Fine Gael's dangerous flirtation with populist rhetoric

INSIDE POLITICS:Abandoning its pro-EU stance at the drop of a hat to try to embarrass the Government for a day reflects badly on FG

FINE GAEL has done itself no favours by attempting to turn a European Commission proposal on budget co-ordination across the EU into a scare about the erosion of Irish sovereignty. In their scramble to score points against the Government, Enda Kenny and Richard Bruton have only done damage to their own credibility as potential leaders of an alternative government.

One of the guiding principles of Fine Gael for the past 40 years has been an unwavering commitment to the European project. That is what makes such an ill-judged reaction from the party leadership to a modest proposal from the commission to protect the euro zone all the more astonishing.

Kenny and Bruton must have squirmed in their padded Dáil seats on Thursday morning when the Sinn Féin leader in the House, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, said he wanted to echo their concerns and politely told them he had forecast just such a development when he campaigned for a No vote in the two referendums on the Lisbon Treaty.

Outside the Dáil another inveterate anti-EU campaigner, Socialist Party MEP Joe Higgins, bluntly said that either Enda Kenny did not know what he was talking about during the Lisbon Treaty referendum campaigns, when he asked the Irish people to vote Yes, or he was deceiving them now. Higgins pointed out that the treaty had strengthened the hand of the commission to co-ordinate a common approach by finance ministers across the EU.

Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan also made the point that greater co-ordination of economic policies was envisaged in the Lisbon Treaty. “All 16 euro zone members are deeply intertwined through the common currency. As we have seen over the past few weeks, a speculative attack on one member state affects us all. For that reason, we have a shared interest in enhanced economic co-ordination throughout the zone,” he said.

Any move at EU level that might put a brake on the kind of Fianna Fáil profligacy that led to a deep economic crisis in Ireland, not once but twice in the past 40 years, should surely be welcomed by Fine Gael and other Dáil parties.

For anyone who genuinely supports the EU, the commission proposal represents a logical pooling of sovereignty to try and prevent future speculative attacks on the euro. For those who have campaigned against EU treaties it represents a further diminution of sovereignty, but so has every step along the road to closer co-operation, beginning with our accession in 1973.

The fact that Fine Gael has put itself on the same side of the argument as the anti-EU forces that campaigned for a No vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendums raises questions about whether the party has any idea of what it stands for or where it is going. What is really worrying is that the latest gaffe appears to be part of a pattern.

The remarkable thing about the party’s performance in the 30th Dáil is that it began courageously spelling out economic and political realities at a time when that approach was not particularly popular and when the Government was still in denial about the problems facing the country.

Leo Varadkar identified the need for a cull of quangos long before Colm McCarthy was brought on the scene, while Kenny and Bruton raised the ire of public servants by calling for control of the public pay bill before the Government realised it was a problem. The party also supported the introduction of the bank guarantee as the only viable option in the circumstances of September 2008.

However, Fine Gael has also moved steadily towards a more populist and unsustainable stance on a range of issues from the public finances to the banking crisis. It is no accident that a number of former Fine Gael luminaries such as Garret FitzGerald and Alan Dukes have distanced themselves from the party’s approach. There is a danger that some of its core supporters will soon despair.

While some degree of populism in response to austerity measures was only to be expected, particularly since Fianna Fáil was largely responsible for the creation of the mess in the first place, it has got to a dangerous stage if Fine Gael is capable of abandoning its pro-EU stance at the drop of a hat to try to embarrass the Government for a day.

There is a suspicion that the party is relying on focus groups to assess the public mood and simply churning out views designed to capture it. While that is precisely what Fianna Fáil did during the Ahern years, it is a dangerous game. Our current difficulties stem in large part from the abdication of leadership that occurred over a decade as government tried to give the public want it wanted without concern for the cost.

That failure of leadership had put Fine Gael in a strong position to become the biggest party in the Dáil for the first time in its history, but its behaviour over the past week indicates that it is quite capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The only card left in Fianna Fáil’s hands at this stage is that, whatever its own past sins, the Opposition would be incapable of dealing with the crisis. Fine Gael and Labour as well have done a good job in recent months of giving credence to this claim.

Brian Cowen squandered an opportunity to ram the point home in his lengthy address at DCU on Thursday night. Instead of focusing solely on what his Government is doing to rescue the economy, he persisted in denying responsibility for his role in its downfall. That approach will only antagonise voters who are simply not prepared to forgive him and his colleagues for blithely leading the country to the edge of the cliff.

It looks as if voters at the next election will face the unenviable choice of supporting the party that shares a large amount of responsibility for the crash, but seems to have a coherent plan to deal with it, and parties who are innocent of responsibility but either don’t know or won’t say what has to be done.