Politics is inching its way back to business after the summer break. The Cabinet had its first meeting in a month, even if the agenda was less than jammers. Ministers are back at their desks, although Leinster House will remain quiet for another week and a half before the Dáil returns.

The European presidency is in full swing again, with meetings of EU ministers in Druids Glen on Tuesday and Wednesday, and in Dublin on Thursday and Friday. The think-ins have begun, with the Labour Party gathering in Galway on Thursday and Friday, an event graced by no less celestial a presence than Michael D himself. Fianna Fáil is in Tullamore next Monday; Sinn Féin in Malahide on Wednesday; Fine Gael in Gorey on Thursday; the Greens in Dublin on Friday. So, so much to look forward to.

Soon, those of us who watch politics closely will be buried in the day-to-day and the week-to-week ups and downs. But often the ebb and flow, the who’s up, who’s down of those episodes proves to be ephemeral, leaving little lasting impact or legacy. Big changes in politics tend to be the result of big forces. So it’s timely, perhaps, for some bird’s-eye-view consideration of the state of Irish politics and the disposition of its forces.

There are essentially four basic camps in Irish politics. How they conduct themselves internally, how they interact with each other externally and how they navigate the broader social, economic and political currents of the age will determine the future shape of Irish politics and who will turn out to be its winners and losers.

The first camp is the largest in Irish politics by some distance, and consists of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. They are assuredly different parties and will remain so (just ask their members). But they make up the same political force, largely agreeing on all big policy areas and sharing the same centrist, consensual, statist outlook.

They are also generally serious in their pursuit of power and their determination to retain it. They are in government together because they realised that this was the only way to retain power – by sharing it, rather than periodically swapping it. They are the largest camp because they have been successful in attuning themselves to the desires and tolerances of the Irish voter. This leads to the obvious charge that they are more interested in being in power than in using it.

They remain each other’s keenest electoral rivals and most willing coalition allies. It is a complicated relationship, and it is not at its most harmonious right now. But both parties know their most likely and congenial route to power remains with the other. For all the squabbling, they will not lose sight of that.

The second camp is Sinn Féin, alone. It is by far the largest opposition party, the largest party on the island and the only possible leader of a left-wing government. That is an important factor when so many voters favour an alternative to the status quo.

Unlike many other parties, Sinn Féin does not have natural coalition allies – see how the so-called Connolly coalition ( which elected the President last year) fell apart in the Dáil in the first half of this year. The centre-left is nervous of Sinn Féin’s turn to the right on immigration, and Labour, cursed with having a memory of Irish history, has residual doubts.

In 2024, having led the polls by a country mile for three years, Sinn Féin experienced an astonishing collapse in support before the local and European elections, unlike anything seen in Irish politics since the demise of Fianna Fáil in 2010. It is true that the party rebounded in the second half of 2024 and recovered a lot of ground in the general election. But it still came third. The awful sense that the party had blown a historic opportunity was unavoidable, and it is not clear if the party has really understood or learned from what happened. The party continues like it is 2019. But it isn’t.

The third camp is the rest of the left: Labour, the Social Democrats, the Greens, some independents. It is, to be sure, a disparate gang, but drawing largely from the same section of the electorate and so are each other’s deadliest electorate rivals, and most natural allies for government. They believe much the same things and want to achieve the same goals, but have proved incapable or uninterested in articulating a way to achieve them. In the post-election coalition scramble now inevitable in Irish politics, none of them seriously sought participation in government in 2024; Labour haven’t done so since 2011; the Soc Dems have never done it. That is probably no longer sustainable. Whether they can co-operate to govern remains an open question. But if they can’t, what’s the point of them?

The fourth camp is everyone else: independents who may or may not be available for government formation; Independent Ireland, Aontú, the far-right outside parliament and the radical left within it in the shape of People Before Profit. The last two bring energy and noise, but are not serious about being in government. They are over-represented in our political discourse and are the weakest of the four big camps. Although, they can influence the future direction of the country, for example, through the fuel protests, or on migration policy, or in the way that People Before Profit pushed Sinn Féin into opposition to water charges a decade ago.

How these political forces interact with one another, and how they manage to negotiate the great tides of the age – economic, political, military, social, demographic and climate – will determine the country’s future, for good or ill.