Daniel Sullivan - he’s a little political

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.

How to guarantee a Yes vote for Lisbon

// September 3rd, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized

If the Taoiseach was 100% committed to the notion of passing the Lisbon Treaty, he would offer the people something they want. A general election. He should make a solemn promise that if the people approve Lisbon that he will go to the country in the following weeks to seek an endorsement of NAMA and his government’s budgetary position. It would remove at a stroke the potential for people to against Lisbon in order to give him and his government a kicking.

Vote yes and get a general election, Vote No and you don’t get one.