GAVAN REILLY: This drab but crucial election suits the Big Two down to the ground

So, here we are. Halfway through the campaign, 10 days after the hustings started, and 10 days before we go to the polls.

And, let’s be frank: it’s all a little bit drab.

I think this is partly down to how quickly the general election has followed the budget season and is prime kite flying season; as the saying goes, show me your budget and I’ll show you your priorities. The pre-Dail think-ins were already dominated by budget talk, given that the announcement of this year’s measures was brought forward by a week. Now, no sooner have we gotten one sets of wish lists, we are catapulted into another. You can understand why people might be fatigued, or cynical, or both.

To be fair, the budget wishlist only entailed spending one year of surplus state cash; election manifestos involve spending five years worth of cash in a three-week window.

Even at that, the debate seems a little detached from reality. I have written here before about the dangers of increasing every day core spending, albeit with the pressures of a pandemic, a war in Europe and an inflation crisis. There still seems to be a level of detachment from the threats to Ireland’s corporate tax receipts from the new occupant of the White House come next January: yes, he didn’t manage to deliver all of his on his first term, but this time around he comes in with a completely compliant Congress and with some experience of how to pull the levers. We ought to be genuinely worried.

But we are where we are, and little - beyond Michael O’Leary’s comments about teachers, and the John McGahon controversy - appears to have landed. If other points are struggling to find their place in the news cycle, 10 days out from polling, then it is reasonable to conclude that the everyday voter (who is probably not yet as engaged as the media) hasn’t heard much new either.

And, I’m beginning to think, this is by design.

Regular political watchers will know the principle of how, during summertime when the political machines are stood down, the incumbent parties tend to do better. The usual thesis is that, when the Dáil goes into its summer recess, opposition parties stop making an impact and the government looks better or more stable by default. The same principle might be about to apply now.

I’m writing this week’s column from the Smock Alley Theatre in Temple Bar, where Sinn Féin is about to launch its own manifesto.

This might be the last opportunity for a bolt from the blue: a chance to push some adrenaline into a campaign that seems curiously subdued. For the first time the country has a choice between governments of the centre-right and a centre-left… and nobody has yet managed to make it feel like the pivotal crossroads that it is.

And that suits the big two parties just fine. If they come back with 80-ish seats in the next Dail they’ll find some configuration of colleagues to make up the numbers. The job for the last ten days is for others to burst the bubble.

Gavan Reilly is Political Correspondent with Virgin Media News and Political Columnist with the Meath Chronicle. Column appears first in Tuesday's paper!