Future of Micheal Martin

Woke authoritarian bandwagons are his stock n trade

He is a very bland leader - reminds of John Major, achieved his goal of being Taoiseach tho but not sure if it was deserved

Done nothing the whole time he has been leading the country bar the odd stuttering speech to buck up the country instilling zero confidence in his leadership - I mean jaysus soon after he took over his own party was falling apart with the scandals

Compare him to any other (for better or worse) leaders around the world and he pales into insignificance

(actually Eamon Ryan is probably more insipid than him but thank god not leading and probably not having much say in anything at present)

MM's critics within FF will be worried if the taoiseachship handover passes with MM still saying he is going to carry on things will just drift on like that till the GE. What may happen is that the anti-Martin figurehead (O'Callaghan?) will lay down an ultimatum at that point: "if he hasn't vacated the leadership in a year's time, I'm going to challenge him."

Well doesn't that maneuvering in intself suggest MM is intending to keep on keeping on? Or maybe he just doesn't want Big Jim to succeed him.

If Martin is planning to fight on, I wonder does the party have the will to face him down, in the absence of a strong alternative candidate. Now that he has signalled that he may be kinda sorta willing to consider a deal with SF, does that not take the edge off a lot opposition to him? If they continue to do okay in the polls, i.e. not massively worse than FG, is there really an overwhelming case for taking him out?

I wonder.

I think I will be a bit like that Japanese soldier who wouldn't come out of the jungle.

I believe they are yes. FF have two big problems:

1. They are a medium sized party but many of their members and TDs believe that they should still be the electoral juggernaut that they were for most of the history of the state. For these people that party simply must just have the wrong leader and someone else can return them to the promised land. The truth is that their previous state was a defiance of the expected outcome of a PR-STV voting system and the modern multi-party system is more of an actual reflection of it. No leader is going to return them to the days where they were getting 70+ seats in every single election.
2. The party has no real identity. They defined themselves by the simple fact that they were the ones most frequently in power and tweaked their ideology to maintain that power. Now that they are no longer that party of power what are they? Michael Martin hasn't cleated this up and many people in the party are eager for them to define themselves in one way or another. Again, there is a feeling that a new leader might do this so that they can focus on one section of the electorate before all of their current voters literally die off.

Personally I'd be shocked if he was still there. He's only 61 but he got into politics at an extremely young age. He's been in the Dail now for 32 years and hasn't got anything left to prove. He pulled his party back from the brink in 2011, exceeded expectations in 2016 and became Taoiseach in 2020. If he tried to stay on the most likely outcome for him (or any other FF) leader is that they end up propping up a SF government next time round. No, this is his peak. He may as well go out on the top.

I've haven't voted for either FF or FG in over 30 years and my SF vote in the last election was really a protest vote about them not allowing MLM to take part in the televised debates back then.

Now we're essentially heading into a potential long term war in Europe, I have more confidence with MM at the helm than I'd have with any of the other current party leaders.

Or am I suffering from some sort of mild, delusional form of Stockholm syndrome?

To use a sailing analogy, if you are caught in a storm at sea it's useful to have a steady hand at the tiller.

An experienced skipper can make all the difference.

You don't have to like the man at the helm you just want to get safely ashore.

Get better soon meehole, your country needs you.

But it's St. Patrick's America Day don't you know. We can't dare upset the Americans.

Women can have balls too