Splintered Sunrise

I’ve been meaning to post something more about the Blueshirt putsch, but there’s already been plenty of good commentary over at the place where the cool kids hang out. It’s hard to imagine a worse scenario for Fine Gael, who have never learned from their FF rivals the fine art of despatching a leader quickly. So there’s now the scenario where Kenny survives in charge with a slim majority, the precise size of which is a secret but which may not be unadjacent to six (in a parliamentary party of 70). Therefore Enda is in a position where he knows, and everybody else knows, that half of his party has no confidence in his leadership, and if you consider his strong support from party senators and MEPs, he probably has the majority of his TDs against him. The words “lame” and “duck” spring to mind, and all that will keep Enda in charge for the time being is a mixture of inertia and the Bruton camp’s making a complete balls of their heave.

Anyway, the thing I wanted to remark on was the geographical spread. Let’s take as a reasonable estimate of support the Irish Times breakdown that showed 33 for Kenny, 30 for Bruton and 7 fence-sitters. This may not be entirely right, so caveat emptor, but it’s unlikely to be wildly inaccurate. Some commentators have remarked on the east-west split, which is true, but it’s slightly more complicated than that. Breaking down the IT list by constituency, we arrive with the following stats:

The 33 for Kenny breaks down as Dublin 6; Leinster 6; Munster 10; Connacht-Ulster 11.

The 30 for Bruton breaks down as Dublin 7; Leinster 9; Munster 11; Connacht-Ulster 3.

And, for what it’s worth, the seven others were Dublin 1, Leinster 1, Munster 2, Connacht-Ulster 3.

You see the Bruton camp, then, having a lead in Dublin and the commuter belt, and Kenny having a near-complete stranglehold on the Connacht organisation, which would probably be crucial. The near-even split in Munster results from Bruton pulling in strong support from around Cork, which would be a Coveney faction rather than a Bruton one, Coveney having medium-term leadership aspirations of his own. There are anomalies, but they are mostly explicable, with Noonan down in Limerick having his own beefs with Kenny, Deasy in Waterford being a serial malcontent and Joe McHugh of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Donegal North East) being married to Brutonite siren Olwyn Enright. Conversely, Electric Enda does have some support on the east coast, but much of that can be identified as people who owe him for patronage reasons.

However, the fact that the anomalies are explicable tends to strengthen the overall picture of a Kennyite faction based firmly in the party’s country-and-western tendency, while the Brutonites huddle around the east coast, with opportunistic support from the Coveneyites in Cork plus scattered malcontents. You will notice the marked resemblance to geographically-based factionalism in Fianna Fáil.

And, as with the FF factionalism, we can pose the question – is there anything political in this? Well, there is and there isn’t.

As is well known, neither of our two main parties is very ideological, and both are what we might politely term broad churches, or impolitely term masses of contradictions. FG’s protean nature through its history borders on the bizarre. Starting out as the pro-Treaty faction of Sinn Féin, by the end of the 1920s it had become a halfway house for disenfranchised Redmondites and unionists; in the 1930s it was fascist; in the 1950s it was vocationalist; in the 1980s it aspired to be social democratic; and these days nobody quite knows what it stands for.

The southern Irish political system being what it is but, nobody knowing what a party stands for is not necessarily a disadvantage. FF for decades refused to produce party manifestos on the grounds that the government should run on its record; the Boss attempted to bring back that culture following the disastrous 1977 manifesto. Under the Irish system, you can be an ideological party and occupy a niche, or you can be a vague amorphous party and have large-scale support. Nobody has ever figured out how to do both.

In fact, political culture, often handed down through families, is usually more important than ideology. Most observers don’t realise – and perhaps Enda Kenny doesn’t realise – how peculiar are the roots of Fine Gael in Connacht and the border counties. Back in the 1940s, FG was virtually extinct west of the Shannon, and only managed to regain a serious base in the 50s and 60s by cannibalising the votes of independent TDs, Clann na Talmhan and, weirdly enough, Clann na Poblachta. (Specifically, the strong FG vote in Cavan derives directly from the old CnaP base there.) Western Blueshirts therefore can be somewhat more economically populist and socially conservative and even republican than their counterparts in and around the capital; but it’s not so much an ideological division as one of culture. With FG having a support base that tends towards the elderly and rural, that’s an important thing, and it lies behind much of the idea that Kenny, hailing from the badlands of Mayo, couldn’t connect with the Dublin voter.

The problem, though, is whether the Brutonites have a solution to that. Observers will have noticed the presence in the Bruton camp of the noisy rightwing faction of Brian Hayes, Leo Varadkar (who, terrifyingly, seems to aspire to being a young Brian Hayes) and the Unbearable Lightness of Lucinda. These people do have an idea of what FG should stand for; it involves FG becoming, to all intents and purposes, the Progressive Democrats Mark Two. If you’re really serious about that, then you should be prepared for Desocrat levels of support, for the Irish electorate remains resolutely resistant to ideology. Further, if FG’s problem in Dublin is that formerly FF-supporting public sector workers are switching en masse to Labour, you want to consider whether you actually want to deepen those guys’ antagonism to FG. It may well be – in fact, I’d take it as a given – that Labour will do frig all for the public sector, but there’s a difference between that and an FG front bench positively promising to screw the public sector.

Garret FitzGerald was so good at winning over the Dublin middle class not because of the detail of what he said – his pronouncements on the PSBR went over most voters’ heads – but because of who he was. He was the sort of politician middle-class voters liked, because he reflected well on the electorate, and he was brilliant at mood music. Gilmore is also great at mood music. I doubt many people could tell you what Gilmore’s policies are, but at the moment he’s more popular than Nelson Mandela. I submit that the two things are not unconnected.

Rud eile: just a passing thought on That Poll. It’s often said that FG needs Labour more than Labour needs FG, because Labour has two options for coalition. The FG preferred scenario, I suppose, would be FG on 70-plus seats and Labour on 15-20, just like it used to be. That would mean a clearly Fine Gael-led government with Labour making up the numbers. But, since FG-SF is not an option (yet), FG could be faced with the appalling vista of coalition on parity terms, and no other option. On the other hand… it’s assumed that FF is so electorally toxic Labour couldn’t possibly prop the Soldiers of Fortune up for another term. But what about the prospect of a Labour-led government with FF as the junior partner? Might Gilmore see that as an opportunity worth considering?

Tonight we take one of our occasional trips south of the border, to ask the question that’s on everybody’s lips. Which is, of course, what in the wide world of sports does Enda Kenny think he’s playing at?

Sacking your deputy leader looks bad. When your deputy leader is also your finance spokesman, in the midst of an enormous economic crisis, and a finance spokesman with a high reputation for competence forbye, it looks worse. To then proclaim that you’re going to your parliamentary party with a motion of confidence in your leadership looks like one almighty balls-up.

It reminds me of John Major. Remember when Major got so pissed off with his right wing that he resigned as leader and announced a back-me-or-sack-me ballot of the parliamentary party? He did survive, but had to suffer the humiliation of a third of the parliamentary party voting for the Deadwood Sage. And, in comparative terms, Richard Bruton is a much bigger cheese than John Redwood.

It’s no secret, of course, that there have been rumblings from within Blueshirt ranks about Electric Enda’s leadership. There have been, of course, throughout his leadership. Enda may have fantastic hair, but you can’t get away from the fact that he has been in the Dáil a very long time – indeed, he’s the longest-serving Fine Gael TD – without making a great impact. It’s no secret either that there are those in the party who might have an idea who might be a better leader. When Coveney starts issuing appeals for party unity, one suspects this vision of unity does not include Enda in the top job.

If the RTÉ report is anything to go by, Blueshirt high command seems to have been seriously spooked by that poll showing Labour in the lead. To me that poll screams outlier, and it would surprise me massively were Labour to perform that well, or Fianna Fáil that badly, in a real election. But it is clear that there has been a collapse in FF support of historic proportions, and that the beneficiary of said collapse has not been FG but Labour. WorldbyStorm explains why:

Many FF voters would be – and this is to put it politely – disinclined to vote for Fine Gael. Acculturation operates in many and wondrous ways. Then there’s the small matter that Fine Gael doesn’t present or promote a programme that’s fundamentally different on many of the key issues from Fianna Fáil. Oh, I don’t doubt it would be a cleaner operation and with some good and useful policies, even from a left perspective. But it’s not a fundamental break with the ancien regime to vote FG. Whereas Labour is a break, and arguably more congenial to those who have hitherto voted FF.

Quite so, and I’d argue this is particularly the case in Dublin. A social-democratic Fine Gael in the mode of FitzGerald, or even God help us Dukes, may have done the business, especially if that social-democratic profile had been strong in the metrop. As it is, the Labour leadership do a better job of channelling the spirit of Sir Garret. Gilmore comes across as a reassuring figure, very slightly left of centre but not so much as to frighten the horses, and is good at giving the impression that he has a plan even if he won’t tell us what it is; Burton is often mocked for her grating delivery – and I’m far from finding her an inspiring figure – but she does ask good questions, and seems to have some mystifying appeal to the sort of public sector workers who used to vote FF. In a sense, it doesn’t matter what Labour stand for, it’s more that they don’t look like more of the same, while FG do.

And, remaining on the Dublin aspect, there’s not just the issue of how a leader from the wilds of Mayo can connect (or not) with the capital, but also what sort of profile the urban FG organisation presents to those defecting FF supporters. I am thinking in particular of the Leos and Lucindas of this world – and, even had George Lee stuck it out (he must be kicking himself now), it’s uncertain how broad his appeal would genuinely have been outside the wealthiest part of the state. Let us return momentarily to 1985 and the formation of the Progressive Democrats. Nobody knew what they stood for except for being against Charlie (it’s telling that O’Malley had been so long in politics with nobody knowing what he stood for); they had an air of freshness and newness and positive media coverage; and they had a great name, in that nobody didn’t want to be progressive or democratic. No surprise that the Desocrats rocketed to 26% in the polls. And no surprise that once they unveiled some actual policies – Thatcherite economics, total political correctness and a neo-unionist line on the north – they sank back to the 4% or so that was their natural level.

The point being, I suppose, that while the southern Irish electorate has never been leftist, it’s never really been rightist in an ideological sense either. Sub-Thatcherite ideology has always been a niche market. If Labour is to soak up the “down with this sort of thing” vote, it helps that it doesn’t really stand for much distinctive except in its branding. To the extent that FG does stand for something, that something is pretty rightwing. And Gilmore’s steady persona compares well with Kenny’s liking for dopey stunts like promising to abolish the Seanad. (Itself unpopular within a party that currently has a record number of county councillors, and therefore is poised to elect a record number of senators.)

And now Richard Bruton, the man who could easily have defenestrated Enda long ago had he had the killer instinct, is now placed outside the tent thanks to his belated refusal to respect Enda’s authority. At times like this one wonders whether Enda is actively seeking to join Dukes and Noonan in that circle of hell reserved for failed Blueshirt leaders. He’s surely going the right way about it.

And much more, of course, at Cedar Lounge.

Today I want to deal with a question raised by WorldbyStorm in the comments below, which is this – how can Fine Gael start to look like a credible alternative government? It’s a tricky one, and I’m tempted to believe that the FG advance in this election is pretty damn near as good as it gets. Much as I don’t have much time for FG, this poses a problem in that for the political system to function you need some kind of serious opposition – unless you’re a diehard Fianna Fáiler who actually believes the one-party state to be a good thing.

Fine Gael, as an opposition, doesn’t begin to look like a government in waiting. The last of its infrequent spells in government came as a result of Labour changing horses in mid-stream. The party, even in coalition with Labour, hasn’t won an election for 25 years, and that was in the extraordinary circumstances of the Year of GUBU, when lots of strange things were happening. The last time Fianna Fáil wasn’t the largest single party was, if memory serves, in the second 1927 election after the O’Higgins assassination. You begin to see the difficulty.

Now, I’ll grant you that at one point in the last campaign the “Alliance for Change” looked like winning in the polls. But, as we all know, that turned out to be snow on the ditch. The enormous seat gain, from 30 to 51, is of course eye-catching, but it doesn’t even recoup FG’s 1997 position and looks spectacular only in comparison to the truly awful 2002 result. What’s more, the gains were overwhelmingly at the expense of the Desocrats and centrist independents, representing what might be termed the natural FG base. All told, the major opposition party is still flatlining at around 25% of the vote and it’s hard to see where more gains could come from.

The obvious place to start would be Dublin. It seems an age ago that FG, under Sir Garret’s leadership, could outpoll FF in Dublin, running at around 42% in the capital, and that’s what got FG up to the 70 or so seats that made government possible. The problem with regaining that vote is that the FitzGerald vote, or its present-day analogue, plumps for Labour or the Greens. If FG made serious inroads there, which would still be difficult for what’s essentially a rural conservative party, it would be at the expense of massive collateral damage to the party’s putative coalition partners. What you’re then left with is the faint hope that FF will suffer a huge slump and that FF defectors will go to FG or Labour and not to, say, PSF or FF gene-pool independents.

It strikes me that the only way you’re going to get some serious opposition is if FG is displaced as the second party. There have been a few times when that looked possible – in 1948, 1992 and again in 2002. The idea of 1948 as Labour’s missed opportunity isn’t my own – I can recall the late Kevin Boland making that argument in the early 1980s – but it comes to mind again as closely paralleling Mick O’Reilly’s arguments of recent years. That means that Labour, or a Labour-Republican axis, would have to eschew the short-term promise of bums on seats in favour of becoming the main opposition in the medium term. But what are the odds of that? For most of the last sixty years successive Labour leaderships have appeared hell-bent on propping up FG, usually at the expense of their own party.

So I would tend to see FG as a dead weight on the body politic, Electric Enda notwithstanding, not being a serious opposition but still having the critical mass to prevent any other party emerging as the main opposition. There are only two ways this looks like changing. One is the remote possibility that the Labour leadership will discover a political backbone. The other, somewhat less remote, is that FG goes through yet another slump, possibly with independents rising again to nibble at the party’s western base (essentially a residue of the old Clann na Talmhan vote) and other parties nibble at the middle-class eastern vote, and the Labour leadership are good enough opportunists to go for an opportunity. Neither appears terribly likely in the near future.