Gavan Reilly: Rishi’s dithering gives Leo a good shot at re-election

We knew 2024 was going to be a dramatic electoral and political year, but who would have thought that Rishi Sunak might have handed the coalition the best possible chance of staying in office?

Much like Ireland, the UK doesn’t technically have to have a general election this year – and while both countries’ opinion polls are led by the opposition, it would be impractical to push either election into 2025 and both are likely to occur in the second half of this year.

Sunak said as much last week, amid some speculation that the early rescheduling of the UK’s ‘spring statement’ (a sort of mini-budget) could mean an election taking place in the more traditional window of early May. The supposed rationale was that if the statement included some good news, Sunak would immediately run to the country and capitalise on the one electoral weapon he can control – the element of surprise.

It’s possible that Sunak might do precisely that, and that his public announcement of an election in the second half of the year is merely a diversion to catch Labour unawares. But there is a curious symmetry in this being the speculated agenda of the British government, when here at home we might be looking at exactly the same circumstance. Most people (myself now included) believe that if the coalition gets that far, it will announce a relatively giveaway budget in the second week of October and immediately run to the country for approval.

The speculated date for the British election is now Thursday 14th November. If so, because British law requires 25 working days notice to be given, the election would officially be called on Thursday 10th October - just two days after a bells-and-whistles giveaway budget is scheduled to be announced here. It is even possible that both countries could announce general elections on the same day, with polling perhaps within the same week.

Of course, these islands will not be the only places voting in pivotal elections that month. The United States goes to the polls on Tuesday 5th November, with the genuine prospect of legitimately electing a candidate who has spent years trying to undermine the last election. It is not impossible that Donald Trump might even be elected president from a jail cell.

In that democratic crisis comes opportunity for Leo Varadkar’s outgoing coalition. Enormous political upheaval in the United States, and the binning of a 14-year Conservative government in Britain, could hand the outgoing coalition here a potent electoral weapon: the avoidance of risk in a radically altered world. The spendthrift budget could be offered as proof of fiscal competence: ‘look what we can keep delivering if you only keep us in place’.

Of course it’s possible Sinn Féin and other opposition parties could try to capitalise on those winds of change, likening Fine Gael’s tenure to that of the Tories across the water. But the other two elections will be enormously stifling in the news agenda in October: so much so, that the ‘risk’ of change might prove to be the government’s best electoral gambit.