Gavan Reilly: Whisper it: FF and FG already miss a third party partner

Remember the riddle from your childhood, what would happen if a chameleon was put in front of a mirror? In fact it’s a nonsense: chameleons don’t change their colour based on a desire to blend in, but rather based on their emotion. They are generally nervous creatures, so change their environment at all and they will simply change colour.

But the analogy – the idea of a creature continually changing its outward look, in response to some perceived threat – is still one that I think holds water. It certainly came to mind on Monday as the coalition resumed its grapple with housing, and in trying to find quick-ish solutions that might be acceptable to both its parties.

Internally, the dynamic in the last government was not such defined by relations between the big two parties, as their collective relationship with the Greens. Whether it was on taming agricultural carbon emissions, the dispute about investment in roads versus cycling and ‘walking infrastructure’, or a future funding model for the likes of RTÉ, the big debates were the Greens on one side and ‘the others’ facing them down.

That meant life in government was an especially gruelling task for the Greens, but for the bigger two parties it was useful to have a third wheel with a clear ideological point of difference. Not only did it provide a third voice in the room to blunt the innate instincts of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to take shots at each other, it gave them a ‘common enemy’ for popular scapegoating and something against which they could define themselves.

The value of that cannot be overstated. For two ‘broad church’, big tent parties, definition has always been slippery: the parties change their shape to suit the environment they’re in. We’re only a month into that new government, without the Greens there as an ideological buffer, and the gears are already straining against each other.

The Independents have not become the same kind of buffer – in fact, they seem to have accepted some internal relegation already. Shortly after the election Simon Harris reminded us of the importance of the Monday night leaders’ meetings ahead of Cabinet on Tuesday mornings, and how vital a clearing house these were. We were then told Seán Canney would be the ‘leader’ of the five independent ministers, attending fora like these… but he’s not invited. Nor is there a spokesperson for the independents in our weekly post-cabinet briefings with the Government’s press secretaries.

Without a common opponent, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael aren’t able to point to a third party and unite behind a rival. Sure, there’s Sinn Féin on the opposition benches. But internally, where ministers will spend most of their time, there’s no other scapegoat: there’s just each other.

And just a month in, the results are clear. The two parties, combined, have compounded the mess in housing. What is their solution? To come forward with proposals that the other side can’t hack. Two chameleons, changing colours in response to each other, paralysed by the need to define their differences.