An Irish Spring?

Ireland’s Taoiseach in waiting, Enda Kenny, seems keen to link his victory in Friday’s election to the situation in the Arab world. Declaring victory, Kenny told reporters that ‘obviously there’s been a democratic revolution here. People did not take to the streets, they took to the ballot boxes’. Though Fine Gael’s victory is certainly historic, Kenny has perhaps misunderstood what a revolution is. Ireland has been a democracy since 1922, which hardly makes for a valid comparison with the sudden end of Egypt’s decades of despotism. Neither did the people of Ireland take to the ballot boxes in revolutionary numbers. Though turnout was higher than in recent years, it was lower than at any election between 1948 and 1987. The only thing ‘obvious’ about Ireland’s ‘democratic revolution’ is that there has not been one. It is, however, a better tag line than: ‘We won the election, but not amazingly, and have replaced a party that is ideologically identical to us because most of it’s former voters voted for parties that were not us’.