If there is one lesson to be learnt from the Sunday Independent series of Millward Brown polls, it is that City Hall is in trouble.
y City Hall (Tammany Hall might be more appropriate), we mean that special clique of politicians, social partners, mandarins and business insider classes who have parcelled the State up between themselves since independence.
Up to now, City Hall has shown the resilience of that cockroach that scuttles away unharmed from a nuclear explosion. But now when it comes to the weakest political link, City Hall is uneasy.
The essence of City Hall politics is to keep enough people happy for enough of the time to be re-elected so you can fulfil your task of carving up the country with your vested interest friends.
The dangerous news our series of Millward Brown polls reveals is that something has begun to malfunction when it comes to the great old Irish game of business as usual.
A strange dissonance has emerged between the record levels of disaffection in Irish politics and the glacial immobility of our political parties.
In a scenario where dissatisfaction with the Government is at 74 per cent, where the Taoiseach has a 66 per cent dissatisfaction rating and the Tanaiste consistently has a 16 per cent satisfaction rating, one would expect that the Opposition would be thriving.
Instead we find Fianna Fail's support is actually down 3 per cent since February 2013 whilst Sinn Fein has risen by a mere 1 per cent.
Such a scenario suggests the electorate has disconnected itself from the Tweedle-dumb versus Tweedledumber variant of civil war politics as is normally practised.
Significantly, it is a disconnection that poses difficulties for more parties than the Opposition. Fine Gael may currently be in the box seats of Irish politics, courtesy of the affable cynicism of the Noonan doctrine, which believes that if FG secures the support of one in six citizens, then it is sure to be back in one variant or another of Coalition.
It might represent a long march from the delights of the 'democratic revolution', but, if replacing Fianna Fail as the custodians of the strong men who have a stake in the country will be enough to see Fine Gael segue into a second term in government, few tears will be shed over the quiet murder of the Just Society wing of the party.
The problem for Fine Gael, and the opportunity for everyone else, lies in the 84 per cent of voters who do not feel Fine Gael is building a country that will allow them have a stake in its future. Intriguingly, the Opposition alternatives and Labour have been unable to fully exploit this opportunity.
In the case of Labour, its relationship with FG increasingly resembles that silent movie heroine who protests impotently as she is bound to the train tracks by a James Reilly-lookalike villain.
The electorate are too pragmatic to give their full consent to a Sinn Fein party they perceive to be careerists dressed up in the clothes of radicalism, whilst they suspect electing that jumble of opposites which constitute our Independents is unlikely to rebuild the ruined architecture of their lives.
As FF struggles to emerge from its status as a home for political amnesiacs, nostalgia junkies and those whose tribal impulse means they cannot bear to have a Blueshirt around the place, all eyes increasingly turn to the political potential of the Reform Alliance (RA). Such interest may, however, pose as many difficulties as opportunities.
The first difficulty is that, to borrow from the parables, should the RA desire to be fishers of votes, merely casting from one side of the boat means the catch will be half the size of its true potential.
A party of genuine Reform which is not informed by the views of the left is not worth the penny candle for it will merely be a social club for Liter PD manque and dispossessed FG types. Similarly, those of the left who go it alone or as a loosely aligned group run the risk of becoming little more than a Liter version of the old Democratic Left.
Ultimately, the RA faces far more practical problems than the loss of voter confidence in failed ideologies or the electorate's distaste for the current administration's variant of the politics of Bertie crossed with Berlusconi.
One of the features of all Great Disruptions, be it the American Depression or the Weimar Republic, is that new forms of politics emerge as a response to the failure of old ways. This has not yet happened in Ireland and the ongoing status of the RA as a party that isn't a party but might yet be a party if the party they were once in (FG) isn't nice enough to invite them back suggests that it's not going to happen in a hurry.
But is the belief, which has not been discouraged by some of the RA, that they intend to wait until after the local elections before forming a party as clever as it appears to be?
Technically, there is some sense in the view that the RA should not become a party before the council elections, given the potential that such a contest has of strangling the new party before it is even born. However, an electorate that is fed up with cute-hoor politics may turn chilly if, like all the other failed old parties, the RA starts looking as though it is too cute for its own good.
Intriguingly, Enda, who is all too aware of the spectral PD-style dangers posed by the RA, struck hard at the central weakness of the non-party, many of whose non-members prefer Dail bar-style musings over the sort of cold steel that wins leadership battles.
Kenny's apropos of nothing meditations about the level of hard work and of meetings with the citizens that is required to successfully set up a new party struck a chord with those who wonder if the RA is too assiduously trying to avoid a call to arms.
After all, even if the RA does establish itself as a new political party prior to next May, this does not mean the RA is obliged to contest the next local elections. Instead, it can clearly state that it is prioritising the Dail elections even as our Alliance sift through the council results for readymade recruits.
The RA might consider one other factor. Fine Gael currently is the largest Irish party because, when it comes to austerity and ensuring that the trains run on time, it is doing what it says on the tin. In contrast, no one knows what the SF or Independent tins contain, the Labour tin has spilt whilst when it comes to FF, the paint is still too old and flaky.
When it comes, though, to the desire of voters for reform, the RA is unique in that, given all the blood spilt by those ministerial resignations, could anyone deny that a party led by Lucinda Creighton and Roisin Shortall would be for honest dealing and real reform. Who could doubt either that such a Reform Alliance, given its past iconography, would not be beholden to vested interests or the eternally semi priapic politics of cute old hoordom.
But, of course, for such a happy day to occur, such a party must first exist ... and soon. Courage, after all, is proven by external deeds rather than internal debates.
