The new Dáil meets Thursday (10 March) and is expected to do no more than appoint a Ceann Comhairle to chair its deliberations. Various parties and groupings have been ruling out alliances which might result in a durable administration and there have been carefree speculations that government formation could take months. Media commentators have been unimpressed, urging everyone to put the country first.

If you feel that Irish politicians are less than responsible, or you found the general election uninspiring, have a look at last week’s Republican candidates’ debate in the US. It made our party leaders look distinguished, thoughtful and public-spirited.

There are four candidates left for the Republican nomination. The Republicans and Democrats have been equally successful in national elections in recent decades, so the Republican nominee could well be the next US president. Three of the survivors, Cruz, Kasich and Rubio, look like they have little chance.

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Unstoppable

Front-runner Donald Trump is odds-on with the bookmakers and may well be unstoppable. Last Thursday in Detroit, Cruz and Rubio spent the evening trading insults with Trump who at one stage reassured viewers there were “no problems” concerning the size of his marital equipment. This was in response to Rubio, who had accused him of having small hands, never before identified as a disqualification for political office. The entire debate was a bad-tempered, ill-mannered shambles. Jerry Springer, the host of a reality TV show which welcomes exhibitionists and fruitcakes to unburden themselves for the US daytime viewer, promptly announced the Republican presidential candidates did not merit an invitation to his programme.

One part of Trump’s anatomy about whose size there can be no dispute is his mouth. He has insulted Muslims, Mexicans and women, appears to have no coherent policies and has expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin, invader of the Ukraine, champion kleptocrat of the Russian Federation (a coveted title) and apparently president-for-life. His other would-like-to-meets include Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister who is still assisting prosecutors in connection with assorted alleged offences.

The Trump phenomenon takes some explaining. The man comes across as an obvious chancer as well as a loudmouth, and Europeans are inclined to take the superior view that he would struggle to be taken seriously in this part of the world. But please recall that Berlusconi, another billionaire showman-turned-politician, still leads a major party in Italy and some Trump-like anti-politics movements are prospering across the continent.

There is a profound disaffection with political establishments and the reasons are not hard to find. The economic downturn, now almost a decade old, is the worst since the early years of the Second World War. Voters cannot punish bankers, weak regulators, developers, plutocrats or whatever other group they deem responsible, but they can punish holders of political office. The downturn has gone on so long that they are punishing not just the current holders but their predecessors, and Ireland is not the only country where the main political parties have suffered.

Next year there will be a presidential election in France and the Front National has a sporting chance. The incumbent Socialists look doomed and the centre-right appears to be intent on exhuming the political career of Nicolas Sarkozy. The Front National is an inward-looking, France-for-the-French, party and plans to depart the euro.

Similar parties, which could be described as nativist and populist rather than left or right, have taken office in Hungary and Poland, and are a parliamentary factor in Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden among others.

There is no similar party with critical mass in Britain, but there is a referendum due next June on exiting the European Union altogether. Even in Germany the anti-immigrant and anti-euro Alternativ fur Deutschland party is expected to take seats at regional elections to be held on Sunday. The two traditional governing parties in Spain took a hammering at the election on 20 December and a government has yet to be formed. Happily the two new Spanish parties, Podemos and Ciudadanos, are not particularly inward-looking.

So Europeans should not be feeling too smug about the antics on display during the Republican primaries in the US. Political parties offering simplistic and inward-looking non-solutions are available, and gaining support, in many European countries. The best guarantee that Ireland has of not becoming another one is the early formation of a government that can last.