The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Entertaining to read how Fine Gael is dealing with the pressures of an overly restless soldiery, now champing at the bit to take power albeit in an electoral context where the next election is at least half a year away and perhaps, should the Coalition weather the Budget storm (and Lisbon) some multiples of that figure. This disconnect between what the largest opposition party says it wants and what is politically achievable has become more and more stark in the past two weeks. Some of you may have missed the fact that the Dáil shut down for business last week. The Seanad follows suit next week. And… that’s it. For the Summer.

Nor is anything very drastic likely to happen when it returns in the late Summer/early Autumn. Again, not until Lisbon and the Budget. Surely, the Green party may face troubles with their revised and revisited Programme for Government. Or they may not, and I’d bet the latter.

So what’s ‘the largest party’ (copyright…various political pieces in June) in the country not actually in Government to do? Particularly with their new star?

THREE INTERNAL policy committees have been set up by Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny in preparation for the next general election.

Dún Laoghaire TD Seán Barrett will head a candidate selection committee, Cork South-Central TD Simon Coveney chairs a policy committee and a communications committee will be led by Senator Frances Fitzgerald.

Newly-elected Dublin South TD and former RTÉ journalist George Lee has been given responsibility for a business and economic forum. It will report to the policy committee on ideas submitted by business groups and the public concerning ideas for job-creation and the economy.

The party’s chief economist, Andrew McDowell, has been promoted to head of research and will work with the new committees.

One could argue that at least they have the virtue of doing something – albeit there is a certain irony in the creation of new roles and responsibilities, granted entirely unpaid, by those who appear to argue that everywhere else there should be either freezes or cutbacks. But… the detail, what’s the detail?

The various groups will be overseen by a steering committee chaired by Mr Kenny. Ultimate responsibility for policymaking will remain with the party’s front bench.

So what again is the point? Now perhaps this is actually quite clever. One forum in particular might have a further virtue of keeping the newest star high in the media heaven. While retaining the front bench status quo ante.

All this is on foot of a meeting in the Burlington Hotel at the end of June. Apparently…

Senior Fine Gael sources said there was “a feeling within the parliamentary party that they were being left outside the consultation process” and that there was “a lack of connectivity” between the party administration and TDs and Senators.

This revolved around the issue of comments made by senior party official Frank Flannery shortly before the European elections which indicated a softening of Fine Gael’s traditional atttitude to coalition with Sinn Féin.

There was said to be “a lot of annoyance” and “a lot of disquiet” at Mr Flannery’s intervention which was seen as having damaged the party in electoral terms at a delicate stage.

Well, Flannery fell upon, or was gently pushed towards, his sword. And I’m not sure his words had a massive impact. Did that genuinely stay the hand of any Fine Gael member, supporter or voter? Or did it dissuade any Fianna Fáil voter thinking of giving FG a go? Does that seem likely?

And what of this intriguing comment, which reeks of ‘on the one hand… but… on the other’…

The communications committee, with Senator Fitzgerald and TDs David Stanton and Damien English, is being established because of a feeling that the party’s policies in certain areas, such as health, need to be publicised more widely and on a more sustained basis, although this is not a reflection on health spokesman Dr James Reilly.

Okay, I guess being pedantic one might argue that Reilly (who some think is actually quite good as a Dáil performer) is constrained by the Dáil. But…

Note the IT is filled with optimism about an earlier election…

Senior party sources said a general election could take place as early as November, in the event that Fianna Fáil and the Greens fail to agree on the next budget. Otherwise, an election within the next 18 months is seen as a strong possibility.

Why 18 months? If the Government survives the Budget then there will be no pressing reason to go the country, and indeed many others not to do so. They can wait out the remaining three years from now that their term encompasses and hope that during that period economic activity stabilises and we experience growth, and then… then they’ll be able to point to how they remained calm when all around… etc.

Indeed Backroom in the Sunday Business Post makes explicitly this point…

ronically, it is the opposition that faces more strategic questions than the government. Rumour has it that the Taoiseach has been enjoying himself since the poll drubbing.

After all, [Cowen] isn’t obliged to face the electorate again until 2012 which, in political terms, is a lifetime away. To add to that, his government seems more stable too. So bad was the government’s drubbing last month that it is unlikely that any of his coalition partners or backbenchers will want to precipitate an early encounter with the electorate.

So look forward three years from now. Let’s say that the economy is beginning to show some signs of life. Cowen will boom that his government took the tough decisions to chisel this recovery from the worst depression ever seen. He will claim that Fine Gael and Labour opposed everything the government had done right. The public might just well tell him to get stuffed, but it might not. If things are getting better for the first time in years, will the public want to change the hand on the tiller?

The opposition therefore faces two challenges. It will be risky to move away from the positioning that served them well in the local elections – why alienate anybody by being clearer about where their cuts will come? But it will also be risky to remain on the current path for fear that Cowen gets the credit for turning things around.

But I think the most revealing comment is back in the Irish Times…

There is said to be a strong feeling in the parliamentary party that, “just being an Opposition party isn’t enough, people want to know what Fine Gael has to offer”.

Byelections and local elections are great. In a sense they are the perfect simplification of political messages down to their bare bones. To a large extent it becomes ‘I’m for FG, or agin FF’ (and consider again the likelihood that Flannery’s words seriously impacted on that dynamic). But… politics in the long periods between contests is a completely different matter.