A year ago, there was an opportunity to offer the electorate something really different. Instead, the choice has been made to offer the electorate some empty rhetoric.
It is, perhaps, the stupidest three paragraphs of text ever suggested to an Irish Government.
Our political class now appears to be in such a desperate state of panic that the apparent priority here was not to think matters through, but to rush the story into print.
The last time a Government lost the co-operation and consent of the Irish people to govern them, it was largely as a result of policing tactics like these, and the injudicious use of its monopoly on the use of force.
The Soc Dems have every chance of watching Labour sink, and picking up the survivors. In the meantime, they have no reason to lash themselves to a sinking ship.
Politics 101: If you want people to abandon one idea, you need to give them a better set of ideas.
In a referendum campaign, the side that tells the better story usually wins.
The significance of 2023 is that it is the year when “far right” stopped being a label people feared, and began to become a standing joke.
Handing out “end of year awards” to politicians is a venerable and stupid Irish media tradition
But perhaps your correspondent is simply getting cynical in his advancing years. Time will tell.
We will find out soon enough how well he has thought his policies through. And we should learn from both his successes, and his errors.
We don’t treat our politicians like that here, for better, or for worse.