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Miriam Lord captures well how the loud complaints from Fianna Fil TDs who did not get the nod for a ministerial seat, with the headline:Martin sparks Olympian levels of whingeing in Fianna Fil (shes worth a subscription to the paper alone).

Two thoughts strike me in response. One is that those complaining that the west wasnt represented well enough ought to reflect on just how ineffective the method of putting in TDs who physically represent western constituency has been over the years.

The flow of voters in the west leaving the big two continues so that despite the fact that this convention has been in place almost since the founding of the state, it isnt working. Something the two larger government parties surely have to recognise by now.

It may feel fair sitting in Government House, but the voters of the parish just get angrier and angrier with the trickle-up economics that feeds Dublin and the cities of the seaboard. So, first, they defected to the independents, now to Sinn Fin.

The truth is that both parties are so depleted neither of them can form a government without the other, so the picks are limited to whomever they think has the talent and/or the loyalty to turn things around. And in loyalty, it is Martin who has the problems.

Many of those now unhappy with Martins arrangements believe that throwing their cap in with the old enemy is a political third rail, and believe the better longer-term option for the party was to sit this dance out and take the damage in a new election.

In any near run result, having so openly Fine Gael rejected the party would come under huge pressure to choose Sinn Fin as leaders of the next government with themselves either as juniors or supporting them from the opposition benches.

Having just spent four years in the latter space, and having witnessed just how profoundly it helped to further hollow out their historic brand, the former would have been the only realistic option. No party in NI has ever prospered in such circumstances.

You only have to see how the west Belfast leadership overrode the common sense of rural folks like Conor Murphy, Michelle ONeill and even the Gaoth Dobhair based Pearse Doherty who must have known just how it would go down with rural voters.

Democratic centralism means they must follow orders even for someone unknown to the public but to whom that leadership had debts. A man who knew how to use his height and weight (if not with Mairia Cahills late but fearless Cork-born grandmother).

Getting close to Mary Lou (or in NIs case, Martin McGuinness if were to look at established records) is of no strategic use if neither operates autonomously at the top of Sinn Fins internal chain of command.

The other line, which arises from the media if not directly from party colleagues is that Martins tenure in office is everything to do with personal ambition. Ive met a fair few ambitious politicians in my time, few of them look or sound like Martin.

He may be criticised for modesty, lack of fire, snark or spike. An inability to smile for the opportune selfie, maybe. A personal distaste for the shallow reality show search for the beauty/uglyness of human authenticity (even if the set up is evidently fake).

If you dont believe me, try Jamie Barletts new BBC Sounds series (all of it, but the last episode in particular on how Trump, the new standard how-low-can-you-go, populist, was made by reality TV)

The Trump standard offered by leaders like Mary Lou and Michelle who arent really mistresses of their own houses is not a road any mainstream party should seek to go down. Innocents get hurt, and as Dennis Bradley says, the promises made are never paid.

Yet, as alluded to at the top some of the reasons for the advance of populist projects like Sinn Fin, Five Star, and whatever the current Le Penn vehicle is called in France these days lies at the feet of the centrists like Fianna Fil and latterly Fine Gael.

As Eric Lonergan says in Angrynomics*, these parties and their analogues elsewhere treat tenure in government as some class of managerial test, when in fact the whole point of voting people into government is in order to change the conditions we live under.

As Eric notes towards the end of the book, the price paid, even in a country of relatively equal like the Republic has been ruinous for the rural west. He writes, we need fundamentally new ideas about who owns what and who gets the returns to assets.

Reconnecting with the parish in one thing, but if this administration is to make good it has to make a huge difference to the lives of ordinary citizens regardless of where they live. Hard when you feel you dont deserve to be in the hard place you find yourself.

They could worse than heeding rule number one of Jordan Petersons 12 Rules for Life, An Antedote to Chaos, which is that

to stand up straight with your shoulders back means building the ark that protects the world from the flood, guiding your people through the desert after they have escaped tyranny, making your way away from comfortable home and country and speaking the prophetic word to those who ignore the widows and the children. [Emphasis added]

Or as one senior member of the Northern Irish press corp said this week, wise up. To which Dr. Petersons younger alter ego might add, and grow a pair

If the country needs fixing, help get it fixed. Or get out of the way of it being fixed in a way that treats all the children of the nation equally. That, as Elaine Byrne rightly notes in the Sunday Business Post, also means strengthening local democracy.

After 20 years of failed government in NI, betting Sinn Fin, be they Greens or Fianna Fil rebels will do anything it promises is not even a long shot. As one northern friend said, however tough it is if Fianna Fil is not a party of government it is nothing.

The cards have been played.

*If you havent seen it already this weeks podcast interview with Eric on #Angrynomics is below. Do give it a listen:

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Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

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Time for Fianna Fil TDs to stand up straight, with shoulders back and make the impossible leap - Slugger O'Toole