In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche put forward his idea of eternal recurrence, a concept which posits that all lives and events will continue to recur in a similar form infinitely.
It might go some way to explaining the phenomenon of Independent TD Noel Grealish and how every few months, without fail, political pundits and anoraks will talk about his future intentions and election prospects, before declaring he is about to join Fianna Fáil, and when he doesn’t, wait a while, before starting the specualation all over again.
We might call this the ‘eternal recurrence of Grealish speculation’. However a straw to grasp on to has been detected in Dep Grealish’s recent statement that he expects an election “within the next year”.
Think about it: around the time the PDs were being wound up a view emerged that Dep Grealish would stay as an Independent for the foreseeable future before perhaps moving closer to Fianna Fáil before the next election.
However with things so volatile can anyone, especially Independents, who risk being squeezed out by a resurgent Fine Gael and Labour, have the luxury of waiting ‘until closer to the election’?
In this light, perhaps Dep Grealish’s comment about the election next year is not so much a prediction by him but a signal that he is now ready to move?
