Singles club

If the Single Issue Candidate Party has a role model, it has to be the late and legendary Screaming Lord Sutch, who, until he committed suicide in 1999, enlivened the British electoral system with his flamboyant attire and absurd manifestos.

Repesenting the National Teenage Party and the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, he piss-took the political system with daft proposals for traffic police too stupid for normal police work to be retrained as clergy, and for the introduction of a 99p coin to save shops having to give customers change! He contested over 40 elections, but, with election counts sometimes scoring him as low as 61, he was as big a failure as a vote magnet as he was as a singer. He wasn’t a proper lord either.
In Ireland, perhaps because our regular politicians are generally such natural figures of fun that they are beyond parody, we have failed to produce a single candidate with the barminess of Sutch. But dwindling confidence in the main parties has resulted in independent candidates standing on such serious issues as the state of our roads, or, in the case of Liam Toomey, now Fine Gael spokesman on health issues, the sickness within our health services.
Ming The Merciless gamely campaigned for the legalisation of marijuana in the ‘90s, with Olaf Tyarensen of Hot Press also running for the Legalise Cannabis Party. The failure of the national media to take their campaign seriously wasn’t helped by their general inability to spell and/or pronounce Olaf’s name correctly.
A cavalcade of corruption scandals has further weakened our trust in the main parties, so each election seems to attract even more candidates fighting on single issues. With polls for the looming election suggesting that no proposed coalition will have a guaranteed victory margin, the role of single issue candidates could be dangerously crucial, in that a tiny number of candidates, some perhaps of dubious merit, might well hold more power than is healthy.
This happened ten years ago, when five of the six elected independents succumbed to Bertie’s seductive allure. One of those was Jackie Healy Rae (pictured), outgoing TD for Ballydung. The last election saw thirteen independents elected, but this time Bertie didn’t need them so badly and they seemed to make fewer appearances in the Dáil than as Z-list celebs on tv.
This year we can expect to see a hospital candidate or two on the ballot sheet, alongside relatives of the victims of the Stardust tragedy and others struggling to have their voices heard over truly serious issues, sidelined by the major party boyos. But more than likely, the only monsters and looneys are likely to be found among those seeking re-election.