While it seems that everyone in office and university land is googleing ‘anglo irish golden circle’ and arriving here or another blog (one visitor a minute earlier today!) and lists are being made and crossed off, many people are wondering what has happened to Fianna Fáil.
Yes I think many are wondering what’s happening to the country also but the melt down of a government party which usually could fight it’s way out of a fix is surprising to many. Key battlers in the party are very quiet recently – Micheal Martin, Dermot Ahern and Noel Dempsey being hard enough to find these days. Minister Martin is in Cuba of all places, I wonder what he might learn.
Tonight Minister Batt O’Keefe is not sent out to defend education cuts on Prime Time aginst Labour Party spokesperson, Ruairi Quinn T.D. We were treated to Junior Minister for Integration Conor Lenihan instead – twice in one week for Conor as he also chilled out on Questions and Answers on Monday night.
Martin Mansergh, Willie O’Dea and Dick Roche are not exactly ‘A list’ Fianna Failers but they never seem to be off the air either (or at least I’m having a very difficult time avoiding them!)
Harry McGee blogs tonight about a FF backbencher thinking the plain people haven’t really grasped how bad things are – when in fact it’s looking like the other way round entirely.
And in all that, is there no place for hope, or for some kind of solidarity in all of this? Does Brian Cowen and his government have the emotional wherewithal to spell out the reality of the situation but offer some semblance of hope and normality, some distant gleam of light over the far horizon?
I suspect that, ultimately, they don’t. Nor does the Fianna Fail side have the vocabulary or maturity to ready up and admit the mistakes, its culpability (along with the PeeDees) in overheating the market and ratcheting up the greed factor over ten years.
FF TD’s are nowhere to be seen (and like Gormley and Eamon Ryan are missing in the Dáil) and there are few if any opportunities to donut a visiting minister as there are no new schools to open and few jobs to annouce. But the other thing that’s missing is the safe pair of hands, the battler, the leader who makes a speech or gives Brian Dobson an interview and says it’s all going to be ok, sort of, eventually!
No I’m not saying bring back Bertie – but leadership is something sorely lacking and this only lends itself to hype the rumours that circulate of heaves being prepared, or general election campaigns readied. It’s being said again and again that the holy trinity of Brian, Mary and Brian L are being left to make a mess of it all because there’s no money to spend and hard times ahead for years.
Meanwhile Fianna Fail are soft launching a YouTube Channel, an official party Facebook group and a Twitter account and recruting bloggers for a mailing list and event invite list. Maybe I’ll get asked to blog the ard fheis next week and I can find out more about what ails the party and if it can find it’s mojo!
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The missing A-List is an example of classic political maneuvering.
When it looks like something is going to bring down the leader, the contenders don’t want to be anywhere near it. The best example is Bertie Ahern when Albert Reynolds government collapsed. During the entire crisis, he practically disappeared from the face of the earth, only to re-emerge when it was all over.
In fact, Batt was originally due on and was withdrawn for Conor the Kebab.
Nonetheless we had Dermot Aherne blustering on the airwaves this morning, telling us that no-one in the cabinet had any idea of the identity of the Golden Circle Anglo Investors – stretching credibility to the extremes. He further blustered that all cabinet members were asked if they had any vested interest in the matter, as is the normal run of business at cabinet meetings – please we did not come down in the last golden shower.
Jasus, never bring Bertie back, he’s the cause of all this shite. My take on the issue you raise is that the logic is that if the cabinet appears on TV, then they are implicated in the crisis. If they are invisible, then they are deamned for not showing leadership. Perversely, while Labour’s leader is actually leading, FG’s leader doesn’t need to ‘appear’ on TV and their ratings go up… it must really piss FF off!
What complicates matters is how in FF there seems to be an awful lot of ‘cross talk’ about various political issues, with various ministers talking on policy that is *not* their brief. I’ve even seen Gormley talking about the banking system lately (remember Gollum’s quip to Frodo: mustn’t ask us, not it’s business!!)
You know, in Haughey’s day (and I feel zero nostalgia for the corrupt dictator of Irish politics), Ministers would never dare speak on their own ministerial brief (without H’s approval) let alone make a comment on someone else’s responsibility. Today discpline has totally evaporated, and the lack of leadership has led to a loss of confidence. This ‘free-for-all’ discourse (which may, in part spring from media’s occasional success of ‘finding someone’ on the hop to make a soundbite) suggests to me that there is no leadership, no Cowenite control of the party and the party’s in real trouble.
As to the electorate (ignoring the immediacy of crisis bit for a mo), well I think people have tired of FF after all these years and the fatigue has been compounded by (a) handling of the crisis, (b) the long-term impact of corruption allegations/tribunals, (c) the party’s lack of the common touch/ feeling it doesn’t care/ understand what is going on in the real world, and people are completely excluded from politics when everything is ‘negotiated’ around a ‘table’ with vested interests instead of real people – it paralyses leadership. Finally, (d) the impact of the (unelected) troika of Cowen, Lenihan and Coughlan (the three stooges of Irish politics) is just poisonous because they’re just clueless. More widely, I would suggest that any ‘changes’ in FF are like moving the deckchairs around the Titanic, it’s been the same old faces in cabinet for years. Cowen’s premiership started with the firing of a ‘harmless’ minister – and that was a sour note upon which to start a supposedly new era. Nothing is, however, new: it’s 1948 all over again.
People are listening very careful to all the utterances of the FF hierarchy versus what Enda and Eamon are saying… and FG and Labour are winning hands down. I note the SF and the ‘rest’ are not benefiting in recent polls, which suggests there will be a shift to the alternative to FF next time ’round. Had Cowen et al taken a more pro-active approach, the poll ratings wouldn’t be quite so bad, but the dithering, ham-fisted approach has made a bad situation worse. At the root of it all, FF just doesn’t get “it” or get “us”. I’m thinking people will sit on their hands, and it will be a meltdown, not just a loss. I won’t miss them.
Re. The Troika: If you saw them sitting together in a bar, you would give them a wide berth: Lenihan wild eyed and unshaven making calculations on a barmat ;Coughlan, utterly clueless, laughing nervously. Cowen getting another round in and becoming increasingly belligerent.
FF are screwed through out the ranks, even at local level they’re squabbling, cumainn are splitting in two, cllrs and local TDs are scoring own goals in local media, the whole party is in disarray from the grass roots up.
Irish Election » Clever Strategy or a Leadership Bid // Feb 24, 2009 at 14:00
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