programme, Mr Harris said that that’s “not something in the past, because there are people sitting at home tonight on their couches still living with the scars of the financial crash”.
To the detriment of both Mr Martin and Mr Harris, whose point backfired spectacularly, Ms McDonald pointed to the Fianna Fáil leader on her right, saying, “You brought the crash”, and to the Fine Gael leader on her left, saying, “and you brought the austerity”.
Mr Martin tried to salvage the situation by saying that as someone who was in Government at the time, he’s “learned from it”. I’m not sure how convincing that will have sounded to those members of the audience in-studio and at home who are struggling with the economic and infrastructural problems Ireland is facing after another five years of Fianna Fáil governance.
The absence of immigration was, once again, absolutely bizarre, given the centrality of the topic in debate in recent months. There’s clearly an understanding at some level that it’s an issue worth avoiding, whether out of fear of stoking unsavoury conversation or resulting from some misapprehension of public priority, but the dearth of discussion is palpable. Whether they want to discuss it ahead of the election or not, immigration is going to be forced onto the new government’s agenda fairly quickly if the recent past is anything to go by, making it all the more important that it is discussed ahead of the election. Unintelligible omission.
If that was the night in total, how did its parts perform? In offering – keep in mind – my opinion, much as my editor John McGuirk did after the Upfront Party Leaders’ debate last week, I’m basing it not so much on how well I think they each performed, as I am in how I think they’ll have been received by viewers around the country. Ranked from 1 (irredeemably horrendous) to 10 (utterly dominant).
Simon Harris: 4
The Taoiseach’s performance was completely forgettable. Not that the others’ weren’t, but he positioned himself in such a way that he appeared a sideshow to the main event the entire night. Not the show you want to put on two days away from polling day. His interjections rarely went beyond muttering, “that’s entirely untrue” or something to that effect. To be fair to him, he did try to focus on policy more than either of his rivals, but he was undercut constantly by the fact that his party has been in Government for five years now – commented upon unceasingly by Ms McDonald, to some effect.
Mary Lou McDonald: 6
Again, influenced as I am by how I think the audience will have received the performance itself, Ms McDonald always had the advantage of embodying the opposition going in. We know, as of polling this week, that 88 percent of voters want some form of change as a result of the election – Ms McDonald did a respectable job of driving home to voters that the leaders she was standing beside are unlikely to provide that, having been in Government through thick and – in her recounting – mostly thin. If she was light on her own party’s policy positions, I’m inclined to think that the relatively unknown may end up being more appealing than the prospect of more broken promises.
Micheál Martin: 5
An entirely average performance. As is his classic style, he was tetchy throughout, taking issue with the hosts’ attempts to redirect him to the content of their questions when he veered off into the land of Fianna Fáil. He steered clear of his coalition partner, Mr Harris, much of the night even as Mr Harris largely steered clear of him, choosing instead to clash with Ms McDonald. His techiness peaked, describing her question as “extraordinary”, when Miriam O’Callaghan brought up his decision to rule out a coalition with Sinn Féin, should the votes fall in that way, given his pledge not to govern with Fine Gael before the last general election.