INSIDE POLITICS - A WEEK CAN BE A LONG TIME BUT ALSO A STRANGE TIME

It's been a strange and exciting political week. It's so early in the electoral cycle that we shouldn't expect such drama.

It was almost like a buy one get one free offer. No confidence debates are comparatively rare events - though there was one launched against Bertie Ahern in late September. The debate reached moments where it was electric - especially the powerful catch-in-the-throat 24 minute speech of Mary Harney's.

Her speech was impressive on a number of levels. Its scope; the extent of her apology to the women damaged by the unforgivable mistakes; and her 'I put patients first' defence of her tenure as Health Minister.

Two other traits were widely reported. The first was that Harney delivered the speech without notes and didn't miss a beat. It was, simply, a tour de force. though I would warrant that the bulk of it came from a script that Harney had learned 'de ghlan mheabhar'.

The second was her raw emotion - she seemed close to tears a few times. Another female TD later told me that the tears were of anger rather than of sorrow. Later in the speech Harney didn't pull her punches when doling out criticism to Fine Gael and Labour. I think the past ten days have also proved that FG's Dr James Reilly will be a formidable adversary. He has been able to match Harney in emotion and tears; as well as in taunts that are as hard as iron girders.

The surprise was Ned O'Keeffe's decision to drum himself out of the FF parliamentary party. Ned said it was nothing personal bur of course all politics is personal. Ned had been building up to this for some time, like a balloon being blown it. It was almost inevitable that it would burst. And while Ned's speech (he never got a chance to deliver it) was from-the-heart, his abstention from the vote had deeper and more complex reason than simply having no confidence in Mary Harney - this particular head of steam had been building up slowly since the election when Ned received the first of a number of perceived slights.

And now today, another twist (and maybe a twist of a knife in the back). The Teflon anorak just doesn't seem to work any more when it comes to the sticky stuff in the Planning Tribunal. Paraic O'Connor of NCB's evidence is very damaging. Notice too how the opposition leaders have lost all their reticence compared to their scaredy-cat attitude prior to the election. Senan Maloney's scoop in this morning's Indo (which revealed the National Lottery was a sleeping partner in a bid for a casino in the Phoenix Park) will also have implications for Ahern.

Finally, my favourite two lines of the week came from De Diary of a Nortsoide Taoiseach, the Phoenix magazine's brilliant parody of Ahern.

"Tuesday. I'm beginnin' to tink we made a tactical blunder in winnin' de election. Not dat we had a choice. De oppositon were so shite dat if we had somehow managed to lose, we'd have been de subject of a steward's enquiry."

INSIDE POLITICS - DAY ELEVEN

Bertie Ahern's financial woes have disappeared off the radar screen over the past few days and we have returned to what passes for 'normal' business during an election campaign.

There's a huge element of artifice about what happens. Yesterday, we got a classic example of a phoney war; lots of hot air about an issue (corporation tax) where the policies of all parties (even the supposedly radical SF) are ad idem.

Most days during the campaign, all the parties hold briefings. Meanwhile, the Leader's go on manic whirlwind tours of the country where they do silly things firstly on behalf of upholding democracy and secondly on behalf of attracting the attention of the lenses.

RTE yesterday showed a great piece of archive footage from 1969 featuring Longford-Westmeath TD Gerry L'Estrange addressing a crowd outside Mass (in fact RTE has put a lot of fascinating archive material on its website including FF's embrace of American canvassing techniques in 1977; Pat Kenny explaining the use of computers in 1982; and a Liam Cosgrave address from 1973. You can find them all here.)

Nowadays, there are few speeches. It's all to do with the photo op - the most surreal was Pat Rabbitte and Breda Moynihan-Cronin on top of a jarvey in Killarney, bringing the famous Tom Parlon-Mary Harney donkey and cart photo from 2002 to mind.

The party's choose their own particular schtick each day and then try to anticipate what their rivals are going to say. Sometimes you feel like there's a secret coven where they all secretly agree in advance they are going to spar on an issue. At other times, it's more like throwing all the balls in the air and seeing which ones the media pack will catch and then kick.

Today it was health. Fine Gael insisting that the biggest broken promise of all by this Government was its promise to provide 3,000 extra hospital beds (it's part of the health strategy that runs out in 2011). The Government, particularly health minister Mary Harney countered by claiming that the FG proposal to provide an extra 2,300 beds would be impossible to achieve within five years. FG Deputy leader Richard Bruton insisted it would be, said that that FG would prioritise the first €850 million of the €2.6 billon provided for capital health spending in the NDP.

At least there was some meat in this particular sandwich, if you don't mind the distortion of a political metaphor. There are real differences between the two alternative alliances when it comes to health. And at least when you hear the debate there is a little bit more Gerry L'Estrange about it; a little bit less modern political leaders - there is debate and argument and the welcome (figurative) return of the soapbox.

INSIDE POLITICS - The Grid

Outside conference season, Sundays are usually quiet days for political journalists. The political parties all know it is a quiet news day. Most of the press releases all have a 'Here's one I prepared earlier' vibe to them.

But in a strange kind of way, weekends have almost been busier than weekdays over the past two months. To be sure, a lot of it is explained by the party conferences and Ard Fheiseanna.

But it's axiomatic that an election is approaching faster than an Atlantic squall.

Sunday was a short straw day. Four separate press conferences - two Government, one PD, and one Labour. At least one of them - and maybe two - was a neat demonstration of the goldfish syndrome. Backroom people know that collective memories last all of about three seconds. So the trick is to announce the same thing over and over again.

But Sunday was the first time that I got a sense of the Grid. The Grid is the diary mode that all parties go into in an election campaign. The schedule everything to wonkish, nerdish, paranoid and exhaustive detail. There's the message of the day. There's the issue of the day. All the effort to get maximum exposure for the party's top personalities across as many demographics, across as wide a geography, as possible.

The Grid will be on the web, on the pod sphere and, yes, on the blogosphere for this election. Political parties will try to fulfill the American civil war maxim of getting there firstest with the mostest. A number of politicians - Dominic Hannigan, Joanna Tuffy, Ciaran Cuffe, John Gormely - have well established blogs. Labour threw up a video of Pat Rabbitte asking us the famous question with the weasel comma: But, are you happy? Mary Harney went one better this weekend with a slick video to accompany the PDs' billboard campaign on health. And here it is but see below for continuation of discussion!




Not so slick though was the actual launch of of the billboard by the Progressive Democrats. Its location was the junction of Stephen's Green and Grafton Street on a busy Sunday morning. That was a mistake. The reason. Politicians might actually encounter what they fear most - the electorate.

It was a very predictable event. The photographers do their smiley shots. Then the reporter huddle around to ask questions of our heroes. All us rabble are missing are the cards with the 'press' legend slipped into the band of our fedora hats.

But there was a guy passing who wasn't reading the script. Con Kennedy threw in a question right at the end of the huddle. The press officers tried to fend him off gently. But he was not to be deflected. He has a four year-old-son who has anaphylaxis which means that Con Kennedy always needs to carry shots of adrenaline. He asked a simple question: why was there no paediatric immunologist in Ireland to deal with his son's rare condition.

No amount of statistics, or general political pronouncements, or aspirations can deal with such direct human experience.

In fairness to Mary Harney, she did her best. But from a public relations perspective, a carefully coordinated press conference had been essentially hijacked.

It was a little like Tony Blair being ambushed by the Women's Institute or John Prescott throwing his famous uppercut. The dailies on Monday morning didn't report the PD billboard launch, rather the fact that an angry young father had rained on the parade.

The Grid. It's not in the sphere yet. In America maybe. But over here, the election will be fought on the streets and in the hustings. Not on the web. Its influence is growing, certainly, though it will take some time before it reaches critical mass.


As an end note, here is one of the vaguely funny parodies that are doing the rounds on You Tube. Do people have nothing better to do with their time except feeds us with such abundant blog fodder?

INSIDE POLITICS - POLL POSITIONS

THERE are some laws of nature that are immutable and predictable.
Gravity. Death. Taxes. Kerry winning All-Irelands.
And then there are some that are not so precise, more theories than universal truth.

One is a version of Newton’s Third Law — for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.

It goes something like this: For every over-the-top reaction from Tánaiste Michael McDowell, there’s an equal and opposite downward traction in the opinion polls. In the relatively peaceful period in the run-up to Christmas, he was uncharacteristically quiet (maybe he was still hurting after being put through Bertie Ahern’s truth-mangling machine).

People do like to hear him speak. On occasion, though. There’s only so much voice that mortal human beings can bear. In the past 10 ten days, McDowell has been on an extraordinary crusade to make his voice more omnipresent, more omniscient than the voice that haunts Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984.

He launched his poster. He made some vague threats about detention camps (letting Enda Kenny know who’s the real tough guy around here). He made pronouncements on tougher sentencing (again), anti-gun and anti-gang legislation (again). In 10 ten days, he opened, released, spoke at, launched, presided, keynoted, addressed, appeared, and stopped just short of walking on water.

He’s a fantastic old genie all the same, capable of many things including shinnning up lamp-posts. But the problem is that once he’s out of the damn bottle it's impossible to put him back in again.

And the result of this ever-so-slightly unscientific theory? When you bang the oven door too hard, the souffle tends to collapse. When you heat up the custard too quickly, it tends to curdle. When you are trying too hard as leader of your small political party, your support tends to plummet.

The latest TNS/mrbi poll for The Irish Times has support for the PDs at 1%. To be sure, there’s a 3% margin of error plus or minus. So it’s not all bad news. It’s worse than that. It’s all drastic news verging on disastrous news.

Statistically (well, theoretically) the Progressive Democrats might be at minus two, a delicious thought for its many enemies. And no excuse about being a niche party is going to magic away such a lousy finding. Bluntly, in terms of national reach, there are almost down to ‘Ming the Merciless’ or Abbey of the Holy Cross
Fitzsimons territory.

Let us enter a caveat. Though couched in the language of science, and festooned with mathematically terms that suggest precision, you
always have to remember how crude, how unscientific and how imprecise polls are. No mathematics will get around somebody who lies, or who says something because it's what they think you want to hear or because it's convenient.

I don’t believe the PDs are quite facing meltdown. In fact, with the margin of error, they could actually be at 4%. But all the same it's indisputable that the party has had a very unmerry New Year.

Beside McDowell’s overexposure (and being exposed somewhat on his crime policies), Mary Harney has also had a cruel January. Nowadays, everywhere she turns, another Socrates is telling her the blatantly and pitiably obvious. You were biting off more than you could chew when you took health. You should have known the monster you were taking on. The biggest ships are slowest at turning. What is the moon, what is the stars, Joxer?

Harney has been brave but has been a little like the new boy, the outsider, in The Lord of the Flies. Those who control the conch are the posh ones, the doctors who call themselves “mister”.

Fair dues to the minister — she has been the first to really tackle them head-on. But she has learned to her cost that there are forces in this land (namely rich business people; rich lawyers and rich doctors) more powerful than any Government.

Will the PDs be vaporised because of the weakness of strategy of its two strongest assets? They will certainly struggle and may end up back in 1997 territory(when the party returned four TDs).

Incidentally, the Greens have jumped to eight points (from four) apropos nothing in particular in January. A 100% leap looks a bit iffy to me but I have been writing for months that the Greens will take huge scalps in constituencies where convention doesn’t give them a prayer. Nobody ever predicts the routing and gougings that takes place at every election. Nobody every sees the tsunami coming.

That’s not a theory by the way. It’s an actual law of nature. And its name? The law of the jungle, otherwise known as the General Election.

This is my column from the Irish Examiner, Saturday, February 3.