Sir, – In Stephen Collins and Ciara Meehan’s recent work on the history of Fine Gael, Saving the State: Fine Gael from Collins to Varadkar, the authors quote Leo Varadkar as saying: “Fine Gael needs to guard against a serious party emerging on its right, either a PD-style liberal market party or a socially conservative one”.
Quite.
A year and a half into the current Coalition – and entering its 12 consecutive year in government – Fine Gael appears bereft of ideas and in desperate need of some introspection about what it actually stands for.
Take the pandemic. As the only serious party of the centre right, one might expect Fine Gael ministers to at least pay lip-service to the importance of restoring some basic freedoms that have been removed over the past 21 months.
Instead, it has been happy to kowtow to heavy-handed public health officials who have demanded some of the most draconian restrictions in Europe.
Moreover, a Fine Gael finance Minister readily abandoned the country’s cornerstone corporate tax model, while the party has recently backed minimum unit pricing for alcohol. On housing, the situation remains so dire that even many well-paid young professionals see little hope of owning a decent home in the near future.
With the party languishing in the polls – almost indistinguishable from its main Coalition partner – and leaving Sinn Féin in the ascendancy, what exactly is the point of Fine Gael? – Yours, etc,
SIMON FOY,
London.