Anyone following the news in the Free State will notice that the Fine Gael daggers are firmly being sharpened against their incumbent Chief. A “Night of the Long Knives” style purge may well be upon this minority Dublin Government, with little real difference between the front-runners. They are planning an open assassination on the only man ever to lead Fine Gael back into government after a general election as a coalition administration with Labour. And doing it all while grinning. As Thatcher opined, it’s treachery with a smile on its face.
This isn’t confined to just Fine Gael. I’m sorry to tell you but political parties wouldn’t kill their own grandmother for office; they would kill, cook and eat the old girl as well. That’s what people do to get power and keep power. It’s in the nature of the beast and human affairs. It can bring out both the worst and the best in people as an arena.
One of the unusual things about Enda was that he is a Mayo man, rooted in rural Ireland and particularly the West Coast. Which made his Cloyne speech all the more striking, given that he has never been too associated with the Dublin metropolitan elite. While I don’t agree with the cut and thrust of his economic policies or government record, I think he is a decent person and a fine orator. No Irish Prime Minister has ever been a tyrant and Mr. Kenny certainly isn’t. So I wish him and his family well for the future.
His party however, are really another matter. One of the reasons he got elected was to make Fine Gael seem a bit more “green” and to appeal to Fianna Fáil voters as such. If you scratch the surface, you’ll soon find that most Fine Gael representatives believe that the Easter Rising was a dreadful mistake; they believe that Ireland should be a devolved entity within the British state; and that Thatcher’s economic ideology should be the standard practice of all Irish governments. There is no internal debate within Fine Gael – they want foreign military interventions on Ireland’s watch, scrapping our neutrality as a nation; they want mass globalisation at the expense of national democracy; and they have no real affinity for our native language (or at least funding it).
The two likely successors include Leo Varadkar – a Dublin Medical Doctor who is closely linked to the Thatcherite European Right; Someone who would want more privatisation and more tax cuts for the wealthiest. And secondly, Simon Coveney, a more liberal conservative figure in the style of Garret FitzGerald. Between them, you couldn’t slip a cigarette paper ideologically. One is the son of a wealthy businessman and the other an upper middle-class professional with what seems to be limited empathy concerning the daily struggles of ordinary people. One of them being gay and breaking a proverbial “glass ceiling” in Ireland means little when you consider the sort of damaging right wing agenda he has in mind for the overall economy. Thatcher was a woman after all, yet governed like the most wicked of men would.
This brings me on to my next point – that class should define a person’s politics, not their ethnicity or social group. The lack of class politics in Ireland has resulted in two identical political parties of the centre-right dominating the power game since the inception of the state. There are no longer any credible differences between the two, like which existed when Sean Lemass and Charles Haughey were in office.
Of course the media, particularly the Establishment chorus within The Independent and RTE, will portray this as a contest between two intellectual titans. For the simple reason that it keeps the focus of the debate within the narrow confines of the centre-right. Not having any real discussion about an alternative left-wing Prime Minister makes it surprisingly easy for these hacks to walk in and out of power, with a permanent government ideology regardless of which of the two big parties wins. It’s a game of smoke and mirrors.
I suspect that whoever wins the Fine Gael leadership won’t be Taoiseach for very long, as Fianna Fáil will bring down the government once the polls swing in their favour. But I do think a sensible debate needs to start taking place about a real alternative Prime Minister and an alternative ideological agenda within the 26 counties. There needs to be a government prepared to move Ireland in the direction of the Scandinavian economies and not some bargain basement haven for corporate fat-cats.
Indeed Donal, I’d not be too keen on any Fine Gael politician, nor supporter for that matter but, as the old saying goes, ‘the divil ye know is better than the divil ye don’t’.
Enda, and I recall just after the Bruton push against him in 2010, where I sat in the restaurant in Leinster House (a marvelous purveyor of meals, with excellent staff) listening to several Fionn Gael, sorry, Deputies debate the pusch with their deputy leader, the good Doctor O Reilly, he made it quite clear to them ‘I’m the fucking deputy leader, there will be no more pusch against the leader’, unfortunately for Enda, Dr. O Reilly failed to obtain re-election last year and is in the failed Deputy retirement home next door.
The new Doctor is, by all accounts of persons I know in Castleknock, about as trustworthy as a snake minding mice, his whimpering colleague in Housing, like his leader, one whom inherited his seat at a young age, was previously Minister for Agriculture, based perhaps upon his Degree in this subject, on RTE one day made the claim that Ireland’s most exported products were the vegetables Potatoes and Mushrooms.
I’m from a farming background and grew both, I, without a third level education in the subject, know neither are vegetables. How one could trust a thicko to be Taoiseach is beyond me.
Now, as before, I am no fan of Enda but, I should much prefer him to the other two, or Bruton as Taoiseach, and Bruton I know.
One last thing, I’ve asked this before, what is the link between Enda and a previous leader of the stoops?
Hi Donal, I have often written to various British and other foreign news outlets to point out to them that Ireland does not have a Prime Minister the same way it doesn’t have a Home Secretary it has a Tanáiste. This is usually corrected by the news outlets in question when pointed out to them.
No-one in Ireland refers to to the Taoiseach as Prime Minister and I really don’t why you have done so in this article.
It’s ridiculous to say that “most Fine Gael representatives believe Ireland should be a devolved entity within the British state.” Very, very few FGers believe this, and most are every bit as patriotic as you or I, albeit they are coming from a different, and much more conservative perspective than most.
It is also false to say “there is no internal debate within Fine Gael” – it’s actually a pretty broad church – generally Christian democratic, but containing a clear social and economic liberal wing (Mr Varadkar being its present champion) as well as social conservatives, more popular in rural Ireland (such as Mr Kenny).
I don’t like FG very much, but I know people in that party that I do like, that I respect, and whose patriotism I would not question.
Sometimes I think that you Donal live in a parallel universe I wonder how many grandmothers
saw it as Endas own wee power struggle when he stood up and pontificated not only to Ireland but the entire world with his denouncing the Vatican,Misquoting the Pope(Benedict) and closing the Vatican Embassy. Oh! and also threatening the seal of confession, Doe’s it matter that grannys and mammys and perhaps daddys too look on his tenure in an entirely different light to you and were perhaps embarassed and angry with his leadership, on many levels, as the sayin goes. uhh! whatdauthink!