I suspect quite well, especially when one considers that one of the more curious aspects of modern British politics is the breakdown in traditional concepts of left and right along the political spectrum.

In particular, the assumption that left voters go to the centre before the right, or vice versa, just isn’t true. A more accurate reality is that modern British voters are prone to cherry picking from various points along the political spectrum, being left wing on health care and spending, but right wing on immigration and law and order. Tony Blair (a Fianna Failer if there ever was one) recognised this, and translated it into three successive election victories. Nigel Farage does too, judging by UKIP’s cross party appeal.

But what really would work for an English FF would be its classlessness, the fact that both entrepreneurs and  social welfare recipients would feel perfectly comfortable lobbying the party, and not feel  that the party owed a pre-loyalty to a different section of society. Fianna Fail’s centrist “whatever works” approach is a very attractive proposition for the modern non-tribal consumer-voter, provided it is accompanied by competence and not marred by self-obsessed corruption dressed up as party loyalty, something which Fianna Fáil suffered from in Ireland.

Perhaps Fianna Fáil should consider opening a UK franchise. After  all, isn’t that effectively what it is in Ireland?

A scene from a film. Or a reformed Seanad operating alongside an unreformed parish-pumping whip strait-jacketed Dail. A Seanad that looks like the modern Irish nation, with both sexes having at least 40% representation, peopled not by professional politicians but teachers, businesspeople, farmers, artists and trades unionists. A Seanad that the Irish in Sydney and Sydney Parade Avenue both vote for, approaching the nation’s business from one side as Mattie McGrath and Michael Healy Rae do their thing in the other house. If the Zappone/Quinn model is adopted, the serious discussion about the nation will happen in the Seanad. It will be where the grown ups will meet, and the Dail will suddenly find itself under scrutiny for its archaic practices and vast swathes of strutting chest-thrusting pointlessness like never before. This is all to the good.

That’s potentially what’s on offer, and it is the most exciting prospect not just in Irish politics, but as a fascinating model for other countries in a post-party political age. If we do this, other countries will point and say “we want one of those!”.

And yet… I’m a sceptic about Seanad reform. If the Zappone/Quinn  model is on offer, I will vote for that. It’s advocated by many people  whose judgement I trust and respect.

But the fear still remains, that reform is only being dangled now because those who have defended the status quo for so long are now staring into the abysss of abolition, begging and pleading with us for their institutional lives and offering us anything, anything to let them live.

But what if we do? What if we spare them? Will it bring the Zappone/Quinn Seanad, or instead be used as an excuse to say that the status quo has been given a democratic mandate, and radical, big reform of the Seanad vanishes back into the mists they have kept it shrouded in for so long?

I want to believe. I really do. I want to believe that the choice in September is not between retention or abolition but abolition or reform, and that a vote to retain will lead to the Zappone/Quinn bill. But I need to hear it from Enda.

Sean Fleming TD’s odd intervention on the property tax, where he either a) did not read the legislation but nevertheless managed to have a strong opinion on it, b) read it but did not understand it, or c) was being deliberately obtuse in selectively interpreting it as a political stunt.

Whatever was the reason, he made Fianna Fáil look bad. I find this particularly annoying because it is not as if this government has not lied enough about real things that it should be held to account on, as opposed to deliberately omitting facts.

Fianna Fail is actually above this sort of stuff, and it’s not often you’ll hear me say that.

http://fishamble.com/guaranteed

1. “Yes, the Seanad should be reformed, but let’s save it first”. This argument would be believable, save for the fact that so many people who make it have opposed reform when they had the power to do it. Some Seanad reformers are credible and sincere. Many are not.

2. “This will give the Govt too much power”. Name all the times in its 76 year history that the Seanad has forced the govt to back down.  Where was the Seanad on the night of the bank guarantee?

3. “If we let the Seanad be abolished, the Irish people will not agree to a new reformed Seanad later.” So? It’s their Seanad.

4. “The Dail is not capable of holding the government to account”. Surely that’s an argument for abolishing the Dail, not keeping the Seanad?

5. “The Seanad has provided a vital platform for different voices”. So would an Irish Times column, and be cheaper too. We should keep an entire House of Parliament for six people? This term’s Taoiseach’s nominees are so noticeable because they are so rare, and normally just hacks. As they will be again if the current Seanad is retained. Vincent Browne and Fintan O’Toole aren’t senators. Neither are David Quinn or Breda O’Brien.

6. “We need more time for reform”. No we don’t. The last in-depth report on Seanad reform was in 2006, where it was then let gather dust by many of those who now claim to be passionate reformers. Why did they not push reform then? Because they don’t believe in it.

7. “This is a power grab by the government”. What power? The govvernment already have all the power, a situation Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour all seem quite happy with when in government

The fact is, most of the arguments for keeping the Seanad are theoretical, whereas the reasons for supporting abolition are based on its 76 year history.

I’d also be more convinced about Seanad reform if it were made by people who don’t have a vested interest in it. Many, like Gemma Hussey and Michael McDowell don’t, to their credit, but…

Finally, I’m all in favour of a reformed Seanad. I just don’t believe in future promises of reform from Irish politicians, who, as a general rule, have a difficulty with the truth. Of course, if they vote through reform before the referendum I’ll vote to retain. Maybe they’ll surprise us, but I doubt it.

But just supposing if tomorrow the Revenue Commissioners publish a spreadsheet of everybody’s declared income and amount they actually paid in tax. What would be the outcome? Well, aside from the outrage and at least a thousand people haring it down to the High Court for an injunction, what else would happen?

For a start, we’d learn the truth about income taxes. People would see the huge amounts of actual income tax that the wealthy pay. We’d all immediately look up Michael O’Leary and Bono et al, and discover the truth. Or perhaps we’d discover that they didn’t pay that much after all, through some deft but legal accounting. But either  way, we’d all know, and at least the debate would start from an honest base.

As to what would really be the result? I suspect that some very wealthy people would be revealed to be paying very large amounts in tax, and some wouldn’t. And the Revenue would immediately be on the spot to explain why, which would be a very useful exercise in itself.

But of course, it’s never going to happen, and not because of any  conspiracy. If we put such a proposal to the people in a referendum, it would be overwhelming rejected, not just by the very wealthy but by farmers and publicans and middle ranking civil servants, because, as with everything in Ireland, the majority would have more to lose from change, and those who would gain probably wouldn’t vote anyway.

Because of his military rank, and the presence of poison, chief inspector Charles Hayes of the Metropolitan Police was assigned to the case to ensure it was “properly” (read discreetly) handled.

An inspection by Hays of General Terry’s medical history revealed that he had in fact recently been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour which was deemed inoperable, and his life expectancy was measured in a few short and painful months. Further inspection of the records by other specialists at Hays request confirmed this diagnosis.

Hays concluded that there were sufficient grounds for concluding that the  general had indeed taken his own life.

However, one odd feature did attract Hays’s attention. On a table near General Terry’s body was an open metal box, roughly the same size and shape as a supermarket-sold box of tea bags. Within the box were moulded spaces for four tablets, of which three remained.

Hays had the box and its contents recorded and removed from the scene for analysis.

The following morning, it was revealed that the box was missing.

However, a young technician, curiosity piqued by the box, had stayed back late that evening to analyse the box and its contents. The  tablets were revealed to be cyanide capsules, although flavoured to taste like chocolate, and with an added sedative to ensure a swift and painless death.

On X-raying the box, he also determined that it also contained a magnetic locking mechanism, a radio transmitter, and a vial of liquid, not unlike a dye pack carried in security carrier cases, which would trigger and destroy the contents of the box if opened incorrectly. The box also had a serial number stamped into its outer  casing.

An inquiry by Hays to the Ministry of Defence proved fruitless, the serial number and box meaning nothing to his MOD liaison.

With the box missing, and there being no other evidence to suggest malign intent, Hays could have ruled the case closed.

Hays was, however, a career policeman, and decided to attempt an old police trick when the trail cools. He attempted to bring the trail to him. He informed his superior officer and the MOD liaison that he intended to publish, anonymously and without reference to General Terry, the notes and X-rays of the box in Popular Electronics magazine, to see if he could perhaps identify the source or purpose of the box.

Within an hour, Hays was invited for tea with the deputy head of the Security Service. He was picked up from New Scotland Yard, and driven to a location he believed to be outside London, a trip during which he was politely but firmly requested to wear a blindfold.

When the blindfold was removed, he found himself inside a warehouse, which Hays’s own notes have described as “probably military” where he was introduced to a man who identified himself as deputy head of MI5. On a table nearby was the box, or at least an exact facsimile of it.

The MI5 man offered Hays tea and a seat, and explained that after   hearing of his plan to publish the X-rays of the box, which he applauded as a masterly “beating of game out of the bushes” he consulted his superiors in the police and had concluded that Hays was “sound”, and could be trusted. Not corrupt, he stressed, but able to see why discretion would be required, especially where no crime had been committed.

He gestured at the vast warehouse, and pointed out that there were actually millions of boxes like this in the warehouse, ready for distribution to every home in the country.

He then presented Hays with a top secret Cabinet Office file which he offered to let the policeman read, or he could summarise it for him?

Hays took the latter offer, while he skimmed the file. The Chief Scientific Advisor to the government, the MI5 man said, had concluded that in the event of a nuclear war, half the population of the United Kingdom would perish instantly. The other half would find themselves living in a shattered nation with no clean water, public services, electricity or food, with disease rampant and no recovery possible. Industrial and agricultural infrastructure, which provides the means for society to function would be irreparable. The CSA concluded that 95% of the survivors would die an agonising radiation-poisoned death in the three years after nuclear exchange, in horrific circumstances.

The former government concluded that no compassionate government could expect its people to suffer like that, and so the boxes were devised. Each home would be issued with one or more depending on family size. They were designed to prevent tampering for obvious reasons, but would all open on receipt of a specific signal transmitted at the same time of the emergency broadcast that Soviet missiles were incoming. It would then be up to families to decide what to do with them in the aftermath, but it offered a clean and painless escape from the horrors of a post-nuclear attack wasteland.

Hays wrote later about how shocked he had been at what he’d been told, but understood why discretion was needed. The new government, the MI5 man had said, had decided to suspend the plan pending further study. Mrs Thatcher apparently thinks it is defeatist, the MI5 man said with a roll of his eyes.

General Terry would have had access to the frequency required to open the box, and, the MI5 man suggested, it was a tidier way to go than a bottle of whiskey and his service sidearm.

Hays was returned to London, where he marked the file closed, no further action.

Final note: Charles Hays retired from the Metropolitan Police in 1990, and passed away in 1994, this event being apparently recorded in private notes found by his son.

It is not known what happened to the boxes.

One of the spin-offs for political reformers in Britain (even pro-Europeans) must be that the potential rise of a viable fourth party will show just how ridiculously unsuitable First Past The Post is as an electoral system in a modern multi-choice age. It’s not too fantastic to suggest that a strong performance by UKIP in a general election could result in the Tories winning the most votes but not the most seats. Could it make the Tories wake up (as their Australian counterparts did) to the fact that FPTP may not be the great voting system they think it is?

The other point which should be made is a warning about assumptions by the Tories that UKIP is somehow their errant gene pool, who can be coaxed back into the Tory fold. This may no longer be the case, because UKIP voters would seem to be exercised by issues wider than just the EU, including immigration and cuts to public  services. Working class UKIP voters, for example, seem to believe that they are being undercut by workers from central Europe. Given that the Tories are not opposed to free movement within the EU, the only solution to that is tougher enforcement of employment regulations, something which the Tories would presumably be against. As well as that, talk of deals with the Tories is becoming much less attractive to UKIP as it develops a respectable tally in opinion polls as the “F**k you all” two fingered option to the political  establishment.

Finally, UKIP’s rise should be welcomed because it has underlined the media obsessed paralysis of the three main UKIP parties. Every  time Nigel Farage says something mildly off the political track, he gets  accused of being a bigot or a racist, and guess what: it doesn’t hurt him politically at all, because he speaks in the language that non-political man down the pub speaks, and when you call him a bigot you’re calling Pub Man a bigot too, and he knows he’s not. Farage is by far the most entertaining player on the political stage since Boris, primarily because he doesn’t cage everything in get out clauses and political speak. In short, he sounds authentic, and politics could do with a bit more of that.