making up the numbers when required, was badly disrupted. But in a lot of recent polls it had seemed that it was gradually reasserting itself, albeit with Sinn Féin occupying Labour’s traditional space. Perhaps, as the economy settled down and the tide of anger receded, the familiar landscape was re-emerging? Not really – after the weekend, it looks more likely that those floodwaters have fundamentally altered the lie of the land.
Two big things are obvious in the local and European elections. One is that the old establishment remains a rather diminished force. But the other is that the opposition to it is, if anything, even more incoherent than it was before. Irish politics is now a game of two halves in which one half is a lacklustre old order and the other half is an incoherent and shifting challenge to it. On the one side, there is an ancient regime that looks weak.