The election posters are just down... they will soon be back

Just when you thought that was the end of elections in 2024, it looks like they are only beginning. The posters are just down. They will soon be back.

The Government has until March of next year to hold a general election. The timing – which they control – is a very big decision for them, the most important political one they make.

When to call an election is technically in the Taoiseach’s sole control, so long as the Taoiseach controls a majority in the Dáil. But in this coalition, it will be decided collectively. This Government learned in this election – especially Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil – that they are better together.

But, in any event, securing a consensus on that will not be difficult. Following the results of the Local and European elections, the Government’s strategy for the year will now be vote often, vote early. And early means the later part of October.

Why? There are lots of reasons. First is the good principle of not quitting when you are ahead. You can cut the numbers any way you like, but the Government won the elections last week. Why would you slow down momentum when you have it? An election in October is only a summer away. An election next March feels like a long time off. A lot of things can happen over winter. And most of those would not be good for a government.

Micheál Martin hasn’t exactly thrown cold water on the idea of maintaining momentum. He was reported last week as having told his TDs that the election is a "maximum" of nine months away, and that they should keep working during the summer. That doesn’t sound like a person trying to calm everyone down before the big push next year.

The second reason to go early is related to by-elections. Various TDs were elected as MEPs last week. It is also a certainty that a TD from Fianna Fáil will be appointed our EU Commissioner. Those TDs have to be replaced and the only way to do it is via by-elections.

The law dictates that any by-election must be held within six months of the vacancy arising. The only way to prevent that is to dissolve the Dáil and fight a general election within the six months. So, if the Government wanted to wait for a 2025 election, they would have to fight a raft of by-elections before that, all over the country. 

Governments normally – and with good cause – hate by-elections. They are terribly hard to win. Even the most cock-a-hoop government politician couldn’t think that they would win a bunch of them. Does anyone think they would? If they did lose all of them (and they could) it would be a disaster - and put the Government under pressure in the Dáil. Why risk that?

There is an aspect to this which may be of local interest. The new EU Commissioner will not only be a Fianna Fáil TD but will certainly be a cabinet minister. The money is on Michael McGrath from Cork, whose brother polled extremely well in the local elections. He is the most senior minister in the running. If he wants it, it will probably be his. But it is not beyond possibility that it could be Charlie McConalogue, who, as we all know, replaced Dara Calleary. Whichever of the two of them it is, that will create a cabinet vacancy. Just throwing that out there, as they say.

The other argument for going in October is the budget. Last year, Budget Day was October 10th. If the Government held Budget Day around the same time this year, the Dáil could pass all the measures arising in a few days, and then the Government could go to the country – with an election date in late October or early November.

They would start their campaign with a raft of goodies, and during the campaign the measures would start to come into effect. Now that sounds so easy there could be no way it could go wrong. But there is a tricky bit: there have been lots of measures over recent years that were introduced in budgets to soften the impact of inflation and fuel price increases. Can the Government do those things again and maintain one of their key messages to the electorate – that they are the prudent ones?

It has also been shown time and again over recent years that if you are firing money at the electorate and you neglect even one area or group, the outrage about that can engulf all your positive measures. However, one of the lessons from this recent election is that the Government will feel braver about such criticism now. There was a negative drumbeat on the airwaves about all sorts of issues for months before the Local and European elections. All that didn’t seem to impact the results.

The biggest argument for going post-budget is simple: once you have announced it, what would you wait for? A government without a budget ahead has very little room to manoeuvre. If you don’t call the election before Christmas, you then have no option on the date, and you have boxed yourself in. Whereas post-budget, the Government can say to the electorate, we have presented our final budget and now there is nothing to hold back the election. The question is in front of us. Let’s decide.

The danger for the Government is that it just feels nakedly political, a risk that it looks too clever by half. A problem can arise if it all seems a bit rushed, and if there is a sense that a whole load of things are being left undone, just so that the Government can get a little bit of political margin for itself. For that reason, you can expect a government planning for an October election to start clearing a bunch of stuff now, so that nothing of importance gets left behind, and can be used to attack them. There will be some issues of course that the Government will be quite happy not to get to. A funding proposal for RTÉ might well be one of those.

Any government should always be alert to the suggestion that they are doing something for cynical reasons. So you can expect a lot of late-night thinking about how the case for going earlier than planned can be presented to the electorate.

But what is clear already is that we are in full-on political season. In that sense, we are not in a break between elections right now: the elections are on, and the temporary absence of posters should not deceive us.