Fianna Fail’s real electoral nightmare – Part 1

// June 30th, 2010 // 7 Comments » // Fianna Fail

The real nightmare for Fianna Fail at the next general election is not losing power, it’s not even whether they end up losing 20 or even 30 seats. It is that the wrong people will end up retaining their seats and the right people lose out. By right and wrong, I mean people best equipped to undertake the necessary work to revive the party and to ensure that they make a decent fist of opposition, something they’ve only had to do for two and half years in the last 23 (this could be a quarter of a century by the time the election comes around) or so.

This isn’t about who I like in FF but about who is more able to articulate a position that might find resonance with the nation faced with a FG and Labour government.

Take Mayo as one example, if Bev ends up saving her seat at the expense of Dara Calleary does anyone realistically think that FF can put her on the front bench as one of the main people to do the hard slog of re-building the party? The same is the case in Meath East were Thomas Byrne to lose out to Mary “Wednesday” Wallace. Or where Jim McDaid ends up as the sole FF rep in Donegal North West, or if FF in a fit of desperation ran Pat the Cope yet again in DSW and he held a seat but in doing so ensured the departure of Mary Coughlan. It’s not merely a matter of how much they lose but who they lose. That as anyone in FG will tell you made the path from 2002 down and outs to 2007 contenders all that much harder

And there are many others, just a few of which I’ve listed below

Cork North Central – Noel O’Flynn instead of Billy Kelleher

Kildare North – Michael Fitzpatrick instead of Aine Brady

Dublin North West – Noel Ahern instead of Pat Carey

Dublin South Central – Michael Mulcahy instead of Sean Ardagh

Cork North West – Michael Moynihan instead of Batt O’Keeffe

Dublin North – Michael Kennedy instead of Daire ?O’Brien

Wexford – John Brown instead of Sean Connick

Meath West – Johnny Brady instead of Noel Dempsey

and there are more. Just imagine that it’s the last week of the campaign and FF are still polling consistently under 30% and they finally know they are in the territory of  a FG in 2002 style bloodbath, who in the party hierarchy is going to be in a position to make the hard calls on behalf of the party and put the resources behind the ones they will need to recover. FG needed someone to do that in 2002 and it didn’t happen and the effect was that the party wasn’t able to close gap when it came to 2007. The difference is that FG has been through long periods of opposition before, so coming close didn’t fracture the party but instead bound it together even more. FF on the other hand with a much reduced local election base looking towards at least 2 terms in opposition might turn in on itself in manner we’ve not seen in Irish politics before. The main players being the tribalists against those who view the party as the best means to power but with any number of smaller factions coming to the fore.

Fine Gael should split the Finance portfolio

// June 28th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // fine gael

My own take on the line up for the new FG Front Bench is that the plan as suggested at the time of George Lee’s departure that the area of Finance and the economy needs a long term view in addition to someone to respond to the day to day eruptions should be put into effect. Michael Noonan should be the person to face off with Lenihan on the day to day stuff with Richard Bruton handling the medium to longer term evolution of our policy proposals. It would be double teaming of the highest order, but will we take the chance it represents?

The next Fine Gael Front bench

// June 21st, 2010 // 2 Comments » // fine gael

My Predictions for the new Fine Gael front Bench are below, note these are who I suspect having read my runes and the entrails of a passing goat that the train hit. They are not necessarily who I would pick nor who I think would be most suitable, well some of them might be while others would not be. You can judge for yourself

Michael Noonan – [Finance] (he’s not a threat to Enda and he is familiar with the brief for finance and is well able to respond and think on his feet)

Michael Ring - [Agriculture, Fisheries & Food]

Jimmy Deenihan – [Arts, Sport & Tourism]

Phil Hogan [Communications, Energy & Natural Resources]

Seymour Crawford [Community, Rural & Gaeltacht Affairs]

Terence Flanagan [Defence]

Leo Varadkar [Education & Science]

Phil Hogan - [Enterprise, Trade & Employment]

David Stanton - [Environment, Heritage & Local Government]

Fergus O’Dowd - [Foreign Affairs]

James Reilly [Health] and deputy leader

Deirdre Clune [Immigration & Integration]

Alan Shatter - [Justice, Equality & Law Reform]

Catherine Byrne – [Children]

Brian Hayes – [Social & Family Affairs]

Paul Kehoe - [Transport & Marine]

John Perry [Chief Whip]

I’ll be on Newstalk’s Saturday Edition in the morning

// June 18th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized

I will be taking part in a discussion re: the week’s events in Fine Gael tomorrow morning between 8.30am and 9.30am. I’m not a main player as it were, merely a phone contributor.  Senator Alex White, Senator Frances Fitzgerald and Padraig Duffy former press for Bertie are the main attraction but I’m aiming to be one of those memorable character actors who runs off with the show. I mean I presume it’s solely going to be about matters Fine Gael cos if we stray into talking about the Lakers win over the Celtics I’m in trouble.

Where does Fine Gael go now?

// June 18th, 2010 // No Comments » // fine gael

I think this rural vs urban stuff is nonsense, Mark Coughlan of another parish noted that it seemed to be in areas where the PDs had once had a foothold or seat that the FGers were opposed to the confidence motion. I would expend that and incorporating my previously expressed and rather simplistic notion of tribalists versus policisits slightly. I would suggest that TDs and Senators from places where FF are the only enemy (and I would include places where a personal vote has gotten Labour TDs elected), these are for the most part ideological free zones and have been for the last 30 years or more and they tended to back Enda because they saw this as an internal party matter and assault on the chief. But in places where FGers have had to battle Labour, the PDs, SF or the Greens or some other shape of ideologue then they saw this as being about reaching out way beyond traditional FG territory by the force of our ideas and so were backing Bruton. In those places, they are tend to FG more by choice than by birth and what the party actually does is more important than who does it. Those they are places where the PDs gained votes from FG during the 80s and 90s.

That divide still remains, and if those who think it is more important what your family did in 1922 than what you’ve got to offer yourself have the upper hand and use it to secure their position then the party is going to find itself struck around 30% for the foreseeable future with Labour and FF snapping at their heels. But if they realise that what was being said in criticism of the performance at the top table was valid and that we still require a change at the top, even if that change is to be in what the top is doing rather than who it is that is doing it  then we could really make some headway and leap well ahead of both FF and Labour. For me it is noteworthy that no one has addressed my Bloomsday questions  to date, and I think that’s because they are still current and no one particularly wants to give voice to the answers.

Those  questions are.

1. Do they accept there is a problem with the public’s perception of his abilities – not with his actual abilities but with the public’s perception of them? I think most people will answer yes.

2. To those who accept there is a problem with that perception, what do we do about it? There are three options: i) demonstrate immediately a convincing plan to right the public’s misconceptions of Mr Kenny and explain why this has not happened before now, ii) accept stagnation of the party’s support, or iii) remove the perception problem entirely by removing the very man who is the subject of the incorrect perception.

We appear yesterday to have rejected option (iii) and surely we can’t as a party be planning on living with option (ii) so the question remains when will we see movement on option (i)?

What the contest in Fine Gael is about

// June 17th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // fine gael

The contest in FG is not urban or rural as Elaine Byrne suggested but between the politics of “what” and “how” as compared with the politics of “who, and where and when”. There is a not inconsiderable number in Irish politics across the party divide for whom the intoning of the party name is the answer to all questions. This is great stuff at the time of an Ard Fheis when rallying the troops but holds less water when faced with more practical problems as we are now.

Enda has rebuilt an organisation that was eager to listen, desperate for salvation, while the general public were not as eager to listen to him. Those abilities and talents which allowed him to achieve this task of re-equipping Fine Gael and to be the best suited person to undertake this task are not the same as the abilities required to get across and convert people who were not so inclined towards the party or who have never thought of voting for it.

And at the time he started, Enda Kenny and the party recognised this and the counter argument to weakness in his approach was that in Irish politics we do not elect an all powerful president, a singular saviour, but we elect a parliament from which our executive will be drawn and this government will be chosen by the individual who commands a majority in that chamber. The value of the Fine Gael approach over the last 8 years was that it emphasised the team: that Fine Gael had solid competent people in the right place. The party was not selling a mere individual but an entire roster. Enda was to be player manager, picking the team beforehand and urging them on new heights on the pitch. He did not need to be the best player in the most important position.

Thus if the public might not be convinced that Enda Kenny knew all when it came to matters economic he had Richard Bruton by his side to reassure them on that. This approach was a harder sell in 2007 than it is now when the panel the leader had to draw from was more threadbare than any Fine Gael leader had been faced with up to that point. Yet the party almost did it if some of the dice had fallen right. Had highly anticipated gains by the other partners in the new Rainbow come through if Dominic Hannigan prevailed, or Dan Boyle held his seat or the Greens made their much vaunted breakthrough in Galway West how differ it might all have been. That time is passed, that particular race is run.

Fact is that Enda was also selected by the party to out-Bertie Bertie and the time for Bertie has passed. Bertie was the ultimate leader of the easy times, faced with a choice between two hard options he would and could pick both. Glad handling and the large scale superficial campaign of recent elections has been replaced by the more nuanced, even tedious policy discussion required to convey a party’s reading of the intricacy of NAMA, achieving national economic recovery in varied forms, dealing with the impressions of the bond markets as we borrow extensively and more before breakfast.

It is this change in political reality that more than anything else necessitates a change in approach and hence in leader. When Enda Kenny suggested at the recent national conference that despite his hailing of the work of Richard Bruton the day before that having him as Minister for Finance was not a deal breaker in any arrangement with Labour it signalled to many in the party and beyond that the FG approach to the restoration of the economy could be easily sidelined to that of Labour. Labour would hold the key ministry of finance from which all resources flow. If that were the case then the public too felt why vote for the middle man if he was not the one who would set the economic course of the country.

The little defence that this is the wrong time admits that this is the right thing to do but just not now. Now that the knife is unsheathed this defence makes no sense at all.  The big defence advanced to date that we should look at what Enda has done as a sign of what he can and will do does not hold water over distance. Enda rebuilt an organisation but surely it does not rebuilding in the same way all over again? Enda did the hard yards but the coach who gets the players through the winter of running up sand dunes to build up their endurance is not the same one to work on their skills in spring. This is not about the past any more, the public have blamed FF for the mistakes we must now provide solutions.

More than anything I would characterise those who are most supportive of Enda to be moreover those for whom the fact of Fine Gael not being Fianna Fail is a bigger selling point to their core voters that the hard facts and policies of what Fine Gael itself stands for and is currently selling. Those ranged in opposition to Enda now are, in my view, those who are more interested convincing the public of what exactly the goals of Fine Gael are and how precisely it will achieve its aims rather that pointing out that Fine Gael are not Fianna Fail. This is where the divide is between those for whom it is more important what we will choose to do and how we do it than the mere fact that it is a Fine Gael minister who pulls the lever. The decision is more important that the person who makes it. Not that the person is irrelevant but less important. The time to merely aim to be not-FF is long past, the time to be Fine Gael has come.

What chances for a smooth change at the top of FG?

// June 14th, 2010 // No Comments » // fine gael

I suspect that it is obvious at this point that the possibility of a change at the top of FG has increased in the last 48 hours and the likelihood of this change over being a smooth and relatively bloodless one has, despite the appearances in the media, increased too. I believe that Enda Kenny knows that the race as currently constituted is run and a change in approach is needed and that he simply can’t overcome the incorrect perception of him that has fixed itself in the mind of the electorate. I say this as a fan of the man, he would be a superb Taoiseach but too large a portion of the electorate can’t see that. So the question is what do we do about it?

In part this mis-perception is to due to the media back lash after he took over the party as many people in the media were somewhat affronted that this guy from the west about whom they knew little had become leader of the main opposition party. Moreover, some of them were appalled that FG hadn’t disappeared to give them the simplistic left right politics they so desperately ached for. Enda Kenny kept the party from relegation into irrelevancy and obscurity but the work to do so meant that most of his time was spent with the organisation the length and breadth of the country and not in Dublin wining and dining with the media insiders. This crucial 18 months when he saved the party has probably damned him in the eyes of the media.

He was exactly what was needed to save the party, but we should remember that Moses never got to the promised Land. For those who say that we must support Enda in all circumstances come what may, I would ask two simply questions.

a) Do they accept that there is a problem with the public’s perception of his abilities? Not with his actual abilities but with the public’s perception of them. If they don’t then they must be blind or delusional.

And b) for those in full command of their faculties who accept there is a problem with that perception then the next question is what do we do about it? If there is something we can do about the then I wish to Christ we could hear it from them cos keeping it as a secret weapon to be deployed just when we need it most has gone on too long. Alternately, if there is nothing more we can do about that perception then either we accept that the party’s support will stagnant into the future at a time when the electorate is in complete flux or they see that a change is necessary. Those are the three options, demonstrate immediately a convincing plan to right the public’s perception of Enda Kenny (and explain why this has not happened before now), accept stagnation of the party’s support or remove the perception problem by removing the man the incorrect perception is of. I’m open to people telling me of other options, but right now those are the only ones I see.

By moving to lance the boil that is the public’s perception of him Enda Kenny can still take the point position in the debate against Brian Cowen, and he can challenge him to match his actions. Enda can profess that the situation has been changed so much by the banking reports that the people need to believe and be convinced that the next Taoiseach will be in command of the economic issues and not be open to being lead or being hostage as it is now so plain Brian Cowen has been, and that FG needs to be strong and seen to be strong in this area in order to ensure that the siren call from Labour to the electorate that there is some easy and painless way out of our economic situation is resisted.

Labour have done well convincing people that we can avoid public sector spending cuts, that we can somehow find significant extra taxation without it impacting on anyone or slowing down the recovering of the economy. There are areas where tax allowances on pensions say can be reduced but you can only do that the once.

We need to find 3 billion this year and then an extra 3 billion again the next and more again the year after that, not the same savings being done again but additional reductions in spending or increases in taxation. If we can get more people in work, then tax revenues will raise and public spending in the form of social welfare reductions.  But where will the money come from to fund this work? If the state were to provide it, we would be borrowing even more which we simply can’t do. That is to relive the 80s all over again.

The end of Enda

// June 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // enda kenny

He has been an excellent leader of the party and has the qualities to make a great Taoiseach but the electorate have fixed in their minds a view of him that is inaccurate, not based on his performance and even at times simply unfair. Yet it would seem that a large portion of them are not for shifting in this view.

It would appear that the public has decided that Enda is the soccer guy who clears out the dead wood, sets up the youth academy, brings through new young players and buys well even wins a few cups but having done all that just can’t seem to connect with them and the squad he has assembled in order to win the league. It’s frustrating and undeserved for Enda Kenny but I think that if the government wins the confidence motion next Tuesday that we as a party should immediately make a smooth transition to a new leader in the form of Richard Bruton and look over the course of the summer to iron out a deal with the Greens that transitions them out of government ASAP. Offer them 3 Taoiseach’s nominee seats in the next Seanad for 3 of their TDs that lose their seats to let them recover as a party in opposition (we’re going to win the Seanad elections anyway with a minimal amount of cllr discipline) and we could look at implementing some of the outstanding Green policies from the PfG that aren’t that awful. A properly constituted directly elected Mayor for Dublin isn’t a bad idea, nor is reform of the planning system.

What the poll shows is our problem that FG are obviously not getting the party’s message across well enough. I get quite annoyed at some of our spokespeople for the their inability to get across a cohesive and consistent narrative of what a vote for FG would mean and what the change that would result from a FG win would be like.

Enda Kenny’s leadership isn’t separate from that but nor it is the whole story.

The rise in Labour’s support is quite impressive for what it is but also very interesting for what it isn’t. It’s not an endorsement of Labour’s policies because they don’t have any. They have a series of well expressed if ill defined goals but not detailed policies to achieve them.

I think the truly massive implication from this poll and other recent ones is that the electorate are hugely volatile. FF have lost the faith of the public and neither FG nor Labour or SF have 100% convinced them to date otherwise Labour would have been over 30% much earlier. There are a lot of voters who are open to listening to a new message and it would seem they are taste testing at the moment. And we should take our lucky stars that we don’t have a rabid party of the right looking for scapegoats amongst racial minorities or minority sections of society.

What this poll does prove once and for all is the folly of many left leaning people in their desire to get FG off the pitch so that a real left/right contest could emerge. It has always been the fact that FF were on Labour’s territory that prevented that sort of contest coming about.

Should FG change leader? I don’t believe so but the question is now will FG change leader? I think it is more possible than it was 6 months ago. There won’t be any movement (with that I’ve probably just damned Enda’s chances of staying on) on the FG leadership this side of the no confidence motion. After all it is entirely possible for McDaid and McGuinness to go walk about, for Lowry to decline to support Cowen (anyone miss his Oxegen ticket give-away?) and Jackie to fail to make the train up from Kerry. And were that to happen all bets are off. For now though it looks to me like the End has started.

“I take full responsibility” Brian Cowen

// June 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // brian cowen

So on foot of the banking reports, An Taoiseach, Brian Cowen says that he takes full responsibility but what does that mean? Is he going to resign, is he going to decline to lead FF into the next election? not a chance! Will he forego his pay until the next election, or return his money earned as Minfin? You tell me once you get off the floor.

Last night on Prime Time Cowen was bigging up his proposals in 2006 to eliminate property incentives which came into final effect in 2008 despite he becoming MinFin in 2004.

So what does “taking full responsibility” for An Taoiseach actually mean? Especially, when he then says his decisions were correct based on the faulty information provided by the ESRI, the IMF, the OCED. Where did they get the info to make their projections from except the department of Finance? And who was the minister in charge of that? He constantly demands endorsement of his government’s “right decisions” after the banking crisis happened despite that crisis being large due to the decisions he made before it came about which he wants to avoid discussing as “that’s history”. So what he is telling us is that he made the correct, the logical, the right decisions based on the information provided to him by others, which turned out to be wrong but sure no one could have known it was wrong and that he himself wasn’t able to read the raw data for himself and so had to rely on the views of others as to what this information meant. So he lacked the skills to be minister for Finance but sure what did that matter cos he was the man to take the decisions! Except that when he took the decision, he wasn’t taking it so much as it was taking him.

Yet FF TDs were going up and down the country telling us that we were building more houses than ever before when people raised the issue of rising house prices, did he not think that an exponential rise in building starts might constitute a bubble? We had 100% and 100% plus mortgages, no deposit required, did that not look like reckless lending to him? Did he not read a newspaper or listen to a radio ad in all that time?

Cowen is like the footie manager you see on the telly who says he takes full responsibility for his teams performance but then publicly blames each and every failing in a match on his players. Or on the ref! Players he bought, trained and picked who were playing the game according to his tactics.

It’s like a kid who breaks your window and says “I’m sorry” in a resentfully, snaring voice and then walks off saying he will fix it but does nothing about it. I’m analogied out but you get the picture.