Bertie's long-term ambition for the whole island
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and German Chancellor Angela Merkel address the media before holding talks in Berlin yesterday. Dr Jim McDaid says he owes Fianna Fail ?nothing? after a bruising election campaign
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ALL this last week, otherwise sane people have been going around asking one another who is going to form the next government. Let me give them a hint.
Fianna Fail has 78 seats in the incoming Dail. Bertie Ahern, if he wishes, can effectively increase the number to 79 by appointing Tony Gregory, or someone from Fine Gael or Labour, to the Chair. But he does not need to do that.
He can make little deals, or big deals, with the two-person rump of the progressive democrats, or the Fianna Fail 'gene pool' Independents or Gregory and the other left wing independent, Finian McGrath.
He has nothing to fear from any of them. He can have as secure a five-year term as either of those that he has already enjoyed.
And what if something goes wrong? An eruption at the Mahon Tribunal? The realisation that, as in the case of his friend Tony Blair, a full term of office with a resignation on the eve of an election is not really feasible? Why, then, he simply hands over the leader-in-waiting, Brian Cowen.
But whereas a scenario like that would satisfy the aspirations of most leaders, it by no means supplies the comfort zone that Bertie likes to keep about him at all times.
The zone can vary from a mere four gene-pool adherence as between 1997 and 2002, and a vast 20-seat Labour cushion. The latter is what he wanted in 1997 and almost got in 1994.
In 2002 he took the PDs on board, although he did not need them. Bertie likes to govern by consensus, or as much consensus as he can manage to wrap around him. Let us not be surprised then, if he reaches some sort of accommodation with the PDs before the Dail meets.
If he makes an offer, will they be content with the unpleasant and humiliating half-life involved? Maybe they will. They have bounced back from electoral disasters before, though never one on this scale.
But arrangements like this would not just be humiliating for them, it would be humiliating for the system. Two parties suffered severe electoral defeats last month, the PDs and Sinn Fein.
The dignified course for both would be to stay out of the way. Instead, Sinn Fein has had the impudence to demand cabinet seats. A somewhat more sensible course would be to form a Fianna Fail/Green alliance.
Two obstacles stand in the way. First, there is a massive culture clash between Fianna Fail and the Greens. Secondly, such an alliance would have no shade of a mandate.
But Bertie, of all people, is not worried about mandates, and he has bigger things at the back of his mind than his comfort zone.
He has a dazzling long-term ambition which embraces the entire island. It postulates a political system dominated by three parties, Fianna Fail, Labour and the SDLP. In some shape, the three could hold power across the 32 counties more or less for ever.
It could work, too. It would develop consensus politics to a fine art, and we like consensus politics. But it has one little fault. Democracy depends on choice, and the ultimate Bertie-style democracy, if it ever comes to pass, will leave us with almost no choice at all.
