Ruth Dudley Edwards: Irish establishment has conspired to avoid honest debate in president vote
The Irish Republic, my native country, is prone to being deeply smug about its successes. And for understandable reasons, there is much rejoicing if in any way it outperforms the old enemy next door.
Eurovision was a case in point, with Ireland having tied with Sweden for the most victories ever (seven), while the UK, despite all its advantages of size and musical talent, clocked up only five.
One of the saving graces of its culture, however, is humour.
An episode of Father Ted dealt hilariously with the “Aren’t-we-great?” culture and the massive financial burden on RTE in the 1990s of four years of success it couldn’t afford.
And the puppet TV personality Dustin the Turkey mercilessly lampooned everything crass about Eurovision and Ireland entries (“Oh, the voting’s tight,/but we’ll win the fight/With a wink and a smile in the Eurovision light/No block voting here, no political game/ Just a turkey with a dream and a catchy refrain”), until a sense-of-humour failing among the solemn majority sadly did for him in the semi-finals.
A familiar theme with which to bang the self-congratulatory drum is how fortunate we are to have a presidential system rather than an old-fashioned, undemocratic monarchy (although as the Queen's visit proved in 2011, when the royals flatter us enough, we are thrilled with them).
Having closely followed the two terms of President Michael D Higgins, I think that despite embarrassments on the Andrew and Harry front, royalty is safer.
Apart from anything else the actual monarch is the servant of his people and, boy, doesn’t he know it.
There would be hell to pay behind and possibly even before the scenes if he strayed across the boundaries as constantly did the egotistical Higgins.
From his praise for brutal dictators like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, the currying of public support with unquestioningly popular opinions like the increasingly anti-Israeli lamentations about Gaza, he misused his office to plug his own brand of socialism so pervasively as to be constantly undermining the government, who appeared to be afraid of him.
As the astonishing result of the votes against amending the constitution proved – proposals to alter wording to include families which are not based on marriage were defeated, as was a proposed change on the wording around the role of women in the home - the plain people of Ireland still adhere to many of the old values.
Ireland at present is bedevilled by group think, which makes it deeply disappointing that Maria Steen didn’t get the votes to challenge in public debate received opinion which is remorselessly progressive and secular.
The establishment conspired to avoid honest debate.
Fianna Fail and Fine Gael lived up to their nickname of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
In Jim Gavin and Heather Humphreys they chose two decent people who seem mercifully short on the ego front but will not be asking any difficult questions about values.
Sinn Fein bottled it by backing Catherine Connolly - whose opinions are so far left as to be comical.
About the only interesting development is that good old Irish sectarianism raised its head from the sewer in trying to make an issue of Mrs Humphreys’ husband possibly having been in the Orange Order 50 years ago.
What will be hard to bear is the smugness with which Irish society will respond if she’s elected.
Ruth Dudley Edwards is the author of ‘The Faithful Tribe: an intimate portrait of the loyal institutions’ and 'Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing and the Families’ Pursuit of Justice’
Ruth’s website is www.ruthdudleyedwards.com, Twitter is @RuthDE, Facebook is Ruth Dudley Edwards, phone is 07768 838344