Query: what kind of electoral landslide is it when most of the electorate doesn’t turn up? Not quite a landslide, I’d say – more the shifting of shingle. To put it another way, in the Irish presidential election, fewer than half of voters turned out (45.8 per cent). Three in four electors did not vote for Catherine Connolly, the United Left candidate. There wasn’t much of a turnout in the previous election, of course, but that was because the sitting president, Michael D. Higgins, was such a shoo-in. This time, the stay-at-homes, at 55 per cent of voters, were way ahead of those who could be bothered.

It was a record victory for the Lefty, as we are being told, which may be true if you take her share of valid votes, 62 per cent, but is less impressive when you consider that she got just over half (55 per cent) of the total vote. What were those invalid votes then – amounting to 317,306, all told? Many were for Jim Gavin, the Fianna Fail candidate, a former football player, who had to withdraw from the election under something of a cloud, but remained on the ballot paper. But most, 213,738, were simply spoiled.

I’ve seen a picture of one of these spoilt votes (God knows if it’s even legal to take a picture........

© The Spectator