Fine Gael’s gains are vulnerable to either a Fianna Fáil resurgence or new entrants in Irish politics
FINE GAEL gathers this weekend for its first ardfheis since its general election triumph last year. It is now the largest party in the land, and after a year in government is still loved by about 36 per cent of the electorate.
Its leader, Enda Kenny, is more popular than he was before the election, and most of the Fine Gael Ministers are doing well.
In normal circumstances the thousands of Fine Gaelers gathering at the Convention Centre Dublin would be entitled to raise the plush roof in celebration of their electoral achievement.
Decorum will be required, however, in these austere times. Like the wedding of a daughter marrying out of a household where there is illness, Fine Gael’s celebrations will have to be subdued.
Party handlers will have learned from recent mistakes when their plan for a triumphant first birthday parade of achievements in government had to be cancelled in the face of popular and Labour Party criticism that it would strike the wrong note. Nonetheless, there will still be much emphasis on what the Taoiseach and his Ministers have achieved.
The change of government in itself brought some calm, some clarity and an element of stability to our politics and, to some extent, to our economic situation. This time last year our politics was hyperventilating; there is a sense now that we can at least breathe again.
The Government has negotiated well with our European partners and international funders, and has leveraged the Greek sovereign debt crisis and the wider European bank crisis to secure an easing of some of the immediate burden arising from our own fiscal and banking debt.
Michael Noonan comes to the ardfheis having secured agreement on postponing the payment on this year’s Anglo Irish Bank promissory note. While the convoluted nature of the mechanism by which this deferral is to be implemented has blunted some of its political impact, it is a significant achievement and augurs well for the prospects of wider restructuring.
Kenny comes to the ardfheis having spent most of the week in China where, as well as promoting trade, he secured the formal promise of future Chinese investment in Irish bonds, assets and/or infrastructure.
Kenny’s energy and demeanour have been his most significant political traits as Taoiseach. He has been excellent as the Government front-of-house man at home and abroad, and has proved competent both at his desk in Government Buildings and at the Taoiseach’s perch in Dáil Éireann.
Kenny has, however, been a light-touch Taoiseach, leaving Ministers to their own devices, free from detailed supervision.
The much-vaunted report cards he promised on ministerial performance never materialised, and he has been remote from the nitty gritty of policy in other departments.
This has enabled him to maintain distance when things go wrong, as they have of late in the Department of the Environment, and also explains why in so many areas this Government has, despite its massive mandate, been pedestrian in its pace of reform.
Political commentators in Britain this week spoke of how David Cameron is only now beginning to appreciate just how long it takes to get things done in government. James Forsyth in the Spectator, for example, wrote of how Cameron has had to fully abandon his strategy of letting ministers run their departments with little supervision. In recent weeks Cameron has held a series of special cabinet meetings where each minister has been forced to defend their performance in their department to cabinet colleagues. One minister described the exchanges as “acid”.
The Cameron government has been in power nine months longer than Kenny, but given the greater need for reform and the greater challenges facing our Government, Kenny needs to learn the lesson sooner.
Kenny and his Ministers have been absorbed in their Government roles and will, therefore, have had little time for party affairs. That may explain in part why Fine Gael has failed to consolidate the gains it made in the 2011 election. It may have held its share in the poll but its performance in actual elections since then has been disastrous.
There is a notion among some Fine Gael politicians and strategists that somehow the Fianna Fáil collapse in 2010 and early 2011 resulted from a cunning and brilliant Fine Gael plan. The reality is otherwise.
Fine Gael didn’t destroy the Fianna Fáil support base; Fianna Fáil self-destructed.
Kenny and his team deserve considerable credit for saving their party from extinction after 2002 and for bringing about sufficient recovery in the 2007 election to enable it to be the primary (although not sole) beneficiary of Fianna Fáil’s collapse. The 2011 election, as Brian Hayes inelegantly but accurately put it, was about the other parties fighting over the Fianna Fáil carcass. In that fight Fine Gael proved the better carnivore.
In February 2011, Fine Gael not only mopped up former Progressive Democrats votes but got about half of voters deserting Fianna Fáil. These switchers are not wedded to Fine Gael, however. The presidential election and Dublin West byelection results suggest that Irish politics remains volatile and there exists a vacuum at the centre of our party system where Fianna Fáil once stood tall. Fine Gael’s 2011 gains are vulnerable to either a Fianna Fáil resurgence, which looks unlikely at the moment, or a new entrant or entrants who may yet emerge in the Irish political marketplace.
Real reform and an appreciable economic recovery may enable Fine Gael to hold its dominant position in the next general election. Ministers will need to deliver more and more quickly to achieve this.
When they get back to their constituencies the party faithful also have a job of work to avoid the organisational neglect that usually goes with being in government.