Has the Government thrived or survived in last four years?

Four years ago, we had what was promised to be a democratic revolution. You don’t need to be a placard-carrying water protester to know that the claim could be challenged under misleading advertisement regulations.

Later today the Government will publish its progress report on those four years of government and will give itself ‘gold stars’ galore. It’s one of the pro forma events we have become used to: self-congratulatory, lacking objectivity and predictable. It will be long on all the achievements (exiting the Troika, economic growth, jobs) and low on the equally long list of failures (referendum losses, water charges debacle, failed promises on taking on our euro partners).

So when Enda Kenny, Joan Burton and company display the metaphorical cake today, for some it will be a simple act of blowing out the candles - for others it will be fanning the flames.

The old saying that ‘eaten bread is soon forgotten’ is particularly true about politics. Even if you have come up with policies in the past that have turned water into wine, it’s not going to have any purchase with the electorate unless it can reassure about the here and now, and about the future.

So part of the election next year will rest on what has happened over the past four years. The critical part will be the twelve months between now and the general election. If the economy suffers any bumps, so the government will suffer. If Europe acts in a manner that is inconsistent with its treatment of this State during the bailout years, that will spell trouble.

The same sex marriage referendum is also another important component. A loss on that will render the Coalition’s promises of constitutional and political reform a failure, irrespective of what they have done. The Yes campaign had an excellent launch yesterday but it’s a long campaign and polls suggest more voters may need to be persuaded.

When Kenny became Taoiseach in 2011, he was in “Paddy needs to know” vein and promised a score card on each minister, with an order of the boot for any member of the Cabinet who didn’t perform.

It quickly became clear that such an approach would be a disaster. For one, if a Minister was fired for incompetence there would be blowback for the Taoiseach for having appointed that person in the first place. And publicly assessing ministers would affect the cohesion and undermine trust in the Cabinet. The guy getting five out of ten would certainly feel under pressure and also feel more of a frisson of hostility towards the swats like Michael Noonan and Leo Varadkar who were getting the 'réalt na seachtaine' awards.

And so the idea was quietly dropped and replaced with what all governments have done for a political generation now - a report published on each anniversary of Government extolling all the great achievements.

They are fascinating documents, taking their lead from such enlightened publications as the Soviet era’s Pravda viz: “Tractor production in Minsk and Volgograd had reached record outputs for the 15th year running.”

A lot has changed in four years and some of it has not been good. Despite the undoubted achievements of exiting the bailout programme and achieving economic stability, the Coalition has shown some extraordinary naivety, lack of strategic nous, and inability to focus when it comes to its political messages.

That is reflected in depressed poll ratings for both parties. The reshuffle last year, and change of leadership in the Labour Party, may have halted the decline but has certainly not reversed it as yet.

In precis, the most important score card isn’t the one for the past four years - it will be the one for the next 12 months.