The Michaels are having a very bad Irish Presidential election. That is Taoiseach Micheál (yes I know it’s Mee-hawl not Mike-hal but give a girl some literary freedom) Martin TD who hand-picked Jim Gavin unhopeful as the candidate for Irish presidential debate and Senator Michael McDowell who admitted in the Irish Times that he didn’t nominate Maria Steen (my mate) because he thought she could win but that she was also divisive. That is a contradiction in terms.
First consider the case of our great glorious President of Gaza European branch and sometime Taoiseach Micheál Martin TD. Just what exactly is the point of this man? I am an outsider when it comes to the Irish political scene, being far more familiar with UK politics, but I am trying to think of an equivalent. Perhaps Grant Shapps or any of the other completely useless mostly former Tory MPs who were intent on modernising the party, moving it away from its core voters. This experiment was so successful they now risk being wiped out by Reform UK.
Martin has been around the town for quite some time and is, unaccountably, reasonably popular with the voters. My parents seem to like him for some reason.
But one has to question Mr Martin’s famed political acumen in handpicking poor Dim-Jim Gavin, most famous for winning some sort of sporting competition I am not that familiar with. Now call me crazy but being a great manager of a football team be it the GAA or the soccer does not mean you will be very good at politics, political campaigning or make a very good President.
Can someone please explain to me, why making say Harry Redknapp Minister for Foreign Affairs in the great country of Great Britain would be a good idea. Because that’s essentially what Micheál Martin TD has done here, only Harry Redknapp has a lot more hair than Dim Jim.
(Above. Harry Redknapp. Previously manager of AFC Bournemouth, West Ham United, Portsmouth, Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur, Queens Park Rangers and Birmingham City. Unsuitable to be head of state.)
But Micheál Martin TD thought Jim Gavin was just a great idea. It was clear to me at the Sunday debate that Jim was well out of his depth. And that is against two not so stellar candidates. For me, it is not Jim’s questionable financial details of a Father Ted nature ‘that money was just resting in my account’ but the fact he was a very poor communicator which was the problem. You would think the ability to communicate on the telly -box would be pretty important if you want to be President of Ireland. Surely Mr Martin knew this, he’s not a bad communicator himself. As we walk through the wreckage of egos on Monday morning surely, our great leader Taoiseach Micheál Martin TD owes not just the Irish people an apology for asking us to vote for Jim Gavin but also owes one to his party and arguably to Dim Jim Gavin himself.
It is bad enough that the Taoiseach thought Jim Gavin was a suitable person to represent Ireland but we must remember he also blocked Maria Steen from getting on the ballot. His defence is, we are not there to help the opposition. That might work for a position with executive power. As I have said before, and needs to be repeated, the President has zero executive power. She can refer legislation to the Supreme Court to check its constitutionality but other than that it is a figurehead position. Therefore there is certainly an argument that the Taoiseach should not turn the screws on TDs, which Micheál Martin did to make sure none of them nominated Maria Steen.
We can’t have the electorate getting ideas above their station. We can’t have them getting notions. This is from the same man who bowed to pressure from the taxpayer funded and useless NGOs to run those stupid family referendums that were roundly rejected by the electorate.
Which leaves me asking again – just what is the point of Taoiseach Micheál Martin? All he does I pontificate on Gaza, try to delete mother and family from the Irish constitution (on Mother’s Day!) and block credible candidates from the Presidential election while offering up someone who is quite frankly so out of depth it is an insult to the Irish people to ask them to vote for him.
And then there is the other Michael – Senator Michael McDowell. He’s having a bad election, that lad. Last week in his weekly column in the Irish Times he took time out from criticising Trump to explain why he didn’t nominate Maria Steen. He said, “I was opposed to her election, which might very well have happened, in my view. It would have been divisive and a step backwards for the kind of Ireland I believe in.”
That’s a bit of a head scratcher, that one. I didn’t nominate Maria as I thought she could win, but she is also divisive. Really? I would have thought it was very difficult for a divisive candidate to win the Irish presidency as you cannot win elections in the PR system without building a broad coalition of supporters. Senator McDowell surely can’t think Maria, a qualified barrister, architect and homeschooler to five children is less qualified than Jim Gavin, even if he does know his way around a GAA pitch. That would be misogynistic if that was his view.
But Michael, in his great wisdom, thought it was in the interests of the Irish electorate to deny them the chance to decide for themselves on the candidacy of Maria Steen, which if you ask me is a tad paternalistic if not downright pompous. Sure enough in the Sunday Independent poll, 44% of those surveyed said Maria should be on the ballot, while 46% said no. 10% said they didn’t know. To the question of whether they would have voted for Maria if she was a candidate 63% said No, 22% said Yes and 15% said they didn’t know. So there was a lot of work to do by her campaign team if Maria hadn’t been blocked by Michaels which is what happened.
Now we have the ludicrous and embarrassing situation where there are three names on the ballot to be President of Ireland but one of those people no longer wants to be considered by the electorate as a candidate. Yet the one candidate that plenty of voters and big wigs in the media did want to be on the ballot was kept off it by The Michaels. That’s the kind of contempt the political class have for the voters in Ireland these days. And yet they call it progress.