General Election - 25th February 2011 - A call to arms

Fianna Fáil were in Mount Street for theirs. Fine Gael were at party headquarters for theirs. And Labour went to the Guinness Storehouse for theirs.

If one were to graphically represent, as a word cloud, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore's remarks this morning, as the three main parties launched their election campaigns, it may look something like this:

Yesterday in the Dáil he used the word twenty times and today it also featured prominently.

In response to questions over Pat Rabbitte's sexist remarks concerning female FF candidates, Mr. Gilmore said publicly, that the comments were 'flippant' and not to be taken too seriously. But privately he will know, in an election campaign, everything you say counts. It's as if words undergo a change of state, a transformation from some gaseous form to dense, dark matter.

But then again, it's difficult to account for the idiosyncrasies of an individual voter; forgotten, as the electoral discussion revolves around the twin suns of polling data and sample sizes.

One man in Galway said he would "always vote for Fianna Fáil, as they had always been good to pensioners." He said it as I have reproduced it here; without an exclamation mark. One resists the urge to quip, à la Grandpa Simpson, where are my teeth, who am I? To do so would commit a grave disservice to the thousands of pensioners who marched on Leinster House to overturn a Fianna Fáil government decision to regressively curtail medical card entitlements. 

But sometimes the mind is impermeable to reason. Loyalty in politics should not be so easily earned and so rarely given away. It is this sort of narrow ideological fundamentalism that has seen Fianna Fáil regarded as the most successful political franchise in Europe, and which gave rise to the arrogance and sense of entitlement exuded by their big players over the last decade.

Enda Kenny will hope that Labour, and in particular Fianna Fáil and Martin, will heed the last Dáil words of Taoiseach Brian Cowen:

“This election will define our economic future and decide whether Ireland moves forward from this recession, prolongs it or succumbs to it. I urge the people to examine the policies being advanced by each of the parties and to cast their vote accordingly.” And pertinently, “this election should not be about personalities but serious debate, reflection and the solemn business of democracy."

 A text to the Lunchtime show on Newstalk said sagaciously of Enda:

 "He simply hasn't got it."

Got what? (Secular lefties look away now). Perhaps Deputy Kenny will prove the antidote to sleaze, to tents in Galway and to policies which maintain the status quo of an economic elite, who acted as lobbyists for their own monetary advancement. Perhaps he will perform to the exulted standard that his supporters have promoted (nay mythologised), that he’ll be a chairman of the board kind of Taoiseach.  So if Enda can’t get the job done he knows a man (sorry Lucinda) that can. It will probably be a man. FG are running a mere 15% of female candidates of a total of 102. [i]

And what of Micheál Martin? For he too seeks to brand himself as the candidate of change, he who has been in cabinet for 14 years. Where do FF grassroots get their motivation from? He will need every last splutter the Fianna Fáil machine, running perilously low on gas, has to give him. Martin will need to win 39 seats or more to avoid being anointed as the least successful FF election leader in history.

Martin has identified Sinn Féin and Labour as his battlegrounds, and if he can attack Fine Gael while doing it all the better. His employment of the term “tug of war politics,” at his party’s campaign launch, neatly highlights the policy gulf that exists between the two would-be government partners, and is perhaps a euphemism for; a vote for Labour is a vote for Fine Gael. This strategy gains credibility in the wake of  both FG and Labour  candidates foolishly attacking one another in the past week.

Normally I would not advocate a pre-election pact, and allow Fine Gael and Labour to battle it out on the merits of their separate platforms, and if the time comes, to negotiate a programme for government and bridge the ideological chasm. But under these circumstances, it is vital that the electorate is presented with a cohesive plan and message; a one-hymn-sheet-only agreed manifesto where economic policy, financial regulation, job creation, education investment and a strategy to rebuild brand Ireland that all the people of Ireland can support, or not.

With these doubts, these unanswerables, Fianna Fáil may gain ground playing on the anxiety such uncertainty fosters. But what Martin is overlooking (publicly, at least - but then, what else can he do?) is that for now the only certainty the country needs is to know that FF will be confined to the opposition benches for the foreseeable future.

This may be an election where anti-government (FF) rhetoric is enough to win, but the electorate should hold the probable usurpers to a higher standard than that. Political reform must feature prominently in the discourse of #ge2011.

As for Sinn Féin, are they going to run a campaign, solely mimicking the anger of voters? Can they afford a leader, in Adams, who is out of his depth economically, when it is an issue of singular importance in this election? Are they capable of shaping a narrative that outlines the political and policy failure of Fianna Fáil's bank guarantee, bailout and NAMA, beyond lip-synching the average coat on a bar stool?

Can Fine Gael outline feasible policy positions that they belive in and resist a manifesto, which has been vetted and combed over by the PR department? Public sector reform is music to the ears of most disgruntled private sector workers but will the detail of such reform stand up to scrutiny?

The axiom, the only poll that counts is the one on the 25th, is true, but only up to a point. In American election campaigns they have a phrase, "the big mo." Opinion polls in the run up to elections can invigorate campaigns deemed to have momentum and cut the legs of those without it.

Does it even matter? Does Fianna Fáil have any credibility when attacking opponents’ policies?  For even when FF receives, what on the face of it seems good news, for example, a reduction in numbers of un-employed, closer inspection exorcises any feelings of mitigation and solidifies what many assert is the total betrayal of their self-aggrandised and readily espoused founding principles. 


Falls in the live register figures, announced today, must be tempered with the ESRI's (Economic and Social Research Institute) assertion that the numbers of Irish jobless has actually risen, whilst the overall decline can be accounted for by a significant drop in non-Irish job-seekers, many of whom are merely returning home.

Will the Irish electorate show the steel at the ballot box that they failed to show in 2007, when the pre-election opinion poll invective, whist not as bilious as now, nonetheless suggested a Fianna Fáil defeat? Fine Gael losing the 2007 election was a blessing in disguise. In 2011, nothing other than a victory which inflicts severe electoral damage to Fianna Fáil can be countenanced.

To meet the enormous challenge facing Fianna Fail, Micheál Martin it seems has borrowed the Gordon Brown/New Labour play book, a word cloud of which would probably feature, solely, the word FEAR.

Some will regard Eamon Gilmore's adamant declaration that we must change the deal with the IMF as primal polemic chest beating, but others will feel he is mirroring their own frustration, and as we struggle to regain some sort of national pride, may clench a fist in defiant unity. Even if we know it's a lie, maybe it's a lie we want to believe.

What is self evident is Gilmore’s observation that this election will be like nothing we have seen before. Does this signify a move from micro to macro, local to national? One can only hope so. We are a single brush stroke on the economic landscape of the world and as such our political institutions must evolve to shape a national vision.


[i] Evening Herald - herald.ie - Family portrait puts women on frontline for Kenny campaign