More than 20 years ago, working in London as Europe editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit, I was fortunate enough to be paid to analyse the policies, economics and politics of the continent’s countries. At the time, there was a fashionable narrative in Ireland: to describe the then Bertie Ahern-led government as the most right-wing administration since the founding of the state (despite Ahern, older readers might recall, self-describing as a ‘socialist’). So silly was this narrative that this author put pen to paper for a national newspaper, debunking the nonsense by pointing out that, compared to contemporary government positions…

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