Gavan Reilly: What's in store for us in 2024!
Columnist’s note: As with previous years, this isn’t supposed to be a faithful projection of the events of the year to come. Longstanding readers will remember the 2018 ‘prediction’ which ended with President Miriam O’Callaghan presenting the seal of government to her brother, Taoiseach Jim O’Callaghan. It’s all a bit of fun, and not to be taken as a genuine prediction.
Unless, of course, I’m right.
JANUARY
The people of Northern Ireland awake to a surprise New Year’s present from Jeffrey Donaldson: although the impact of the Windsor Framework and a sea border has not yet been negated, the DUP believes the absence of power-sharing in Stormont means the government in Dublin – which has been putting up some of the money for projects like Casement Park – has too much influence in Northern affairs. Stormont is back.
In the United States, election year formally gets underway with the primaries in New Hampshire. Donald Trump enters with a commanding lead but refuses to participate in the first debate against the likes of Nikki Haley and Chris Christie. He wins, but with a smaller lead than first imagined.
Rishi Sunak’s contentious plan to use Rwanda as his very own Direct Provision centre – think Mosney-upon-Nile – goes through tortured line-by-line scrutiny in the Commons, where some Tories think the plan is too tame and others think it’s not tame enough.
FEBRUARY
The formal TV debates get underway in Ireland ahead of the two referendums taking place in early March, on the definition of the family and the role of women/carers in the home. As one of the Oireachtas’ main sceptics and a critic of the ‘woke agenda’, Sharon Keogan is one of the more prominent panellists. Her criticism of the referendums taking place on International Women’s Day, yet removing the constitution’s only explicit mention of how women differ from men, garners attention. Others are won over by the argument that the referendum is an unwarranted attempt to move Ireland into a ‘post-gender’ society.
Peadar Tóibín spots an opportunity for Aontú to underline its family values credentials by taking an active role against the referendum on family, arguing that the replacement clause about ‘durable relationships’ is too woolly and could mean atypical households seeking constitutional protection.
The Republican primaries continue in America but Trump wins so convincingly in Nevada and South Carolina that the rest seem like a foregone conclusion.
MARCH
‘Super Tuesday’ takes place early in the month and Trump’s victories are so thumping that his rivals throw in the towel and the contest is over. All of this is while court charges hang over him for his role in rejecting the 2020 outcome.
At home, the referendums take place. Holding them on a Friday, with no other elections on the same day, results in a demotivated turnout. An unlikely coalition emerges, of those who saw the votes as woke nonsense, those who think the constitution should make no mention of family and marriage at all, and those women who have to take International Women’s Day off work because the schools are closed to facilitate polling. The family referendum passes but the referendum on the role of women is defeated.
Licking his wounds, and with some unexpected international attention taking aim at his liberal credentials, Leo Varadkar travels to Washington for St Patrick’s Day. However punctured the Taoiseach appears, he still looks far more vigorous than his host: Joe Biden (81) needs extra microphones to be able to project his voice in the East Room at the annual Shamrock Reception.
APRIL
With the referendums in the rear view mirror, attention turns to the local and European elections. Somewhat out of the blue, Fianna Fáil’s veteran TD Willie O’Dea announces his plans to run for the newly-created job as executive mayor of Limerick. Given the party would like to be the first to hold a new major job in Irish society, Fianna Fáíl throws its weight completely behind him. Fine Gael chooses Kieran O’Donnell, the junior minister who was actually responsible for getting the legislation passed to create the job in the first place. Rumours about the candidacy of John Kiely prove unfounded.
Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda legislation hits a big roadblock when hardline Tories try to further enshrine that the scheme would be beyond the reach of any British courts. Moderates who respect the role of courts, and the energised Labour opposition, manage to block it. Suddenly Sunak’s own position as Conservative leader looks rocky.
MAY
The candidates for the European elections are nailed down. The coalition parties run a ticket with a fair share of sitting TDs: Barry Cowen is among the Fianna Fáil candidates, while former agriculture minister Michael Creed gets the nod to run for Fine Gael. Sinn Féin pointedly omits any TDs from its list of candidates, fielding instead senators and councillors.
Fianna Fáil takes a blow just ahead of the elections with the news that Robert Troy will face a referral to the DPP, and the Dáil’s disciplinary committee, for the non-disclosure of several of his investment properties. Micheál Martin breathes a sigh of relief that Troy did not form part of the European ticket: Cowen is already the midlands candidate, and was joined by Mayo senator Lisa Chambers.
Joe Biden has a brief hospital stay for a flare-up in his arthritis and the removal of a skin lesion, similar to one found a year earlier. Further questions are raised about his stamina.
JUNE
The local and European elections take place. Sinn Féin’s performance is good – not great, merely good – but still amounts to a huge improvement on 2019. Having started from a low base, the party wins dozens of seats around the country – becoming the largest in Dublin, making historic breakthroughs in Cork, and making a major dent in places like Meath where it was previously in the shadow of the ‘big two’. The biggest casualties are Labour, whose standing is massively diminished. Ivana Bacik faces immediate questions over his future as party leader, but survives, largely because her prospective rival Aodhán Ó Ríordáin loses his tilt at Europe, while Alan Kelly wins back the Munster seat he first held in 2009.
Barry Cowen is also elected to Europe, as is Michael Creed.
Willie O’Dea is elected mayor of Limerick, in part thanks to a late and unlikely endorsement from Blindboy Boatclub of the Rubberbandits, who deems him to be mavericky enough not to be a slave to party headquarters in Dublin.
JULY
The arithmetic of the Dáil has now changed as a result of the European elections, and the outcome isn’t great for the government. Technically the coalition held 80 of the 160 seats beforehand: now there are three vacancies, and the coalition only accounts for 78 of the remaining 157. Sinn Féin, with the wind at its back, uses the weeks before the Dáil break to hammer the government – most notably on its housing record. Eventually it contrives a reason to table a motion of no confidence, testing whether the independent TDs still back the coalition.
The government survives that motion, but only with the support of independent TDs Michael Lowry, Noel Grealish and ex-FG man Joe McHugh. The writing is effectively on the wall that the government hasn’t got long left. Almost everyone heads into the summer recess expecting an election to follow quickly.
Once the Dáil breaks for summer, Charlie McConalogue is nominated as Ireland’s next EU commissioner. His seat too now falls vacant.
AUGUST
An election does come… but not necessarily the one they expected. Rishi Sunak decides that the best way to see off the internal dissent within the Tories, and to bolster his bid to ‘Stop The Boats’, is to call a general election instead.
Labour’s campaign doesn’t go brilliantly: Kier Starmer moves so far into the Blairite centreground that he is vocally undermined by the Corbynite left wing. Nonetheless Labour wins a clear parliamentary majority. Keir Starmer becomes Prime Minister.
Donald Trump is convicted of conspiring to overthrow the legitimate result of the 2020 election and is sentenced to several years in jail. An appeal will not be heard this side of the election, meaning Trump will effectively campaign from jail. This makes him even more of a martyr for the Republican cause.
SEPTEMBER
The government returns to start its plotting for the final Budget before the election. There is a momentary hiccup when corporate tax takes another sudden dip, and nobody can quite tell whether the dip is down to changes in global tax rules or a mere scheduling aberration. Paschal Donohoe (above), and Michael McGrath, who have declined big jobs at the IMF and European Commissioner respectively to stay behind in Dublin, face a dilemma: do they go ahead with a pre-election giveaway Budget, if it entails spending money they don’t have? The decision is not helped by the volume of funding requests for other ministers.
Donald Trump is convicted in his federal trial for overturning the 2020 election and will spend the rest of the campaign behind bars. This, predictably, only hardens the resolve of his supporters - and plays into his hands electorally, as his supporters believe him a martyr. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the governor of Arkansas and his former spokeswoman, leads the rest of his campaign as his running mate.
OCTOBER
Despite the wobble in corporation tax, the Budget is a ‘big bazooka’ giveaway with major cuts in income taxes and promises in public spending, including big infrastructural projects being cleared for takeoff like never before. The question then arises: does the government wait until February, for the tax cuts to arrive on payslips, or cut and run immediately?
Leo Varadkar decides not to repeat the mistakes of 2015 and 2019, and seeks dissolution of the Dáil early. The government goes to the country to make its case for re-election. Unmentioned is that the Budget-day measures have no effect until they are translated into law, and because the Dáil was dissolved without a Finance Act or Social Welfare Act, the promises are merely words.
NOVEMBER
In a twist of irony, a man behind bars because he couldn’t accept the legitimate result of the 2020 U.S. election wins the 2024 version. Donald Trump finds himself unable to set about preparing his new administration from behind bars; in an act which he hopes will be seen as one of healing, Joe Biden pardons his predecessor simply so that Trump can set about filling his new cabinet.
Ireland goes to the polls a couple of weeks later, with Sinn Féin emerging by some distance as the biggest party – but a distance short of an overall majority. Their 62 seats compares with 36 for Fianna Fáil (exactly what they previously held) and 30 for Fine Gael. 88 seats are needed for a majority, so Sinn Féin will need one or the other to govern with. Micheál Martin refuses to consider such a coalition and steps down as party leader.
DECEMBER
With Leo Varadkar resigning as leader of Fine Gael (but remaining as a caretaker Taoiseach), and Micheál Martin’s successor still to be chosen, the process of forming a government is tortuously slow. Christmas and the New Year come around with Mary Lou McDonald unable to form her own government, waiting for Fianna Fáil to pick a leader who might be willing to coalesce. The Budget not being legislated for, none of the ‘giveaway’ measures reach payslips. Just as well: the corporation tax wobbles continue and SF will inherit a country with far less money than expected.
Released from jail, Donald Trump makes a Christmas address to the United States. Only then does the penny drop that the leader of the free world had no real ambitions for a second term in office, and only wanted the job so that he could seek vengeance on those who he claimed had screwed him out of it four years earlier. 2025 looks pretty bleak.