Great Betrayal

by John Drennan

As the curtain falls on the 31st Dail, the government have fallen drastically out of favour, something that is hard to believe if we cast our minds back just a few years to 2011 when they rode a wave of populist sentiment all the way to Dail Eireann. No Irish government has ever enjoyed a larger majority and none has ever so comprehensively squandered its mandate. How did they fall so far so fast?
Written with the unique insight of one of the most original observers of Irish politics, The Great Betrayal provides an entertaining and enlightening narrative of a government that, in the eyes of many, betrayed the hopes of the Irish electorate for a democratic revolution, almost immediately after being elected with a thumping majority.
The Great Betrayal is required reading for anyone wondering how it all went wrong and where we might go from here."

252 pages, Paperback

First published September 11, 2015

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'd never read any Drennan before, and after this hopeless heap of a book, I hope to never again. Every sentence is tediously overwritten, with no metaphor left untortured, no idea too naff to beat you around the head with (the voters are called 'Paddy' throughout, the cabinet are the 'Grumpy old men', and so on). I get the impression readers of the Sunday Independent love this sort of thing and will find it terribly clever. I found it terribly fecking useless, and this almost entirely fact free account of the term of the previous coalition offered almost no point, no analysis and not even a narrative history of the life of that government. Drennan gets two stars for his occassional (likely accidental) slivers of insight that seem to have not been cut during whatever godforsaken shambles of an editing process this collection of barstool rants was quickly passed through.

[Cormac Ó Fearghail · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful, I couldn’t even finish it’s written that bad.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read once you get used to the style of language.
However, it (like most media)is a very negative read about the last government. But negativity sells newspapers and books. I agreed with a lot of his comments but he could have been a bit more positive. I can't see what type of government would ever satisfy John Drennan.