According to Cllr. Patrick Quinlan, who had resigned as leader, was asked to reconsider and was voted back in. He tried to run the organisation, but eventually got voted off the very body that had voted him back in.
All perfectly normal, apparently!
This is not a political party so much as a particularly aggressive WhatsApp group with delusions of government.
One can almost picture the scene when Quinlan, having apparently made the outrageous mistake of believing he was running an actual political organisation, asked for access to the registered membership database.
There must have been a moment of terrible silence. Someone probably opened the spreadsheet. Another person checked the filing cabinet. A third man stared nervously at his phone. Then came the terrible discovery: there was no membership database. The membership, it seems, was simply there in the WhatsApp group.
The entire glorious nationalist vanguard of Ireland, gathered together beneath the familiar green “online” dots, waiting patiently for the next poll.
No membership records. No proper meetings. No minutes. No accessible accounts. Just a phone screen glowing in the darkness like the control panel of a badly managed submarine.
And this is the organisation that apparently intends to challenge the establishment and govern the country.
Imagine the future, Ireland, 2032.
A national emergency breaks out. The Taoiseach calls an emergency Cabinet meeting. The President addresses the nation. The National Party responds with a WhatsApp poll:
“Should we invade the Occupied Six Counties?
Yes
No
Maybe after lunch.”The whole thing would be hilarious if it weren't so painfully revealing.
Quinlan says he wanted access to the membership, party emails, finances, proper accounts, editing tools and the basic resources required to organise political activity.
In other words, he apparently walked into the National Party asking for the outrageous luxuries of administration, accountability and functioning infrastructure.
You can almost hear the screams. “Jesus Christ, Patrick, next you'll be asking where the minutes are.”
And then comes the magnificent revelation that decisions of the Ard Chomhairle are apparently made by poll in a messaging group.
No meeting. No minutes. No proper record. Just a digital thumbs-up from whoever happens to be holding the phone.
This is not how you run a political party. This is how teenagers decide where to go drinking.
And somewhere in this strange little nationalist bureaucracy, there must be a poor bastard desperately trying to explain that democracy requires more than asking fourteen people on WhatsApp whether they fancy something.
The great irony is that Quinlan says he wanted to build a serious, disciplined nationalist movement.
Fine.
But before you can build the Fourth Reich, the Fourth Republic, or even a moderately competent residents’ association, you generally need to know who the bloody members are.
You need names. You need records. You need accounts. You need meetings. You need minutes. You need some mechanism by which a person can establish what the hell was actually decided.
Instead, we apparently have a political movement where the membership database may effectively be a WhatsApp group and the supreme constitutional instrument is the poll function.
This is not the storming of the Bastille. It is the storming of the group chat.
And then there is the international conference business. Apparently, while the great nationalist machine was struggling to establish who its own members were, somebody had the brilliant idea of looking abroad.
Because nothing says “grassroots Irish political movement” quite like flying people into a hotel ballroom to discuss nationalism while the actual political organisation back home is apparently being held together with free software and mobile data.
Forget knocking doors in Blanchardstown. Forget leaflets. Forget talking to voters. Get the PowerPoint projector. Book the conference room. Find somebody from another country.
And for God's sake, make sure the Wi-Fi password is written down, because otherwise the Ard Chomhairle may be unable to conduct its next leadership election.
The whole spectacle has the surreal quality of a revolutionary movement accidentally being run by the people who organise the office Christmas party.
And then, after all this chaos, Quinlan says he was sent a statement approved by the very people who had voted him off the Ard Chomhairle, a statement thanking those same people for supporting his decision.
That is not merely political spin. That is performance art. It is the kind of thing that makes you wonder whether somewhere in the National Party headquarters there is a secret committee whose sole purpose is to make reality increasingly difficult to distinguish from parody.
You could not write this stuff. Well, apparently you could.
They did.
The National Party now appears to have achieved the impossible: a political organisation simultaneously obsessed with nationalism and apparently incapable of maintaining a functioning domestic administration.
A movement that dreams of national sovereignty but conducts its internal affairs through a group chat.
A party that wants to challenge the establishment but apparently cannot establish where its own membership records are.
A leadership structure apparently capable of removing people without minutes, records or even the courtesy of having them present.
It is magnificent. It is almost beautiful.
Somewhere in Ireland, a man is sitting alone with his phone, staring at a WhatsApp poll and wondering whether this is how National Party icon, Michael Collins would have done it.
And the answer, tragically, is no.
Collins had couriers.
These lads have typing indicators.
Collins had an underground network.
These lads have read receipts.
Collins had intelligence operations.
These lads are still trying to locate the membership database.
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