Politicians' pay has continued to dominate the agenda, especially since yesterday's volte face by the Cabinet. I was in the supermarket last night and people in the queue were talking about it; when I went for coffee early this morning, it was also been discussed by people at the next table. Most of the focus was on the fact that it had been deferred for a year - most people thought that it was a stunt, as simple as that.
I was surprised that none of the opposition leaders raised it during Leaders Questions this morning. Having said that the two topics raised (water charges for schools and extraordinary rendition) have merit.
Here is a piece of analysis I wrote for this morning's Irish Examiner
Last month the Taoiseach came out with a legendary Bertie-ism when he said that deferring THAT pay rise would be ‘smokes and daggers’.
So, two really bad opinion polls later in addition to getting it in the lug from Joe Public on the airways and newspapers, what does the Taoiseach do?
Um, he announces that the Government is deferring the pay rise.
Before we all go jumping to conclusions that what we have here is a classic case of smokes and daggers, the government wants to point out that, no it’s not, its something else entirely. Yep, it’s actually cloaks and mirrors.
The official reason is hilarious. The Government – wait for it! – want others to exercise restraint ahead of the new round of talks on pay and benchmarking and they want to lead by example. So the Taoiseach and his ministers has selflessly sacrificed the implementation of his E38,000 pay rise and their exorbitant hikes in salary until September 2008. So they’ll all have to slum it on salaries ranging from E214,000 to E270,000 per annum.
What was offered yesterday by the Chief Anorak and the shower that surrounds him was a sop, a wet drizzle of a sop – a pathetic attempt to retrieve some of the public support that it lost over this issue. It is a gesture and it’s meaningless.
And the Taoiseach and his chief loyalists yesterday trotted out the same old excuses (none of which stand up) as to why like the models in the L’Oreal ads they were SO worth it.
Backroom people in Fianna Fail must have been getting nervous when they saw the Ministers who were being put up to explain this to the public – Dermot Ahern and Mary Hanafin. They were two of the three ministers (along with Seamus Brennan) who presided over the shambles of a press conference during the election campaign, during which FF’s main economics adviser Colin Hunt had to ride to the rescue and publicly dig them out of a spot of bother.
And neither Dermot Ahern nor Mary Hanafin were well briefed yesterday
Before we get to that let’s stick to the facts.
This award was given by a group which compares the pay of the golden circle of the public service (ministers, judges, semi state CEO, university heads, top civil servants etc) with comparators in the private sector.
Two years ago it gave them an interim award of 7.5%. Sic weeks ago it gave them a further 15%, making a grand total of 22.5% since 2000.
First of all Ministers have tried to spin it that this was the only pay rise they got in seven years. Ms Hanafin was busying herself with the line last night; claiming on RTE’s Six One News that they have got just 2% every year.
But in fact, the salaries of all ministers have increased by between 130% and 145% in the last seven years. Bertie Ahern was paid E145,000 in 2000. After the latest pay rise he will be getting E310,000. Ditto with Brian Cowen. The Tánaiste’s salary was E125,000 in 2000. Now it’s E270,000.
When it was pointed out to her that the rise was in fact closer to 145% than the miserly 2% per annum she was claiming, she claimed that, yes, it was a substantial salary but it was a substantial job. And then she argued that we had to pay our politicians well so they are not susceptible to any outside interference (like dig-outs, for example, or spontaneous whip-rounds at functions in the North West of England?).
And the cloaks and mirrors continued with the extraordinary performance given by Dermot Ahern at a door-step interview.
It wasn’t so much the very tenuous argument he made that the Government was now exercising restraint (yeah, until next September) so that the unions might do likewise.
He also maintained the line that it was an increase of 22.5% over a period of 11 years (ergo, it was modest). This argument neglects the fact that politicians and ministers have benefited from every single national pay award (and benchmarking award) that have been going. And the cumulative effect of it all is that their pay has more than doubled in the course of only seven years.
It was the fact that he was completely and utterly aware that he had been awarded an interim pay rise of 7.5% of his Ministerial salary two years ago. For what it is worth, this is how much it was worth – around E7.500.
When the existence of this increase was pointed out to him, he said:
“That is not as a result of the examination by the independent review group (for higher remuneration).”
Well, yes it was in fact. A little later he said he did not recall that particular pay award. Well, he should have.
The net effect of this has been to prolong the kicking the Government has taken over this for another day. It also gave opposition leaders another field day.
Enda Kenny reminded us again of the following little factoid: “We have a situation where Taoiseach of this country is better paid than President Bush; better paid than Chancellor Merkel; better paid than President Sarkozy and better paid than Prime Minister Brown.”
He continued: “This is a hypocritical decision by a hypocritical government.”
Eamon Gilmore said they were still going to accept the lavish increase (if 12 months later) and that the Government’s handling of the situation showed how much out of touch with reality it was.
Dermot Ahern did say that there has always been a difficulty with politicians and their pay. That is quite true. And the difficulty has been this. Somewhere along the line greed has become the new currency for defining public service.
For how long more do we have to put up with people on a quarter of a million euro a year (plus gold-plated pensions and expense arrangements) telling us that they are not in it for the money?
Showing posts with label Eamon Gilmore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eamon Gilmore. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - ANALYSING GILMORE'S SPEECH
This is my analysis piece from this morning's Irish Examiner
Somewhere out there in the world, I’m sure there’s a recipe book for leaders’ speeches. And when Eamon Gilmore popped his first one out of the oven on Saturday night you knew from the first bite that this one had used familiar ingredients and followed an age-old method.
I have covered every speech by every leader of every Irish party (with the exception of The Socialist Party and the Workers Party) over the past four years and they all follow a roughly similar pattern. There’s the rhetoric (I want a better Ireland); there are the specifics for news headlines (Pat Rabbitte promising lower taxes); there is the record (FF major on this, for obvious reasons); there’s the attack on the other crowd; and then there’s the climax where the leader rallies the troops into a rally of joy and expectation.
And of course the basis ingredient is rhetoric. Lots of it:
And:
And:
And:
But for all that, the speech and its delivery were surprisingly good and the conference itself also defied many expectations by turning out to be an anticlimax of the anticlimax we were all told it would be.
It must be remembered too that Labour approached this weekend’s conference in Wexford like a pupil approaching the school building knowing he hasn’t got his homework done.
It was bad enough for Labour to find itself sitting on the shelf after the May Election. At a time when introspection was needed, the party was forced into a national conference that it simply didn’t want but had to have for its own constitutional reasons.
It was always going to be an unusual conference – it’s unprecedented for one to be held so soon after an election. There was no live TV coverage. There were low expectations. There was none of the ersatz stuff you expect around national conferences and Ard Fheiseanna (which have become wholly TV-oriented and stage-managed in recent years).
Or as one delegate put it on Saturday, he sometimes feels that he is being dragged along to national conferences just to clap (for the cameras).
Perhaps it was because expectations were so low that the conference was more robust, more muscular than was anticipated. In fact, with the exception of Gilmore’s speech, it was one that belonged very much to the delegates.
And party HQ didn’t get it all its own way either (that was also very refreshing). A motion that would have committed the party to implacably oppose the Shell terminal in North Mayo was narrowly defeated (Labour Youth almost sneaked it in an early morning vote) and the party leadership by a whisker referred a controversial motion on the legalisation of cannabis to its National . And for a while in the afternoon, it looked HQ’s opposition to a fully fledged two-day delegate conference next year would be defeated by bolshie delegates.
And the motion on Labour’s presence in the North of Ireland was intriguing, with a series of very strong speeches from Northern delegates. One Michael McBrien referred to de Valera’s famous speech from 1918 in which he said Labour must Wait. And conscious of FF’s expansionist ambitions, he argued that Labour could no longer wait to organise in the north.
Another delegate Ronan Farren, a member of Labour and the SDLP, argued against either Fianna Fail or Labour arriving into the nest like cuckoos.
It must have been a very difficult week for Gilmore, following the death and funeral of his mother. Despite a nervous start, he delivered a strong speech – that was helped by the fact that it didn’t have to stay to the exact half hour for the purposes of television.
The new Labour leader set out his stall in a general way. There were few specifics in the speech, but he nonetheless sketched out where he wants to go. His attack on Bertie Ahern’s obsession with money and the Government’s poor handling of Shannon was clever. He was never gratuitous instead comparing Ahern unfavourably to Eamon de Valera and Jack Lynch.
In real terms, Gilmore isn’t a wet week in the job yet. And it’s clear from the passages on the long-term vision thing that a couple of trips to the optician will be needed before it’s brought into sharp focus. Yes, he is right saying that Irish politics is very short-termist – but his vision of Ireland in 20 years time will need a lot more detail, a lot more specifics before anybody begins to buy into it.
Anybody, who knows Gilmore will know his values and will be unsurprised that he majored on equality of access to education, on eradicating poverty, and on improving the health services (there were only two paragraphs on crime). He seems to be saying that he will try to come up with practical do-able solutions that are easily explained.
What was probably most interesting of all was his own perception of his style of leadership (not a ‘boss’ like Haughey but the captain of the team).
Are we about to experience a most unusual species in the modern political world – a modest and humble leader? Gilmore will realise that the party needs rebuilding and renewal, needs new candidates, needs to do well in the European elections. On radio yesterday, he said it was much too early to talk about electoral strategy. I think it’s almost too early to talk about anything. It’s a period for 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness. And to that end, the most telling thing he really said came towards the end of the speech.
It’s only the start of the journey for Gilmore, too early, much too early to start experimenting with the ingredients, the method or even the recipe itself.
Somewhere out there in the world, I’m sure there’s a recipe book for leaders’ speeches. And when Eamon Gilmore popped his first one out of the oven on Saturday night you knew from the first bite that this one had used familiar ingredients and followed an age-old method.
I have covered every speech by every leader of every Irish party (with the exception of The Socialist Party and the Workers Party) over the past four years and they all follow a roughly similar pattern. There’s the rhetoric (I want a better Ireland); there are the specifics for news headlines (Pat Rabbitte promising lower taxes); there is the record (FF major on this, for obvious reasons); there’s the attack on the other crowd; and then there’s the climax where the leader rallies the troops into a rally of joy and expectation.
And of course the basis ingredient is rhetoric. Lots of it:
“I believe that every person is equal. It is as simple as that.”
And:
“Labour made modern Ireland.”
And:
“Ireland needs a New Purpose”
And:
“We need a vision for our country, and its place in the new expanded Europe and increasingly globalised two or even three decades.”
But for all that, the speech and its delivery were surprisingly good and the conference itself also defied many expectations by turning out to be an anticlimax of the anticlimax we were all told it would be.
It must be remembered too that Labour approached this weekend’s conference in Wexford like a pupil approaching the school building knowing he hasn’t got his homework done.
It was bad enough for Labour to find itself sitting on the shelf after the May Election. At a time when introspection was needed, the party was forced into a national conference that it simply didn’t want but had to have for its own constitutional reasons.
It was always going to be an unusual conference – it’s unprecedented for one to be held so soon after an election. There was no live TV coverage. There were low expectations. There was none of the ersatz stuff you expect around national conferences and Ard Fheiseanna (which have become wholly TV-oriented and stage-managed in recent years).
Or as one delegate put it on Saturday, he sometimes feels that he is being dragged along to national conferences just to clap (for the cameras).
Perhaps it was because expectations were so low that the conference was more robust, more muscular than was anticipated. In fact, with the exception of Gilmore’s speech, it was one that belonged very much to the delegates.
And party HQ didn’t get it all its own way either (that was also very refreshing). A motion that would have committed the party to implacably oppose the Shell terminal in North Mayo was narrowly defeated (Labour Youth almost sneaked it in an early morning vote) and the party leadership by a whisker referred a controversial motion on the legalisation of cannabis to its National . And for a while in the afternoon, it looked HQ’s opposition to a fully fledged two-day delegate conference next year would be defeated by bolshie delegates.
And the motion on Labour’s presence in the North of Ireland was intriguing, with a series of very strong speeches from Northern delegates. One Michael McBrien referred to de Valera’s famous speech from 1918 in which he said Labour must Wait. And conscious of FF’s expansionist ambitions, he argued that Labour could no longer wait to organise in the north.
Another delegate Ronan Farren, a member of Labour and the SDLP, argued against either Fianna Fail or Labour arriving into the nest like cuckoos.
"The arrival of Southern parties in the North will only serve the interest of the two parties, Sinn Fein and the DUP, responsible for deepening sectarianism in the north," he said.
It must have been a very difficult week for Gilmore, following the death and funeral of his mother. Despite a nervous start, he delivered a strong speech – that was helped by the fact that it didn’t have to stay to the exact half hour for the purposes of television.
The new Labour leader set out his stall in a general way. There were few specifics in the speech, but he nonetheless sketched out where he wants to go. His attack on Bertie Ahern’s obsession with money and the Government’s poor handling of Shannon was clever. He was never gratuitous instead comparing Ahern unfavourably to Eamon de Valera and Jack Lynch.
In real terms, Gilmore isn’t a wet week in the job yet. And it’s clear from the passages on the long-term vision thing that a couple of trips to the optician will be needed before it’s brought into sharp focus. Yes, he is right saying that Irish politics is very short-termist – but his vision of Ireland in 20 years time will need a lot more detail, a lot more specifics before anybody begins to buy into it.
Anybody, who knows Gilmore will know his values and will be unsurprised that he majored on equality of access to education, on eradicating poverty, and on improving the health services (there were only two paragraphs on crime). He seems to be saying that he will try to come up with practical do-able solutions that are easily explained.
What was probably most interesting of all was his own perception of his style of leadership (not a ‘boss’ like Haughey but the captain of the team).
“I don’t rule the Labour Party. I serve it… This party belongs to all of us… My job is to steer and, sometimes to point, from the vantage point I have as leader.”
Are we about to experience a most unusual species in the modern political world – a modest and humble leader? Gilmore will realise that the party needs rebuilding and renewal, needs new candidates, needs to do well in the European elections. On radio yesterday, he said it was much too early to talk about electoral strategy. I think it’s almost too early to talk about anything. It’s a period for 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness. And to that end, the most telling thing he really said came towards the end of the speech.
“When this conference is over, I intend to embark on a journey- physical and political to relearn Ireland. To visit communities across the country, talking with people about their lives, their families, and their aspirations.”
It’s only the start of the journey for Gilmore, too early, much too early to start experimenting with the ingredients, the method or even the recipe itself.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - LABOUR PARTY'S GILMORE
Eamon Gilmore's speech last night didn't depart from the recipe book of leaders' adresses. It was heavy on rhetoric and short on specifics. I think journalists last night struggled to find a news line (last time round, Pat Rabbitte included the bombshell that Labour would lower the standard rate of tax). Otherwise it had all the same ingredients and used more or the same method.
I'm not sure if I like the catchline around the word 'purpose' (too many echoes of a FF election slogan from 2002). If you were very cyncial about it you could distill it down to the following: Eamon Gilmore is a nice and worthy leader who wants to improve education, improve the health services, eliminate poverty and build a better Ireland - and do it all with purpose.
É sin ráite, he delivered it well, aside from opening nerves. He was helped, I'd say, by the fact that it wasn't televised live. And for me the most noteworthy thing was his promise of embarking on a mission around Ireland to meet and to learn. So early in the election cycle, that's the only thing to do.
Two other interesting aspects. Like Enda Kenny, Gilmore has excellent Irish and it was a pleasure to listen to a couple of complicated passages trí Ghaeilge rather than the token cúpla focal.
Secondly, there may not have been live TV but there was ustream.tv. And it was a super service. The viewership reached a peak of about 250 during the speech. That should very low. But in such a competitive word, that amount of people sitting at home on a Saturday night looking at a stream of a political speech on their computer screens tells you two things: not bad and Anoraks!
I'm not sure if I like the catchline around the word 'purpose' (too many echoes of a FF election slogan from 2002). If you were very cyncial about it you could distill it down to the following: Eamon Gilmore is a nice and worthy leader who wants to improve education, improve the health services, eliminate poverty and build a better Ireland - and do it all with purpose.
É sin ráite, he delivered it well, aside from opening nerves. He was helped, I'd say, by the fact that it wasn't televised live. And for me the most noteworthy thing was his promise of embarking on a mission around Ireland to meet and to learn. So early in the election cycle, that's the only thing to do.
Two other interesting aspects. Like Enda Kenny, Gilmore has excellent Irish and it was a pleasure to listen to a couple of complicated passages trí Ghaeilge rather than the token cúpla focal.
Secondly, there may not have been live TV but there was ustream.tv. And it was a super service. The viewership reached a peak of about 250 during the speech. That should very low. But in such a competitive word, that amount of people sitting at home on a Saturday night looking at a stream of a political speech on their computer screens tells you two things: not bad and Anoraks!
Saturday, November 17, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE
Wexford 4.20pm
Midway through this afternoon's session, one of the delegates said that he sometimes feels that he is being dragged along to the national conference just to clap.
Having been at every party conference of all the larger political parties in the State over the past four years, I know how he felt.
The two bigger parties have brought it much further along the line, but conferences and Ard-Fheiseanna have become increasingly stage-managed. Get you candidates onto morning TV. Have a couple of new initiatives to feed the media a line. Have a catchy slogan. Pump-prime a couple of simple (and easy to absorb) messages. And put the bulk of your energy into the leaders speech.
FF and FG Ard-Fheiseanna have become ridiculous in recent years. You get no sense that this is grass-roots democracy in action. Debate takes the form of the party leadership dictating what will be and the delegates meekly going along with it.
In recent years, the smaller parties have also got into the act. The last thing you want to do is air all your fights in public. And Sinn Fein have gone furthest along the road. You always feel (and maybe this is unfair on my part) that every moment of the debate, every instant is being controlled from the top table.
And so as a general rule, the conferences have become sterile. No blood-letting. No arguments. No nothing.
But I must say that today's conference was an exception.
Maybe it's because this conference was a little unwanted (too early after the election; too early for Eamon Gilmore). There's no live television (except on the web- and I must say the live stream from Ustream has been magnifico) and there were very few expectations. It was all about housekeeping - deciding on strategy for elections, for policy, for establishing a presence in the North, for (yet again) a name change.
And I must say (and I never though I'd say this for a Saturday afternoon session) I enjoyed it. It began with Micheal D Higgins that social democracy is a label that can be used against Labour. It continued with a speech by his wife Sabrina Higgins who was so flamboyant in her passion that her husband seemed subdued by comparison.
There were a couple of robust debates and what the party hierarchy wanted, the party hierarchy didn't fully get. One of the motions called for a full delegate conference each year (the leadership also want this but don't want it to happen until 2009). That was defeated on the floor. In a bit of a procedural mess, it was then kicked into touch and referred to the National Executive Council (as the cannabis motion was this morning). The chair, Breda Moynihan-Cronin, made the mistake but otherwise she policed the session with a fist of steel.
The motion to explore the possible expansion of Labour in the North was heavily backed by the conference (no surprise there) but there were different nuances of opinion as to how this should happen (should Labour organise itself for elections in the North? Should it tie-up with the SDLP? Should it leave the SDLP to forge it alone?).
There were a couple of very good contributions to this debate, most from Northern delegates. One Mike McBrien harked back to Dev's famous speech of 1918 that 'Labour Must Wait'. He argued that Labour could wait no longer in Northern Ireland.
Or from Michael Robinson who argued for the same thing and warned about allowing Fianna Fail steal a march in the North. He reminded delegates here in Wexford of Bertie's famous self-declaration as a socialist:
Ronan Farren is a member of both Labour and the SDLP (and a former press officer with the part). He gave a passionate and strong speech in which he warned about Labour following FF's lead by trying to woo voters in the North.
"The arrival of Southern parties in the North will only serve the interest of the two parties, Sinn Fein and the DUP, responsible for deepening sectarianism in the north," he said.
Labour's debate on its future in the North will be fascinating. But I suspect its own moves will be very much tempered by what FF may or may not do.
The best moment of all came with the very last motion, which might have seemed frivolous on the face of it. Dermot Looney from Dublin South West wanted the party to adopt the Red Flag as its anthem. The song - which has been adopted internationally and is the song of the British Labour Party - was written by a Meathman, Jim Connell from Kilsyre. Looney gave a funny, passionate and visceral speech.
When he quoted the last two lines, he brought the house down.
Once uttered, there was no way in the world that that particular motion wasn't going to get passed.
Midway through this afternoon's session, one of the delegates said that he sometimes feels that he is being dragged along to the national conference just to clap.
Having been at every party conference of all the larger political parties in the State over the past four years, I know how he felt.
The two bigger parties have brought it much further along the line, but conferences and Ard-Fheiseanna have become increasingly stage-managed. Get you candidates onto morning TV. Have a couple of new initiatives to feed the media a line. Have a catchy slogan. Pump-prime a couple of simple (and easy to absorb) messages. And put the bulk of your energy into the leaders speech.
FF and FG Ard-Fheiseanna have become ridiculous in recent years. You get no sense that this is grass-roots democracy in action. Debate takes the form of the party leadership dictating what will be and the delegates meekly going along with it.
In recent years, the smaller parties have also got into the act. The last thing you want to do is air all your fights in public. And Sinn Fein have gone furthest along the road. You always feel (and maybe this is unfair on my part) that every moment of the debate, every instant is being controlled from the top table.
And so as a general rule, the conferences have become sterile. No blood-letting. No arguments. No nothing.
But I must say that today's conference was an exception.
Maybe it's because this conference was a little unwanted (too early after the election; too early for Eamon Gilmore). There's no live television (except on the web- and I must say the live stream from Ustream has been magnifico) and there were very few expectations. It was all about housekeeping - deciding on strategy for elections, for policy, for establishing a presence in the North, for (yet again) a name change.
And I must say (and I never though I'd say this for a Saturday afternoon session) I enjoyed it. It began with Micheal D Higgins that social democracy is a label that can be used against Labour. It continued with a speech by his wife Sabrina Higgins who was so flamboyant in her passion that her husband seemed subdued by comparison.
"We have got to be activists," she urged. "The media is where it's happening. (But)... they are complacent. I do not see them as having a vision that we have for people and for tomorrow... Be a campaigning party."
There were a couple of robust debates and what the party hierarchy wanted, the party hierarchy didn't fully get. One of the motions called for a full delegate conference each year (the leadership also want this but don't want it to happen until 2009). That was defeated on the floor. In a bit of a procedural mess, it was then kicked into touch and referred to the National Executive Council (as the cannabis motion was this morning). The chair, Breda Moynihan-Cronin, made the mistake but otherwise she policed the session with a fist of steel.
The motion to explore the possible expansion of Labour in the North was heavily backed by the conference (no surprise there) but there were different nuances of opinion as to how this should happen (should Labour organise itself for elections in the North? Should it tie-up with the SDLP? Should it leave the SDLP to forge it alone?).
There were a couple of very good contributions to this debate, most from Northern delegates. One Mike McBrien harked back to Dev's famous speech of 1918 that 'Labour Must Wait'. He argued that Labour could wait no longer in Northern Ireland.
Or from Michael Robinson who argued for the same thing and warned about allowing Fianna Fail steal a march in the North. He reminded delegates here in Wexford of Bertie's famous self-declaration as a socialist:
"Bertie stole our clothes down here. Do not allow him steal our votes in the north," he said.
Ronan Farren is a member of both Labour and the SDLP (and a former press officer with the part). He gave a passionate and strong speech in which he warned about Labour following FF's lead by trying to woo voters in the North.
"The arrival of Southern parties in the North will only serve the interest of the two parties, Sinn Fein and the DUP, responsible for deepening sectarianism in the north," he said.
Labour's debate on its future in the North will be fascinating. But I suspect its own moves will be very much tempered by what FF may or may not do.
The best moment of all came with the very last motion, which might have seemed frivolous on the face of it. Dermot Looney from Dublin South West wanted the party to adopt the Red Flag as its anthem. The song - which has been adopted internationally and is the song of the British Labour Party - was written by a Meathman, Jim Connell from Kilsyre. Looney gave a funny, passionate and visceral speech.
When he quoted the last two lines, he brought the house down.
"Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here."
Once uttered, there was no way in the world that that particular motion wasn't going to get passed.
INSIDE POLITICS - LABOUR PAINS
JIMMY SANDS we will never forget you, went the joke about the status of the 1981 hunger strike in Irish history.
That joke was always a bit of a cheap shot and I suppose it is an even cheaper shot to start a peroration (oops Pat Rabbitte is no longer there), ahem, an argument on the future of the Labour Party.
As he prepares to give his first leader’s address to his party’s national conference (and his preparation was thrown off kilter by the death of his mother, Celia, this week) Eamon Gilmore has two major problems as leader of the Labour Party.
The first one is organisation. The second is even more challenging. To put it in highly technical political terms: Eamon who?
Gilmore faces the same mountainous journey that Enda Kenny faced in 2002 when he became leader of Fine Gael. Outside the Dáil, outside Ireland’s political beltway, Gilmore is unknown. Not quite like Kenny, who to borrow Rummy’s famous phrase was an “unknown unknown” (ie we didn’t know him and we didn’t know if he was any good). Those of us who watch him for a living know Gilmore’s ability. But the question is can he make it stick with all those who don’t watch him for a living and whose only real interaction with him is shoving a piece of paper into a box every five years.
Of course, this particular conference — time-wise — is a bit of a mistake. It was organised at a time when Labour believed it would be in government and that Pat Rabbitte would be Tánaiste. None of those eventualities came to pass. And a new leader, for whom it is too early to begin to build up profile, will tonight address a party for which it’s much too early to build up profile. It’s like a country man putting on his Sunday suit to go down and clean out the byre.
And that’s what Gilmore has been landed with this weekend.
The conference isn’t being fully televised (there’s a live stream available on the internet). There are no potential divisions (do we all take along long spoons just in case we have to sup with the de Valeras?). The meatiest motions are the usual existentialist ones — the political take on the plea from Captain McMorris in Shakespeare’s Henry V: “What ish my nation?”
And Labour will once again be embarking on an exercise asking itself what is its nation, what is its constituency, what is its identity in a fragmented society with none of the neat divisions of class that gave the party is support.
Nowadays, in south Dublin constituencies for example, the Labour Party’s base is predominantly middle class and liberal (the prawn sandwich brigade). In the north, west and south-west of the capital, its core is still blue collar workers. And down the country, there are places (Limerick, Cork, Westmeath, South Kildare, Waterford) where it still attracts a strong traditional rural and town vote, that would be more conservative in values. And then there are other places where the party has no presence at all.
And so to the heart of what this weekend is about. Sure, it was meant to be about taking stock of the new government and seeing the best way forward for Labour. The only slight glitch is that Labour isn’t a part of the Government.
And so two commissions, a Centenary Commission and a Commission for the 21st century will be formed to explore those things. I remember interviewing Pat Rabbitte about three years ago where he mulled over the direction that Tony Blair had taken the Labour Party in Britain.
Rabbitte never saw himself as a Blairite, pointing to Gordon Brown and the late John Smith (Blair’s predecessor) as personifying what he admired about Labour in Britain. Gilmore and those advising him will need to forge a strong identity and brand within the next 12 months. The test of its efficacy? When somebody asks what does Labour stand for, Gilmore and every representative of the party will be in a position to answer in one concise and simple sentence. It sounds fatuous, but it is important. People need to know what you stand for without having to listen to a thesis full of conditionalities.
And unfortunately for the opposition, Fianna Fáil has had a monopoly in that market for a decade. Who are you we ask. We are the party that governs and runs the economy, they reply.
And on that score, you begin to worry when the motion proposing one of the commissions runs to 720 words — I’m not codding you, 720 words — that’s almost as long as this column.
On an individual level, Gilmore could do worse than follow the strategy adopted by Enda Kenny. Spend the first year going around gee-ing up the party and rebuilding. Spend the second year building up your own profile. Throw everything at the local and European elections in 2009 (including all the dosh you have) to make some gains to allow you to claim electoral success. Then begin the big push for 2012.
This weekend’s conference will be the most hi-tech event hosted live by an Irish party. It’s going out live on the Labour Party site with clips being posted to YouTube. There are also blogs, online Q&A, photos on Flickr and mobile posts on Twitter. A lot has been organised by Shauneen Armstrong aka the blogger Red Mum (www.redmum.blogspot.com).
That joke was always a bit of a cheap shot and I suppose it is an even cheaper shot to start a peroration (oops Pat Rabbitte is no longer there), ahem, an argument on the future of the Labour Party.
As he prepares to give his first leader’s address to his party’s national conference (and his preparation was thrown off kilter by the death of his mother, Celia, this week) Eamon Gilmore has two major problems as leader of the Labour Party.
The first one is organisation. The second is even more challenging. To put it in highly technical political terms: Eamon who?
Gilmore faces the same mountainous journey that Enda Kenny faced in 2002 when he became leader of Fine Gael. Outside the Dáil, outside Ireland’s political beltway, Gilmore is unknown. Not quite like Kenny, who to borrow Rummy’s famous phrase was an “unknown unknown” (ie we didn’t know him and we didn’t know if he was any good). Those of us who watch him for a living know Gilmore’s ability. But the question is can he make it stick with all those who don’t watch him for a living and whose only real interaction with him is shoving a piece of paper into a box every five years.
Of course, this particular conference — time-wise — is a bit of a mistake. It was organised at a time when Labour believed it would be in government and that Pat Rabbitte would be Tánaiste. None of those eventualities came to pass. And a new leader, for whom it is too early to begin to build up profile, will tonight address a party for which it’s much too early to build up profile. It’s like a country man putting on his Sunday suit to go down and clean out the byre.
And that’s what Gilmore has been landed with this weekend.
The conference isn’t being fully televised (there’s a live stream available on the internet). There are no potential divisions (do we all take along long spoons just in case we have to sup with the de Valeras?). The meatiest motions are the usual existentialist ones — the political take on the plea from Captain McMorris in Shakespeare’s Henry V: “What ish my nation?”
And Labour will once again be embarking on an exercise asking itself what is its nation, what is its constituency, what is its identity in a fragmented society with none of the neat divisions of class that gave the party is support.
Nowadays, in south Dublin constituencies for example, the Labour Party’s base is predominantly middle class and liberal (the prawn sandwich brigade). In the north, west and south-west of the capital, its core is still blue collar workers. And down the country, there are places (Limerick, Cork, Westmeath, South Kildare, Waterford) where it still attracts a strong traditional rural and town vote, that would be more conservative in values. And then there are other places where the party has no presence at all.
And so to the heart of what this weekend is about. Sure, it was meant to be about taking stock of the new government and seeing the best way forward for Labour. The only slight glitch is that Labour isn’t a part of the Government.
And so two commissions, a Centenary Commission and a Commission for the 21st century will be formed to explore those things. I remember interviewing Pat Rabbitte about three years ago where he mulled over the direction that Tony Blair had taken the Labour Party in Britain.
Rabbitte never saw himself as a Blairite, pointing to Gordon Brown and the late John Smith (Blair’s predecessor) as personifying what he admired about Labour in Britain. Gilmore and those advising him will need to forge a strong identity and brand within the next 12 months. The test of its efficacy? When somebody asks what does Labour stand for, Gilmore and every representative of the party will be in a position to answer in one concise and simple sentence. It sounds fatuous, but it is important. People need to know what you stand for without having to listen to a thesis full of conditionalities.
And unfortunately for the opposition, Fianna Fáil has had a monopoly in that market for a decade. Who are you we ask. We are the party that governs and runs the economy, they reply.
And on that score, you begin to worry when the motion proposing one of the commissions runs to 720 words — I’m not codding you, 720 words — that’s almost as long as this column.
On an individual level, Gilmore could do worse than follow the strategy adopted by Enda Kenny. Spend the first year going around gee-ing up the party and rebuilding. Spend the second year building up your own profile. Throw everything at the local and European elections in 2009 (including all the dosh you have) to make some gains to allow you to claim electoral success. Then begin the big push for 2012.
This weekend’s conference will be the most hi-tech event hosted live by an Irish party. It’s going out live on the Labour Party site with clips being posted to YouTube. There are also blogs, online Q&A, photos on Flickr and mobile posts on Twitter. A lot has been organised by Shauneen Armstrong aka the blogger Red Mum (www.redmum.blogspot.com).
Thursday, November 15, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - LABOUR CONFERENCE
Eamon Gilmore's biggest problem is the one that Enda Kenny had when he became leader of Fine Gael.
Outside the beltway; outside his own constituency, outside Caltra and East Galway where he grew up (and is fiercely proud of - up Galway!) Gilmore is still an unknown quantity to the public out there.
His speech at the conference this weekend will be vitally important for him. He follows a very high-profile high-personality leader. He has been (unfairly) described as a clone or mini-me of Rabbitte. He has not yet established a national profile; or a 'brand' for himself - if I can use such a crude marketing expression.
And of course it has all been affected by the death of his mother this week, which has delayed his own arrival at the conference until Saturday.
Gilmore has done very well in parliament since becoming leader. He is non showy during the two key sessions of the week - Leaders Questions on Tuesday and Wednesday - and tends to ask Bertie Ahern pointed, sometimes blunt, questions, not giving the Taoiseach that much opportunity to pick the most convenient question to answer.
The main quote attributed to him on the Labour Party website sounds lovely when you say it out... but beyond its vague resonance of Martin Luther Kind does it really mean anything?
"Not only me, but others too; not only here, but elsewhere too; not only today, but tomorrow too."
Unfortunately for Labour, it's always been about tomorrow.
One thing to note about its conference (and I suspect the influence of super-blogger Shauneen Armstrong here) is that it has embraced technology like no other. Ustream, YouTube, flicker, twitter, online Q and A - you name it, it's there. It's going to be more exciting on the screen than it's going to be in real life down in White's Hotel! For more details of all the online stuff, see here.
And just to get in the spirit of things, my own blog will be chugging along on Saturday, and giving instantaneous (ie discount it immediately!) reaction to Gilmore's speech as it happens!
Saturday, November 10, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - CHARVET ANORAKS
AT THE end of every Dáil term, I tot up the topics that have come up during Leaders Questions — the two slots every week where Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore ask Bertie Ahern a question without giving him notice.
When he’s in the chamber, Ahern has a large volume in front of him indexed A to Z. It’s a mini Bertie encyclopaedia and contains briefings for every imaginable issue that will come up — from crime, to anti-social behaviour, to finances, to house prices, to stamp duty, to nuclear power; to class sizes; to the Taoiseach’s pay; to the bill for Bertie’s make-up.
Yes, these days the Taoiseach is high maintenance. So high maintenance that you sometimes feel that he may have crossed the Rubicon and is now more Charvet shirt than St Bernard anorak. On that subject, let us digress for a second. He was at it again on Thursday, trying to justify his huge pay hike while telling ordinary workers that wage restraint was the order of the day. And when asked to justify his own €38,000 rise, he trotted out the same excuse that it was an independent body and that he hadn’t got a turnip for seven long years (if you forget the nice little interim award of 7.5% they got two years ago). And who wrote the independent body’s terms of reference? Erm, oh yes, the Government.
And so when they met the social partners on Thursday, we had utterly hypocritical posturing from him and from Brian Cowen — the wealthy who have just become even wealthier telling the poor why they must stay poor.
Now back from that side alley onto the main drag of Leaders Questions.
The issue that floats to the top term after term, year after year, is health. It comes up in different guises. You can be sure of one thing. The opposition will always use the word “crisis” and “scandal”. Ahern in his reply will always compare the amount of money his Government have spent on health compared to the Rainbow who preceded it. It is hard to clearly identify when the Rainbow last ruled.
Mediaeval historians place the last signs of that particular civilisation sometime towards the end of the 20th century but we can’t be sure. But it’s still the default comparison for the Taoiseach when unleashing a drizzle of statistic.
Traditionally, Ahern has responded to the barbs of the opposition in a very clever way. He will know that they have offered him a choice of questions so he’ll chose the ones that most suit. He will read out verbatim the brief written for him by a civil servant.
If there’s explaining to do, he will do it but in that unique smokes and daggers way of his that makes everything as clear as mud. And he will deliver it in that reasonable, sotto voce tone of his. It’s not pretty on the ear but it’s deft and has served him well.
There’s been a theory doing the rounds of Leinster House for the last couple of months, however, that his demeanour has changed, has hardened, that he has become arrogant and aloof. He has won his third election now and doesn’t care any more. There’s nothing more to prove electorally. All that matters is retaining the loyalty of his party, to hang on until it’s time to go.
Tony Blair underwent such a transformation in his third term. He changed from the politician who was eager to please everybody to the one who realised that wasn’t possible.
Since May, there’s been little evidence of the famous anorak. The arrogance began in the RTÉ studios on the night of victory and is still evident. Little niggling things are being said about him that were not said before — that he is obsessed with money and wealth; that he has become imperious; that he increasingly out of touch with real people.
He was certainly damaged during the Tribunal and he badly dropped the ball over provisional licences. His defence of the pay rise was indefensible. But the thing that really bolstered the notion for me was his performance at Leaders Questions on Wednesday.
Now maybe Eamon Gilmore provoked him by mentioning the unmentionables, Doctors John Crown and Maurice Neligan. What stood out from his response was his attack on the two medics and his jibe that one of them made more money than him. What had that to do with women who have just learned the horror of a misdiagnosis? There was no empathy. It was somebody else’s fault; not his.
In the past, that would not have happened. The apology would have been made within seconds. He has either lost his common touch or has become deeply complacent. Bertie’s become high maintenance with all the attitude to go with it.
This is my column from this morning's Irish Examiner
When he’s in the chamber, Ahern has a large volume in front of him indexed A to Z. It’s a mini Bertie encyclopaedia and contains briefings for every imaginable issue that will come up — from crime, to anti-social behaviour, to finances, to house prices, to stamp duty, to nuclear power; to class sizes; to the Taoiseach’s pay; to the bill for Bertie’s make-up.
Yes, these days the Taoiseach is high maintenance. So high maintenance that you sometimes feel that he may have crossed the Rubicon and is now more Charvet shirt than St Bernard anorak. On that subject, let us digress for a second. He was at it again on Thursday, trying to justify his huge pay hike while telling ordinary workers that wage restraint was the order of the day. And when asked to justify his own €38,000 rise, he trotted out the same excuse that it was an independent body and that he hadn’t got a turnip for seven long years (if you forget the nice little interim award of 7.5% they got two years ago). And who wrote the independent body’s terms of reference? Erm, oh yes, the Government.
And so when they met the social partners on Thursday, we had utterly hypocritical posturing from him and from Brian Cowen — the wealthy who have just become even wealthier telling the poor why they must stay poor.
Now back from that side alley onto the main drag of Leaders Questions.
The issue that floats to the top term after term, year after year, is health. It comes up in different guises. You can be sure of one thing. The opposition will always use the word “crisis” and “scandal”. Ahern in his reply will always compare the amount of money his Government have spent on health compared to the Rainbow who preceded it. It is hard to clearly identify when the Rainbow last ruled.
Mediaeval historians place the last signs of that particular civilisation sometime towards the end of the 20th century but we can’t be sure. But it’s still the default comparison for the Taoiseach when unleashing a drizzle of statistic.
Traditionally, Ahern has responded to the barbs of the opposition in a very clever way. He will know that they have offered him a choice of questions so he’ll chose the ones that most suit. He will read out verbatim the brief written for him by a civil servant.
If there’s explaining to do, he will do it but in that unique smokes and daggers way of his that makes everything as clear as mud. And he will deliver it in that reasonable, sotto voce tone of his. It’s not pretty on the ear but it’s deft and has served him well.
There’s been a theory doing the rounds of Leinster House for the last couple of months, however, that his demeanour has changed, has hardened, that he has become arrogant and aloof. He has won his third election now and doesn’t care any more. There’s nothing more to prove electorally. All that matters is retaining the loyalty of his party, to hang on until it’s time to go.
Tony Blair underwent such a transformation in his third term. He changed from the politician who was eager to please everybody to the one who realised that wasn’t possible.
Since May, there’s been little evidence of the famous anorak. The arrogance began in the RTÉ studios on the night of victory and is still evident. Little niggling things are being said about him that were not said before — that he is obsessed with money and wealth; that he has become imperious; that he increasingly out of touch with real people.
He was certainly damaged during the Tribunal and he badly dropped the ball over provisional licences. His defence of the pay rise was indefensible. But the thing that really bolstered the notion for me was his performance at Leaders Questions on Wednesday.
Now maybe Eamon Gilmore provoked him by mentioning the unmentionables, Doctors John Crown and Maurice Neligan. What stood out from his response was his attack on the two medics and his jibe that one of them made more money than him. What had that to do with women who have just learned the horror of a misdiagnosis? There was no empathy. It was somebody else’s fault; not his.
In the past, that would not have happened. The apology would have been made within seconds. He has either lost his common touch or has become deeply complacent. Bertie’s become high maintenance with all the attitude to go with it.
This is my column from this morning's Irish Examiner
Saturday, November 03, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - THAT OPINION POLL
The latest opinion poll tells us that Fianna Fail is on the way out and if we are patient enough to wait out the other 1,500 days between now and the next General Election, we can collectively wave them goodbye.
In one sense, the findings of the TNS mrbi opionion poll are meaningless in the greater scheme of things. We're all still descending to base camp after the tough high altitude exertions of the elecyion – it will be next year before we will see the ambition expeditions towards the next electoral Everest begin.
But having said that, the result is very illustrative of the internal dynamics within Fianna Fail and the party's complacency and mediocrity since the Summer.
Since forging its very cute and very clever deal with the Greens, the PDs and the four independent TDs, Fianna Fail's leadership has spent the last couple of months doing what it's become good at (making sure that it feathers its own
nest) and doing what it's become bad at (looking after the rest of us).
It has to be said that the timing of this poll could not have been worse for Fianna Fail. The sampling was taken in the immediate wake of the cringe- inducing reverse over provisional driving licences and a couple of days after they accepted Biblical pay hikes for themselves and the top brass of the civil service, universities, local authorities, army, gardai and the judiciary.
It also came a week after another farce, the Department of Transport report about who knew what about Shannon losing its Heathrow slots and why Noel Dempsey was the last to find out. And On top of all that, Bertie Ahern's remarkable filmic tale at the Mahon Tribunal encompassing amnesia and his experience with international money markets was still fresh
enough in some people's minds to be reflected in this poll.
There's no doubt about it, it's a stinker of a poll for Fianna Fail and for Ahern himself.
When it comes to pinpoint accuracy, opinion polls have the same record as the Limerick hurling team in the All Ireland final. The three per cent margin of error, plus or minus, is too often ignored by the media. So a party showing 12 per cent could be on 9, and equally could be on 15. So
they're not good at picking up small shifts in support for smaller parties.
The corollary of this is that polls are good at reflecting large shifts of support (ie outside the margin of error) for the larger parties. And so we can take it that nobody in Fianna Fail can quibble with its monumental nine per cent drop in support.
Nor can Bertie Ahern. His stock has fallen dramatically. What is unclear is whether this is a one-off (an immediate reaction to a dismal week for FF) or whether the Teflon coating on his Anorak is finally beginning to wear thin. My own
inclination is that that massive pedestal on which we put this remarkable political animal is finally beginning to totter and topple.
A couple of people said to me: what difference does it make? Sure, won't he be hanging up the Anorak at the next election? It makes a big difference. Ahern wants to stay on until he decides to go. And he has given no indication so far it's going to be earlier than 2011, even though most others within FF are thinking of 2009 (and before the European and local
elections).
So, if the figures for FF continue to slump at its core support figure of the low thirties and if Ahern's own popularity fails to recover, you will begin to hear sounds from the FF committee rooms not heard for many a year – the nervous shuffling
of feet and the sharpening of long knives.
A lot of FFers believe that the Irish Times is out to get them. Their paranoia won't be alleviated by the inclusion of Tánaiste Brian Cowen among the leaders for the first time.
One of their backroom people told me Thursday night that he believed Cowen was included deliberately to make Ahern look bad. I think the reason for his inclusion was simpler – he is, after all, the anointed one.
But his popular showing of 49% compared to 43% for his leader will have a ripple effect within FF – and may see some of Cowen's supporters (who are more impatient for
the big prize than he is) begin to make subtle moves nudging him in that direction.
I'd love to think that the poll was a reaction to the disgraceful pay rises the top brass got last week. It wasn't solely that. People expect politicians to do that – that storm was only a one day blow. I really believe the pay rises to politicians, higher civil servants, and other high-ranking state employees was an affront to democracy. Ahern said there was no review in seven years. In fact the body awarded an interim increase of 7.5% two years ago. And Ministers and
TDs like Ahern, Cowen and company have benefited from every single national award and benchmarking award over the past seven years. And the body is independent but for most of its world-of- business membership, big six figure
salaries are par for the course.
Have politicians made one personal sacrifice over the past decade? No. The new class that has grown up to run our
State and its institutions has become self-perpetuating - looking after its own interests first and foremost.
In one sense, the findings of the TNS mrbi opionion poll are meaningless in the greater scheme of things. We're all still descending to base camp after the tough high altitude exertions of the elecyion – it will be next year before we will see the ambition expeditions towards the next electoral Everest begin.
But having said that, the result is very illustrative of the internal dynamics within Fianna Fail and the party's complacency and mediocrity since the Summer.
Since forging its very cute and very clever deal with the Greens, the PDs and the four independent TDs, Fianna Fail's leadership has spent the last couple of months doing what it's become good at (making sure that it feathers its own
nest) and doing what it's become bad at (looking after the rest of us).
It has to be said that the timing of this poll could not have been worse for Fianna Fail. The sampling was taken in the immediate wake of the cringe- inducing reverse over provisional driving licences and a couple of days after they accepted Biblical pay hikes for themselves and the top brass of the civil service, universities, local authorities, army, gardai and the judiciary.
It also came a week after another farce, the Department of Transport report about who knew what about Shannon losing its Heathrow slots and why Noel Dempsey was the last to find out. And On top of all that, Bertie Ahern's remarkable filmic tale at the Mahon Tribunal encompassing amnesia and his experience with international money markets was still fresh
enough in some people's minds to be reflected in this poll.
There's no doubt about it, it's a stinker of a poll for Fianna Fail and for Ahern himself.
When it comes to pinpoint accuracy, opinion polls have the same record as the Limerick hurling team in the All Ireland final. The three per cent margin of error, plus or minus, is too often ignored by the media. So a party showing 12 per cent could be on 9, and equally could be on 15. So
they're not good at picking up small shifts in support for smaller parties.
The corollary of this is that polls are good at reflecting large shifts of support (ie outside the margin of error) for the larger parties. And so we can take it that nobody in Fianna Fail can quibble with its monumental nine per cent drop in support.
Nor can Bertie Ahern. His stock has fallen dramatically. What is unclear is whether this is a one-off (an immediate reaction to a dismal week for FF) or whether the Teflon coating on his Anorak is finally beginning to wear thin. My own
inclination is that that massive pedestal on which we put this remarkable political animal is finally beginning to totter and topple.
A couple of people said to me: what difference does it make? Sure, won't he be hanging up the Anorak at the next election? It makes a big difference. Ahern wants to stay on until he decides to go. And he has given no indication so far it's going to be earlier than 2011, even though most others within FF are thinking of 2009 (and before the European and local
elections).
So, if the figures for FF continue to slump at its core support figure of the low thirties and if Ahern's own popularity fails to recover, you will begin to hear sounds from the FF committee rooms not heard for many a year – the nervous shuffling
of feet and the sharpening of long knives.
A lot of FFers believe that the Irish Times is out to get them. Their paranoia won't be alleviated by the inclusion of Tánaiste Brian Cowen among the leaders for the first time.
One of their backroom people told me Thursday night that he believed Cowen was included deliberately to make Ahern look bad. I think the reason for his inclusion was simpler – he is, after all, the anointed one.
But his popular showing of 49% compared to 43% for his leader will have a ripple effect within FF – and may see some of Cowen's supporters (who are more impatient for
the big prize than he is) begin to make subtle moves nudging him in that direction.
I'd love to think that the poll was a reaction to the disgraceful pay rises the top brass got last week. It wasn't solely that. People expect politicians to do that – that storm was only a one day blow. I really believe the pay rises to politicians, higher civil servants, and other high-ranking state employees was an affront to democracy. Ahern said there was no review in seven years. In fact the body awarded an interim increase of 7.5% two years ago. And Ministers and
TDs like Ahern, Cowen and company have benefited from every single national award and benchmarking award over the past seven years. And the body is independent but for most of its world-of- business membership, big six figure
salaries are par for the course.
Have politicians made one personal sacrifice over the past decade? No. The new class that has grown up to run our
State and its institutions has become self-perpetuating - looking after its own interests first and foremost.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - ANORAK WEATHER
After a couple weeks of clear blue skies, the mists started to fall yesterday and we found ourselves back in familiar climatic (more like bloody anti-climatic) conditions.
There are a couple ways you can observe that poor weather is on the way. One is a red sky at morning. Another is a dog eating grass. But perhaps the best one of all is Bertie Ahern telling the Dail that the Health budget has increased from E3 billion in 1997 to E14 billion today.
The moment you hear that, be advised that you need to run for cover. For you know that you are going to be drowned by an endless drizzle of statistics.
Once Bertie Ahern replies to a question by reading out a note written for him by a civil servant, beware! It's anorak weather.
It’s ceaseless stuff: BreastCheck is available in 15 counties. There’s high voluntary screening activity. The budget is E14 billion a year across 120,000. A 1% control of that is a small amount. There are enormous resources being put into the health servic3es. Most of that is for staff. There are 120,000 of them. The budget is E14 billion. Just in case you were not aware, the budget is E14 million. And by the way there are 120,000 staff.
That’s why they call him Anorak Man, because he needs to wear one to protect him from the deluge of information he gives out.
Yesterday’s Leaders Questions was as dull and dispiriting as the first damp evening after the clock goes back an hour.
The subject being debated was actually vitally important; the
heart-rending story of Susie Long who died last Monday. Both opposition leaders Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore raised her case and the fact that as a public patient she had to wait months for a scan that a private patient got in three days.
The problem for Enda Kenny is that it’s better to play the direct ball when asking the Taoiseach a question. Give him a selection of topics to address and instead of avoiding just one question he will avoid the lot, instead providing a bewildering array of statistics and non sequiturs.
In fairness, the Taoiseach had a couple of points to make. But he spluttered worse than a damaged exhaust and it was hard to know what he was talking about. He did say it was regrettable that Susie Long had been let down by the health services. But he argued that it wasn’t because she was a public patient. A doctor referring an urgent public case to the hospital for a colonoscopy would get priority. But as Eamon Gilmore pointed out how would you know what case was urgent until it the test was done.
The other point I think he made is that we shouldn’t lose sight of the woods for the trees, that the overall performance of a behemoth of a service like the HSE should not be judged solely on a number of individual cases or discrete problem areas.
At least I think he made it. Blue sky thinking it certainly was not.
There are a couple ways you can observe that poor weather is on the way. One is a red sky at morning. Another is a dog eating grass. But perhaps the best one of all is Bertie Ahern telling the Dail that the Health budget has increased from E3 billion in 1997 to E14 billion today.
The moment you hear that, be advised that you need to run for cover. For you know that you are going to be drowned by an endless drizzle of statistics.
Once Bertie Ahern replies to a question by reading out a note written for him by a civil servant, beware! It's anorak weather.
It’s ceaseless stuff: BreastCheck is available in 15 counties. There’s high voluntary screening activity. The budget is E14 billion a year across 120,000. A 1% control of that is a small amount. There are enormous resources being put into the health servic3es. Most of that is for staff. There are 120,000 of them. The budget is E14 billion. Just in case you were not aware, the budget is E14 million. And by the way there are 120,000 staff.
That’s why they call him Anorak Man, because he needs to wear one to protect him from the deluge of information he gives out.
Yesterday’s Leaders Questions was as dull and dispiriting as the first damp evening after the clock goes back an hour.
The subject being debated was actually vitally important; the
heart-rending story of Susie Long who died last Monday. Both opposition leaders Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore raised her case and the fact that as a public patient she had to wait months for a scan that a private patient got in three days.
The problem for Enda Kenny is that it’s better to play the direct ball when asking the Taoiseach a question. Give him a selection of topics to address and instead of avoiding just one question he will avoid the lot, instead providing a bewildering array of statistics and non sequiturs.
In fairness, the Taoiseach had a couple of points to make. But he spluttered worse than a damaged exhaust and it was hard to know what he was talking about. He did say it was regrettable that Susie Long had been let down by the health services. But he argued that it wasn’t because she was a public patient. A doctor referring an urgent public case to the hospital for a colonoscopy would get priority. But as Eamon Gilmore pointed out how would you know what case was urgent until it the test was done.
The other point I think he made is that we shouldn’t lose sight of the woods for the trees, that the overall performance of a behemoth of a service like the HSE should not be judged solely on a number of individual cases or discrete problem areas.
At least I think he made it. Blue sky thinking it certainly was not.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - OPPOSITION STRATEGY
At the end of every term, I do a simple exercise, totting up the topics that have been chosen by opposition leaders for the twice-weekly set piece Leaders' Questions.
Over the last couple of years, the predictable issues have dominated - health, crime, and the Government's secret weapon of dealing with Limerick's gang culture: unleashing Willie O'Dea in the city's drinking establishment on weekend nights.
The dynamic has changed this time. There are now only two leaders entitled to speak during Leaders Questions and one of them, Eamon Gilmore, is new. With the smaller parties and indepedendents having been hoovered up by Government or gobbled up by the electorate, there is no longer a technical group. There is no Joe Higgins. The Greens have forsaken tofu abstinence for meat indulgence. And Sinn Fein - this was meant to be another breakthrough election; it instead became a breakdown election. Down from five to four. No Mary Lou. Pearse Doherty in the Senate rather than in the Dáil.
So where once there were five, now there are two. It's very early days and I don't think that any of the opposition parties have got their heads around what strategies they will adopt to down the Government over the next five years.
With Labour's Gilmore, there has been a difference of style and nuance rather than substance so far - he is less confrontational; appealing more to reason and to common sense than Rabbitte was. For Enda Kenny and Fine Gael, it's been more of the same, leaving off where they left off before the election.
Fine Gael's big strategy last time was that the election would be won or lost on three big issues - health, crime and value for money. The party was wrong on all three issues. The election was won and lost on the economy.
So can we expect more PPARS, more attacks on health, more 'we are tougher than Terminator' on getting the criminal gang scum off the streets.
Well on the crime front, yes. Listening to Enda Kenny and Charlie Flanagan yesterday, it was deja vu all over again. Kenny repeated a phrase three times: "Who's in charge Taoiseach, the Government or the gangs?"
That had tabloid written all over it. But when Charlie Flanagan started talking about bringing the army onto the street as back-up, that really took the pip. Brian Lenihan should have dismissed it out of hand. Instead, foolishly, the Justice Minister actually said he would refer it to the Garda Commissioner. I mean, if you follow that line of argument, the next thing is that we will impose martial law on the street and people will begin to consider the sense of Eoghan Harris's baublings about armed gardai shooting it out with criminals and the return of capital punishment.
Over the last couple of years, the predictable issues have dominated - health, crime, and the Government's secret weapon of dealing with Limerick's gang culture: unleashing Willie O'Dea in the city's drinking establishment on weekend nights.
The dynamic has changed this time. There are now only two leaders entitled to speak during Leaders Questions and one of them, Eamon Gilmore, is new. With the smaller parties and indepedendents having been hoovered up by Government or gobbled up by the electorate, there is no longer a technical group. There is no Joe Higgins. The Greens have forsaken tofu abstinence for meat indulgence. And Sinn Fein - this was meant to be another breakthrough election; it instead became a breakdown election. Down from five to four. No Mary Lou. Pearse Doherty in the Senate rather than in the Dáil.
So where once there were five, now there are two. It's very early days and I don't think that any of the opposition parties have got their heads around what strategies they will adopt to down the Government over the next five years.
With Labour's Gilmore, there has been a difference of style and nuance rather than substance so far - he is less confrontational; appealing more to reason and to common sense than Rabbitte was. For Enda Kenny and Fine Gael, it's been more of the same, leaving off where they left off before the election.
Fine Gael's big strategy last time was that the election would be won or lost on three big issues - health, crime and value for money. The party was wrong on all three issues. The election was won and lost on the economy.
So can we expect more PPARS, more attacks on health, more 'we are tougher than Terminator' on getting the criminal gang scum off the streets.
Well on the crime front, yes. Listening to Enda Kenny and Charlie Flanagan yesterday, it was deja vu all over again. Kenny repeated a phrase three times: "Who's in charge Taoiseach, the Government or the gangs?"
That had tabloid written all over it. But when Charlie Flanagan started talking about bringing the army onto the street as back-up, that really took the pip. Brian Lenihan should have dismissed it out of hand. Instead, foolishly, the Justice Minister actually said he would refer it to the Garda Commissioner. I mean, if you follow that line of argument, the next thing is that we will impose martial law on the street and people will begin to consider the sense of Eoghan Harris's baublings about armed gardai shooting it out with criminals and the return of capital punishment.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Nobody actually openly accused Bertie Ahern of lying yesterday. But if you were to look up a thesaurus, you’d find that just about every possible alternative word for ‘lie’ was used by Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore when describing the Taoiseach’s evidence to the Mahon Tribunal.
There is a basic rule in the Dáil. The ‘L’ word may never be uttered. In the past, we have seen some creative words and phrases being employed: dissembling; misleading the Dail; untruth; ‘being economical with the truth’.
But yesterday was of a different order. The L word was never uttered. But during the motion of confidence – and let’s make no mistake about – it was clearly meant. There was to be no softening of the blows. To all intents and purposes – but without every actually saying so – Kenny and Gilmore accused the Taoiseach of lying and lying and lying again.
During a heated, angry and self-evidently bitter debate on the motion of confidence in the Taoiseach – the first motion brought since one against Albert Reynolds in November 1994 – Ahern found himself being accused of giving incredible accounts, of fabricating, of not being credible, of creating smoke screens, of gelling bizarre and shifting tales. And all of this was said under oath, during his 18 hours of evidence to the Tribunal.
The charges that Kenny and Gilmore laid were far more serious, far graver than most of us had anticipated. Not alone did they accuse him of the L word. They claimed that most of the events that he has based his entire defence on never took place. They contended that events recalled by Ahern in interviews and under oath to the Tribunal – the famous Manchester dinner, the dig-out from friends, the Michael Wall payment, the purchase of £30,000 sterling – never took place.
This was the core of Kenny’s argument in one of the best speeches he has made since he becoming leder: “Most of the events we were discussing never happened. In my view, in my opinion, they’re fictitious. Complicated stories, part of a web of complicated stories designed to mask hard facts. Constructed stories to fit known facts.”
Phew! That was strong stuff and potentially as corrosive as sulphuric acid. And though he didn’t say it either, what Kenny also suggested that Ahern was on the take when he lodged amounts between 1993 and 1995 that equated to €300,000 in today’s terms.
“We have heard no credible explanation from the Taoiseach for these lodgements. In the absence of such an explanation the deep suspicion must remain that these lodgements were a result of personal contributions made to the Taoiseach.”
And in a speech designed to – and which probably did – get under Ahern’s craw, Kenny quoted lines from Des O’Malley (“I stand by the Republic”) and Jack Lynch (“we cannot stand idly by”) to make unfavourable comparisons to Ahern. He also quoted from Charlie Haughey to make even more unfavourable comparisons.
Gilmore, making his maiden speech as the new Labour leader, went over the same ground. He recalled the Taoiseach recalling next to nothing about the dinner in Manchester and then pointed out that Ahern claimed on the Late Late Show in 1998 that one of his best attributes was a good memory.”
His recurring theme – in a speech that was serious and under-stated - was that he did not believe Ahern, that the Taoiseach was making up cock and bull stories.
“I don’t believe him. Most of his own deputies don’t believe him and the public clearly doesn’t’ believe him either,” was a phrase that was uttered more than once.
And this is Taoiseach’s big quandary. There’s a serious credibility problem there that can’t be explained by unusual circumstances or his marriage break-down or by what he described as his ‘unorthodox affairs’ during his marital separation in the 1990s.
Yesterday he again urged people to read the 18 hours of transcript. But anyone who reads it will be no clearer about all those information and credibility gaps. If anything they will be bewildered and more confused.
He – and all his Ministers who spoke – also argued that there was not a scintilla of proof to back up the central allegation made by Tom Gilmartin that he took payments from Owen O’Callaghan.
Joe Higgins was spot-on last week when describing the use of this particular blatant diversionary tactic. Higgins gloriously employed a famous Bertie-ism to describe Bertie dragging Owen O'Callaghan and Tom Gilmartin in:
But it’s not about Tom Gilmartin any more. It’s about all these odd transactions, all these unremembered and half-remembered sterling and Irish sums passing through accounts controlled by him. And why his explanation of them is of the ‘the dog has eaten my homework’ type.
He was effective in pointing out the belated courage of both Fine Gael and Labour in going for his political jugular. “One day they blow hot and the next day they blow cold. Last May to them due process was an excuse not to comment but today, political accountability is the pretext for their questioning.”
He repeated his defence against allegations made in the Tribunal, rebutting allegations that he had delayed or not cooperated or dissembled. But it’s all a bit conditional. He said he waived confidentiality on bank documents and consented to the Tribunal obtaining discovery against AIB. But he forgot to mention yesterday that he only did so when forced to by the opposition.
And as for changing his evidence he asserted: “The fundamental of my evidence have remained the same. I have added some detail and elaborated in some areas for reasons which I shall explain…. It is a matter of reality that one’s recollection can be helped as new information comes to light.”
And in a day where little love was lost, where both sides strongly signalled that the 30th Dail will be a tenser, colder House, he accused his political foes of “stretching the available evidence with malign invention.”
The thrust of the Government defence, put most passionately by Tánaiste Brian Cowen in the closing speech (and boy does he sound like leader-designate) the opposition were hypocrites in that they had only discovered high standards and morality after the election, where before polling day they back-pedalled from BertieGate more quickly than a professional cyclist on dope.
“I know right from wrong. And the Tribunal will be the arbitrer. If we are to avoid arbitrary justice let the Tribunal proceed with its deliberations.”
Ahern sat through it all, uncomfortably. It’s clear he finds it all, as he said in his speech, unseemly and intrusive. For him once no evidence is adduced of payments from Owen O’Callaghan, the rest is nobody’s business. The payments were, as he put it, being “assisted by friends”. In his moral compass, he did nothing wrong. He made a big deal of paying back €100,000 but he only did that when he had to (in 2006), when the outing of the payments last year forced him to do that.
And if he was uncomfortable, the Greens seemed to be squirming in their seats. Trevor Sargent, Eamon Ryan, Ciaran Cuffe and Mareey White didn’t clap at the end of Ahern’s speech as the loyal FFers did, but we were later told that nothing turned on that. The opposition reminded the party of how quickly it had rolled down from the high moral ground into the swamp. Trevor Sargents excoriations of FF in the run-up to the election campaign were recalled. And when John Gormley finally made an appearance in the chamber shortly after 8pm, he said little more than he would wait until the Tribunal reported. He then resorted to the magician’s trick of misdirection by reciting Green policy objectives in Government. There are times to talk about climate change but last nights was not one of them.
The L word was never used. They didn’t have to. This was the most serious attack Ahern faced in 30 years of politics. Strategically, the Government banked completely on the Tribunal report. When it does report (will it be next year or 2009?) if it criticises him to any serious extent, he will be a goner. One senior Green Party person thought privately that it might be as soon as the Christmas break.
We have all gone through the disconnect between the media and Joe Schmo out there. But no matter how you look at this one, Bertie Ahern has been damaged.
There is a basic rule in the Dáil. The ‘L’ word may never be uttered. In the past, we have seen some creative words and phrases being employed: dissembling; misleading the Dail; untruth; ‘being economical with the truth’.
But yesterday was of a different order. The L word was never uttered. But during the motion of confidence – and let’s make no mistake about – it was clearly meant. There was to be no softening of the blows. To all intents and purposes – but without every actually saying so – Kenny and Gilmore accused the Taoiseach of lying and lying and lying again.
During a heated, angry and self-evidently bitter debate on the motion of confidence in the Taoiseach – the first motion brought since one against Albert Reynolds in November 1994 – Ahern found himself being accused of giving incredible accounts, of fabricating, of not being credible, of creating smoke screens, of gelling bizarre and shifting tales. And all of this was said under oath, during his 18 hours of evidence to the Tribunal.
The charges that Kenny and Gilmore laid were far more serious, far graver than most of us had anticipated. Not alone did they accuse him of the L word. They claimed that most of the events that he has based his entire defence on never took place. They contended that events recalled by Ahern in interviews and under oath to the Tribunal – the famous Manchester dinner, the dig-out from friends, the Michael Wall payment, the purchase of £30,000 sterling – never took place.
This was the core of Kenny’s argument in one of the best speeches he has made since he becoming leder: “Most of the events we were discussing never happened. In my view, in my opinion, they’re fictitious. Complicated stories, part of a web of complicated stories designed to mask hard facts. Constructed stories to fit known facts.”
Phew! That was strong stuff and potentially as corrosive as sulphuric acid. And though he didn’t say it either, what Kenny also suggested that Ahern was on the take when he lodged amounts between 1993 and 1995 that equated to €300,000 in today’s terms.
“We have heard no credible explanation from the Taoiseach for these lodgements. In the absence of such an explanation the deep suspicion must remain that these lodgements were a result of personal contributions made to the Taoiseach.”
And in a speech designed to – and which probably did – get under Ahern’s craw, Kenny quoted lines from Des O’Malley (“I stand by the Republic”) and Jack Lynch (“we cannot stand idly by”) to make unfavourable comparisons to Ahern. He also quoted from Charlie Haughey to make even more unfavourable comparisons.
Gilmore, making his maiden speech as the new Labour leader, went over the same ground. He recalled the Taoiseach recalling next to nothing about the dinner in Manchester and then pointed out that Ahern claimed on the Late Late Show in 1998 that one of his best attributes was a good memory.”
His recurring theme – in a speech that was serious and under-stated - was that he did not believe Ahern, that the Taoiseach was making up cock and bull stories.
“I don’t believe him. Most of his own deputies don’t believe him and the public clearly doesn’t’ believe him either,” was a phrase that was uttered more than once.
And this is Taoiseach’s big quandary. There’s a serious credibility problem there that can’t be explained by unusual circumstances or his marriage break-down or by what he described as his ‘unorthodox affairs’ during his marital separation in the 1990s.
Yesterday he again urged people to read the 18 hours of transcript. But anyone who reads it will be no clearer about all those information and credibility gaps. If anything they will be bewildered and more confused.
He – and all his Ministers who spoke – also argued that there was not a scintilla of proof to back up the central allegation made by Tom Gilmartin that he took payments from Owen O’Callaghan.
Joe Higgins was spot-on last week when describing the use of this particular blatant diversionary tactic. Higgins gloriously employed a famous Bertie-ism to describe Bertie dragging Owen O'Callaghan and Tom Gilmartin in:
“It’s throwing red herrings at white elephants.”
But it’s not about Tom Gilmartin any more. It’s about all these odd transactions, all these unremembered and half-remembered sterling and Irish sums passing through accounts controlled by him. And why his explanation of them is of the ‘the dog has eaten my homework’ type.
He was effective in pointing out the belated courage of both Fine Gael and Labour in going for his political jugular. “One day they blow hot and the next day they blow cold. Last May to them due process was an excuse not to comment but today, political accountability is the pretext for their questioning.”
He repeated his defence against allegations made in the Tribunal, rebutting allegations that he had delayed or not cooperated or dissembled. But it’s all a bit conditional. He said he waived confidentiality on bank documents and consented to the Tribunal obtaining discovery against AIB. But he forgot to mention yesterday that he only did so when forced to by the opposition.
And as for changing his evidence he asserted: “The fundamental of my evidence have remained the same. I have added some detail and elaborated in some areas for reasons which I shall explain…. It is a matter of reality that one’s recollection can be helped as new information comes to light.”
And in a day where little love was lost, where both sides strongly signalled that the 30th Dail will be a tenser, colder House, he accused his political foes of “stretching the available evidence with malign invention.”
The thrust of the Government defence, put most passionately by Tánaiste Brian Cowen in the closing speech (and boy does he sound like leader-designate) the opposition were hypocrites in that they had only discovered high standards and morality after the election, where before polling day they back-pedalled from BertieGate more quickly than a professional cyclist on dope.
“I know right from wrong. And the Tribunal will be the arbitrer. If we are to avoid arbitrary justice let the Tribunal proceed with its deliberations.”
Ahern sat through it all, uncomfortably. It’s clear he finds it all, as he said in his speech, unseemly and intrusive. For him once no evidence is adduced of payments from Owen O’Callaghan, the rest is nobody’s business. The payments were, as he put it, being “assisted by friends”. In his moral compass, he did nothing wrong. He made a big deal of paying back €100,000 but he only did that when he had to (in 2006), when the outing of the payments last year forced him to do that.
And if he was uncomfortable, the Greens seemed to be squirming in their seats. Trevor Sargent, Eamon Ryan, Ciaran Cuffe and Mareey White didn’t clap at the end of Ahern’s speech as the loyal FFers did, but we were later told that nothing turned on that. The opposition reminded the party of how quickly it had rolled down from the high moral ground into the swamp. Trevor Sargents excoriations of FF in the run-up to the election campaign were recalled. And when John Gormley finally made an appearance in the chamber shortly after 8pm, he said little more than he would wait until the Tribunal reported. He then resorted to the magician’s trick of misdirection by reciting Green policy objectives in Government. There are times to talk about climate change but last nights was not one of them.
The L word was never used. They didn’t have to. This was the most serious attack Ahern faced in 30 years of politics. Strategically, the Government banked completely on the Tribunal report. When it does report (will it be next year or 2009?) if it criticises him to any serious extent, he will be a goner. One senior Green Party person thought privately that it might be as soon as the Christmas break.
We have all gone through the disconnect between the media and Joe Schmo out there. But no matter how you look at this one, Bertie Ahern has been damaged.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - OF YOUTH AND AGE (AGAIN!)
Next Tuesday morning a school bus will pull up outside a hotel in Galway and a scatter of kids - in shiny new uniforms, with cheese and banana sandwiches in their satchels – will clamber into the lobby.
The fresh-faced ones are Fine Gael’s new TDs. In the immediate wake of the election, the party made a couple of vain and empty boasts like it had won the election (nearly); had got into government (nearly) and had bounced right back from the near-oblivion of 2002 (nearly). The one boast that it could really stand over without having to qualify or explain is that it has youth on its side. At least a couple of those sitting on the FG benches on the first day of the 30th Dail look like they had a tube of Clearasil stashed away somewhere on their person and still need to carry ID to get into pubs.
And sitting alongside them – hardly a zimmer frame length away – was the Labour Party parliamentary party. The tragedy that the media was writing up after the election was one relative one of youth and age. The argument went that the time this Dail comes to the end, the form of ID that most Labour Party TDs will carry with them will be the free travel pass. They must be green with envy comparing its failure to get more than three younger TDs elected with the success of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail in terms of renewal. I heard the new super junior minister for children Brendan Smith reeling out the same old lines last week, like he was racing through the first decade of the rosary. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael equals young and vibrant. Labour equals doddery and falling into decrepitude.
It’s an easy exercise to do, to tot up the average age of the parliamentary party and find out that, hey, it’s 55. And what does that tell you? A little bit, sure. Ultimately, not a lot. Fine Gael had the youngest front bench of all the parties in the last Dáil. Performance wise, they had few star performers (Richard Bruton), a bunch of mediocrities and a few who were dire, completely dire. The woeful performers did include TDs who been knocking around for years. But it can also be said that of their younger spokespeople – John Deasy; Olwyn Enright, Denis Naughten, Simon Coveney – none really distinguished themselves as anything amazing.
To be sure, Labour has an age issue. But it’s been over-stated. Sure the party wanted more young blood. And it will be a major surprise if Gilmore doesn’t fast-track Sean Sherlock (and maybe Ciaran Lynch) into a senior role.
But let’s explore another thought for a second. This might seem like a strange proposition but the party is in a far better position than FF and FG to renew itself now and reap the benefits in the next election. If a third of its parliamentary party is retiring in the next election, Labour can spend the next year finding replacements (in addition to the ready-made candidates in the Senate), blooding them in the local elections if necessary, and making them recognisable Dail aspirants long before 2012.
To achieve that, Gilmore as the new leader will need to concentrate on the organisation more than his own profile in the first year. The mistakes made in Carlow-Kilkenny - where the party had no thought-out strategy to find a replacement for Seamus Pattison – cannot be allowed to be repeated. To do that, Gilmore and his team will have to borrow a tactic from Workers Party days – the use of a ruthless centralism to choose the right candidates and strategies locally.
And it’s not a nonsense to suggest that two big parties will have difficulties with renewal even if they have many young TDs.
Fianna Fail’s difficulty is encapsulated by Brendan Smith’s own experience. He’s been a TD for 15 years now and he’s not even at the Cabinet table yet. Bertie Ahern likes his troops to serve long apprenticeships. But when they’re promoted, they tend to stay put … forever. Most of his senior ministers have lots of smarts, granted. The problem is with the second-tier. They’ve also been around for a long time but very few have the necessary calibre or character. To really renew, Brian Cowen (when he eventually becomes leader) will have to be ruthless and skip a generation for some of his key people.
And what about Fine Gael’s lack of renewal? It will have a couple of badly-needed heavy hitters this time around, with the return of Brian Hayes, Charlie Flanagan and Alan Shatter to the Dáil. Its problem is positioning. Its identification of the three election issues didn’t work. Its decision to make the election a referendum on health doesn’t work. It’s been so long out of power now that it has been reduced to being the party that gives FF a rest from government every generation or so. It needs to get radical… and quckly!
The fresh-faced ones are Fine Gael’s new TDs. In the immediate wake of the election, the party made a couple of vain and empty boasts like it had won the election (nearly); had got into government (nearly) and had bounced right back from the near-oblivion of 2002 (nearly). The one boast that it could really stand over without having to qualify or explain is that it has youth on its side. At least a couple of those sitting on the FG benches on the first day of the 30th Dail look like they had a tube of Clearasil stashed away somewhere on their person and still need to carry ID to get into pubs.
And sitting alongside them – hardly a zimmer frame length away – was the Labour Party parliamentary party. The tragedy that the media was writing up after the election was one relative one of youth and age. The argument went that the time this Dail comes to the end, the form of ID that most Labour Party TDs will carry with them will be the free travel pass. They must be green with envy comparing its failure to get more than three younger TDs elected with the success of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail in terms of renewal. I heard the new super junior minister for children Brendan Smith reeling out the same old lines last week, like he was racing through the first decade of the rosary. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael equals young and vibrant. Labour equals doddery and falling into decrepitude.
It’s an easy exercise to do, to tot up the average age of the parliamentary party and find out that, hey, it’s 55. And what does that tell you? A little bit, sure. Ultimately, not a lot. Fine Gael had the youngest front bench of all the parties in the last Dáil. Performance wise, they had few star performers (Richard Bruton), a bunch of mediocrities and a few who were dire, completely dire. The woeful performers did include TDs who been knocking around for years. But it can also be said that of their younger spokespeople – John Deasy; Olwyn Enright, Denis Naughten, Simon Coveney – none really distinguished themselves as anything amazing.
To be sure, Labour has an age issue. But it’s been over-stated. Sure the party wanted more young blood. And it will be a major surprise if Gilmore doesn’t fast-track Sean Sherlock (and maybe Ciaran Lynch) into a senior role.
But let’s explore another thought for a second. This might seem like a strange proposition but the party is in a far better position than FF and FG to renew itself now and reap the benefits in the next election. If a third of its parliamentary party is retiring in the next election, Labour can spend the next year finding replacements (in addition to the ready-made candidates in the Senate), blooding them in the local elections if necessary, and making them recognisable Dail aspirants long before 2012.
To achieve that, Gilmore as the new leader will need to concentrate on the organisation more than his own profile in the first year. The mistakes made in Carlow-Kilkenny - where the party had no thought-out strategy to find a replacement for Seamus Pattison – cannot be allowed to be repeated. To do that, Gilmore and his team will have to borrow a tactic from Workers Party days – the use of a ruthless centralism to choose the right candidates and strategies locally.
And it’s not a nonsense to suggest that two big parties will have difficulties with renewal even if they have many young TDs.
Fianna Fail’s difficulty is encapsulated by Brendan Smith’s own experience. He’s been a TD for 15 years now and he’s not even at the Cabinet table yet. Bertie Ahern likes his troops to serve long apprenticeships. But when they’re promoted, they tend to stay put … forever. Most of his senior ministers have lots of smarts, granted. The problem is with the second-tier. They’ve also been around for a long time but very few have the necessary calibre or character. To really renew, Brian Cowen (when he eventually becomes leader) will have to be ruthless and skip a generation for some of his key people.
And what about Fine Gael’s lack of renewal? It will have a couple of badly-needed heavy hitters this time around, with the return of Brian Hayes, Charlie Flanagan and Alan Shatter to the Dáil. Its problem is positioning. Its identification of the three election issues didn’t work. Its decision to make the election a referendum on health doesn’t work. It’s been so long out of power now that it has been reduced to being the party that gives FF a rest from government every generation or so. It needs to get radical… and quckly!
Thursday, September 06, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - EAMON GILMORE
It was election by acclamation at the end. Eamon Gilmore always had a big gale behind him. But when others did the sums (and I'll tell you there's none better at Joan Burton than doing that) they realised that they would not even give him a contest. Democratic choice is all very well, but if it's you and if you're going to be chazzled in the contest, then it's better not even to step into the ring.
The blog just about ticked over during the summer as I took the Enda Kenny philosophy on political endeavor to heart (ie stay away from it as much as possible). Anyway, it's now September and we're back in full swing. Eamon Gilmore went through the crowning process. The Senate returns next week. Sure, the debates will be more interesting (but ultimately useless). And of course, most of the attention will be on the Skiberreen Ego (ok Baltimore these days)and Mr Bombastic Eoghan Harris. All of Harris's stuff is self-serving. The duels between Ronan Mullen and Ivana Bacik will be ultimately more interesting.
And of course, there's the Anorak taking the stand at the Planning Tribunal. If it goes badly, he'll not last the course - and expect Brian Cowen to be elevated in short order.
Incidentally, Sunday Indo have had it in for Cowen all summer. It's extraordinary how they initially went on the attack on stamp duty, pulled back during the election campaign (amid rumours of a back-Bertie-at-all-costs deal hammered out at Castle Martin) and - once FF had won - kept writing up Bertie while renewing their ridiculous attack on the anointed one.
* Sorry. Forgot to add in an amusing little bit from Gilmore's biography.
"Eamon's interests outside of politics include cooking. He is an avid sports fan and is a passionate follower of his native Galway in both the hurling and football. His local village team Caltra won the all Ireland club title in 2004. Recently he consoled himself following the disappointing results of the recent election by watching the Galway hurling team. Unfortunatley no matter what Galway do Kilkenny always seem to win the title."
Gilmore is one of six Oireachtas members from Catlra and Ahascragh (the three Kitt siblings; Ronan Mullen and Mary Harney who was also born there). As a fellow Galway man and long-suffering hurling supporter, I can safely vouch that he go no consolation whatsoever in the game.
Friday, August 24, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - RABBITTE RESIGNS
Yesterday morning Pat Rabbitte began ringing around his colleagues in the Labour Party. The news he conveyed shocked them to the core, even those who were closest to him. He was resigning with immediate effect, from that very afternoon.
None of the main players within the party had any inclination that Rabbitte was about to cut the rope and bring his five-year leadership of the party to an end.
It was the same for Brendan Howlin:
It was well known that Rabbitte was crestfallen after the election. Labour had gone in with 20 seats and returned with the same number. In the immediate aftermath, he described it euphemistically as a standstill election but yesterday’s development showed that – personally – it had gone far deeper than that.
As he himself said yesterday: “In the event, Labour won the same number of seats as in 2002 and failed to replace the existing government. As Leader I take responsibility for that outcome.”
But the other net outcome of the general election was that Rabbitte’s leadership was not in doubt. He had defeated Howlin, Gilmore and Roisín Shortall by a whomping majority in 2002. While a small minority of the party had quibbled with electoral strategy, there was no appetite in the party for another leadership contest, notwithstanding the electoral setback, and the question of his leadership was settled.
His colleagues knew that he was disappointed but underestimated its effects. “Sure, he took a hit but I thought that he’d get over it, lick his wounds and continue leading the party,” said a fellow TD yesterday.
While on his annual holiday in the Kerry Gaeltacht, Rabbitte thought long and hard about the election and his own future. His term of office wasn’t up for another year, until the autumn of next year. Yesterday he said it made no sense for him to stay on until then. That would have meant that a new leader had taken over just months before the local and European elections of 2008. He believed that the best time to go was right at the start of the term.
You couldn’t argue with any of that. Sure, if he was going, it was better to go now. But the bigger question was: why go?
Those close to him said that many underestimated the effect of failing to get into government had on him. Yes it was “unsuccessful only by a narrow margin” as he himself said yesterday but that was still failure.
And having put that effort in, he decided in Kerry that he did not have the appetite to go once more into the breech. He is now 58 and given that Fianna Fail has covered all angles with its own little rainbow, it’s widely accepted that this Government will last its full term and that Brian Cowen will seamlessly succeed Ahern in 2008 (if the Tribunal goes badly for Ahern) or in 2009 or 2010 (at the latest).
And what the Labour Party needs, according to several of its strategists, is a person who has passion and energy, and has “fire in the belly”.
We will come back to that, but Rabbitte’s resignation brought to an end the career ambitions of one of the country’s most intelligent, able, and colourful politicians.
The native of Ballindine in Co Mayo first distinguished himself as a student leader in University College Galway in the early 70s before becoming the President of the Union of Students in Ireland. He later became a prominent official with the ITGWU union before entering politics full-time.
One major legacy problem that dogged him was his membership of Sinn Fein the Workers Party and its connections to the ‘Stickies’ of the Official IRA. But paradoxically Rabbitte joined the party after the split, having been previously a member of the Labour Party (he resigned because of his opposition to the 1973 coalition with Fine Gael).
And though the Workers’ Party (later Democratic Left) never really succeeded in becoming much more than a marginal presence, the party was notable for the quality of its parliamentarians – including Rabbitte, Gilmore, Proinsias de Rossa, and Liz McManus (who is now the acting Labour leader).
Indeed, when DL went into the Rainbow Coalition in late 1994, Rabbitte became a ‘super junior’ and one of the highest profile members of government, deservedly praised for his far-seeing drugs strategy.
An acerbic wit and brilliant parliamentarian, he became a darling of the media because of the ease and brilliance with which he rounded his thoughts and his hilarious put-downs. But there was an occasional arrogance and distance about him that some thought off-putting – and a sense that he could not translate his Dáil form to the streets, and could not relate to ordinary Joe Schmoes in the street in the way that Bertie Ahern did.
But Rabbitte’s performance on the hustings in the election campaign surprised everybody, showing far more appetite for the plod and flesh-pressing on the hustings. And despite going one witticism too far comparing Michael McDowell to a ‘menopausal Paris Hilton’ he was the hands-down winner of the TV debate.
But like all the smaller parties, it just didn’t happen for Labour. Some colleagues (particularly Howlin) put it down to the Mullingar Accord and the deal with Fine Gael. But Rabbitte believed it went deeper than electoral strategy.
“Whereas the core values of Labour are timeless and immutable, we must accept that Irish society has changed and we must change.”
Elsewhere he described it as the ‘brand’. Unions no longer wield the same emotional draw. People’s definition of working class, of blue collar, their expectations of politics, of how society should be ordered, has changed radically.
(For Rabbitte's own analysis of the election, follow this link. It is his delivery of the Jim Kemmy Lecture to the Tom Johnson Summer School in Galway)
It’s clear somebody else will have to be the architect of that change. The party can’t really skip a generation like it did in the early 1980s with Dick Spring. It’s too early in their careers for any of its three new TDs. The others, if not of Rabbitte’s generation, are very close to it.
Surprising though the announcement was, Pat Rabbitte was right. If the party wants to renew itself, the time to do is now.
None of the main players within the party had any inclination that Rabbitte was about to cut the rope and bring his five-year leadership of the party to an end.
“It came like a bolt out of the blue,” said Eamon Gilmore the Dun Laoghaire TD. “I am surprised and I am disappointed. I would have liked to see him continue on.”
It was the same for Brendan Howlin:
“It took me completely by surprise when he called me this morning. When I spoke to him earlier this summer when I was offered the position (of Leas Ceann Comhairle) he gave no indication.”
It was well known that Rabbitte was crestfallen after the election. Labour had gone in with 20 seats and returned with the same number. In the immediate aftermath, he described it euphemistically as a standstill election but yesterday’s development showed that – personally – it had gone far deeper than that.
As he himself said yesterday: “In the event, Labour won the same number of seats as in 2002 and failed to replace the existing government. As Leader I take responsibility for that outcome.”
But the other net outcome of the general election was that Rabbitte’s leadership was not in doubt. He had defeated Howlin, Gilmore and Roisín Shortall by a whomping majority in 2002. While a small minority of the party had quibbled with electoral strategy, there was no appetite in the party for another leadership contest, notwithstanding the electoral setback, and the question of his leadership was settled.
His colleagues knew that he was disappointed but underestimated its effects. “Sure, he took a hit but I thought that he’d get over it, lick his wounds and continue leading the party,” said a fellow TD yesterday.
While on his annual holiday in the Kerry Gaeltacht, Rabbitte thought long and hard about the election and his own future. His term of office wasn’t up for another year, until the autumn of next year. Yesterday he said it made no sense for him to stay on until then. That would have meant that a new leader had taken over just months before the local and European elections of 2008. He believed that the best time to go was right at the start of the term.
You couldn’t argue with any of that. Sure, if he was going, it was better to go now. But the bigger question was: why go?
Those close to him said that many underestimated the effect of failing to get into government had on him. Yes it was “unsuccessful only by a narrow margin” as he himself said yesterday but that was still failure.
“He gave the leadership every ounce of his being and energy over five years and he did a great job,” said Gilmore.
And having put that effort in, he decided in Kerry that he did not have the appetite to go once more into the breech. He is now 58 and given that Fianna Fail has covered all angles with its own little rainbow, it’s widely accepted that this Government will last its full term and that Brian Cowen will seamlessly succeed Ahern in 2008 (if the Tribunal goes badly for Ahern) or in 2009 or 2010 (at the latest).
And what the Labour Party needs, according to several of its strategists, is a person who has passion and energy, and has “fire in the belly”.
We will come back to that, but Rabbitte’s resignation brought to an end the career ambitions of one of the country’s most intelligent, able, and colourful politicians.
The native of Ballindine in Co Mayo first distinguished himself as a student leader in University College Galway in the early 70s before becoming the President of the Union of Students in Ireland. He later became a prominent official with the ITGWU union before entering politics full-time.
One major legacy problem that dogged him was his membership of Sinn Fein the Workers Party and its connections to the ‘Stickies’ of the Official IRA. But paradoxically Rabbitte joined the party after the split, having been previously a member of the Labour Party (he resigned because of his opposition to the 1973 coalition with Fine Gael).
And though the Workers’ Party (later Democratic Left) never really succeeded in becoming much more than a marginal presence, the party was notable for the quality of its parliamentarians – including Rabbitte, Gilmore, Proinsias de Rossa, and Liz McManus (who is now the acting Labour leader).
Indeed, when DL went into the Rainbow Coalition in late 1994, Rabbitte became a ‘super junior’ and one of the highest profile members of government, deservedly praised for his far-seeing drugs strategy.
An acerbic wit and brilliant parliamentarian, he became a darling of the media because of the ease and brilliance with which he rounded his thoughts and his hilarious put-downs. But there was an occasional arrogance and distance about him that some thought off-putting – and a sense that he could not translate his Dáil form to the streets, and could not relate to ordinary Joe Schmoes in the street in the way that Bertie Ahern did.
But Rabbitte’s performance on the hustings in the election campaign surprised everybody, showing far more appetite for the plod and flesh-pressing on the hustings. And despite going one witticism too far comparing Michael McDowell to a ‘menopausal Paris Hilton’ he was the hands-down winner of the TV debate.
But like all the smaller parties, it just didn’t happen for Labour. Some colleagues (particularly Howlin) put it down to the Mullingar Accord and the deal with Fine Gael. But Rabbitte believed it went deeper than electoral strategy.
“As regards (strategy), I remain absolutely convinced that it was correct to offer the people a choice of an alternative government,” he said yesterday. “It was not successful but unsuccessful only by a narrow margin… It would be a mistake to restrict the debate to electoral strategy.
“Whereas the core values of Labour are timeless and immutable, we must accept that Irish society has changed and we must change.”
Elsewhere he described it as the ‘brand’. Unions no longer wield the same emotional draw. People’s definition of working class, of blue collar, their expectations of politics, of how society should be ordered, has changed radically.
(For Rabbitte's own analysis of the election, follow this link. It is his delivery of the Jim Kemmy Lecture to the Tom Johnson Summer School in Galway)
It’s clear somebody else will have to be the architect of that change. The party can’t really skip a generation like it did in the early 1980s with Dick Spring. It’s too early in their careers for any of its three new TDs. The others, if not of Rabbitte’s generation, are very close to it.
Surprising though the announcement was, Pat Rabbitte was right. If the party wants to renew itself, the time to do is now.
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