The last lap: inside the campaigns

Labour handlers look spooked. Fine Gael tails are up. And Fianna Fáil is going local, local, local. With six sleeps left till polling day, the party strategists aren’t taking anything for granted

SO THIS is it. “The high pitch of the campaign. The crucial weekend,” in the words of Labour’s press director, Tony Heffernan. Nervous? Nah. Labour? Nervous? “Not at all,” says a senior strategist, eyes down. “Fine Gael are probably more nervous. Suddenly the Holy Grail of an overall majority is within reach and it’s all there to be lost.” Clever.

It’s called “doing a McDowell”. Remember the last-gasp PD posters? “One party government? No thanks.” Now Labour uses scary words like “uncontrolled” and “monopoly of power”.

A Fine Gaeler says happily – they say everything happily these days – that “Leo [Varadker] has stopped being a pup”. Indeed, he sat through his party’s entire manifesto launch this week looking pale and thoughtful, never opening his mouth.

Yeah, but he’s the Margaret Thatcher of Irish politics, says Labour. On the canvass, they talk about him “wielding a cleaver”. They complain bitterly about Fine Gael sneaking around doorsteps spinning Labour as the High Tax Party. Well, Fine Gael is the Stealth Tax Party and THEY started this tit-for-tat stuff with their horrible lies, so yah-boo.

Sinn Féin talks crowd-pleasing stuff about burning the bondholders. Power without responsibility, sighs an acid-tongued Fianna Fáiler; it’s always been the prerogative of the harlot.

And Fianna Fáil? “The brand is toxic, it’s almost beyond help,” says a FF veteran, comparing the degree of “toxicity” to the Perrier water disaster.

Poignant stuff. But wait. Maybe that’s a strategy too. This is the juggernaut that turned on a sixpence 10 days before the 2007 election, catching a lot of us on the hop. To some opposition old-timers, Fianna Fáil has a whiff of the undead about it. A Labourite mournfully recalls the cautionary Conor Cruise O’Brien quotation about Charlie Haughey: “If I saw Mr Haughey buried at midnight at a crossroads with a stake through his heart, politically speaking, I should continue to wear a clove of garlic around my neck, just in case.”

OUT ON THE CAMPAIGNtrail, it's a badge of honour now for thrusting, new candidates to say it's all about "national issues". This week, on the same day a new poll claims that three out of four voters want an end to parish pump politics (up 50 per cent on the last election), yet another Dublin West constituent is complaining bitterly and at length to Pat Rabbitte about the state of their windows.

There’s the senior citizen, living in good, sheltered housing who leans on the door jamb, slowly looks the candidate up and down and pronounces: “Youze are all the same. Every wan o’ yiz. A bunch o’ gangsters.”

A leisurely gent, passionate about the sound of his own voice, demands – against all advice – yet another, immediate public meeting about a highly divisive local issue.

But at many houses, a worried face appears, talking about a future that seems barely imaginable. A son with cystic fibrosis; another about to emigrate. Most poignantly, a young father of five, a pleasant, thoughtful man, exhausted after a long, lonely shift, talks about the threat to his industry pay agreement and the effect of the universal social charge. “I’m not sure I can do this anymore,” he says wearily, comparing his annual wage to departing ministers’ pensions. “I wouldn’t earn in five years what they’re getting in one.”

Again and again, it comes back to fairness. This is the welcome for an opposition politician.

Now imagine a Fianna Fáil candidate taking the same route. Imagine the doors that will not open, the cutting remarks and profanities when they do, the naked appeal on the candidate’s winsome face. “Remember me? I’m Tom. Your friend/fixer/confidante/counsellor? The one that got the street lights/emergency passport/the drain fixed/ the trees cut back for you . . . ?” Tom may talk up a storm, but the two words that will never pass his lips if he can help it, are “Fianna” and “Fáil”.

Never mind the guff about national issues; this is how Fianna Fáil plans to save itself. Going bullishly against the tide, the tactic is play up the local, don’t mention the brand, ignore the national; intensify in the final week. “We figured out at an early stage that there’s not a lot to be done around the Fianna Fáil brand. It’s almost gone beyond help,” says a strategist, not known for surrender.

“The numbers are terrible and not getting any better. The best we can aspire to is for Micheál Martin to have a decent cohort behind him when we go into Opposition.” So the “only” way is to build the campaign around the candidates with roots in the constituencies or around interesting or attractive young candidates.

“The next week is about intensifying the local focus. Trying to persuade our own people not to leave us, really. In places with Sinn Féin competition, we have that card. If people – the kind we’ll call the lost tribe of Fianna Fáil – are going in to vote and it’s a choice between Mary Fitzpatrick or Mary Lou McDonald, will they vote for Mary Lou?” He’s betting they won’t.

And Micheál Martin has made a difference, he says. But not to the polls? “That’s true and it’s hard to know why it’s stagnant. He’s getting around. He’s apologised for the 14 years. He has a personality, a presence.”

He trenchantly denies that Martin is being confined to safe havens and positioned for quick getaways. “There’s no such thing as a safe haven. And he’s certainly not hiding. He’s going where he’s needed. And people actually like him, women in particular.” The focus groups say so.

Where he has made a difference they say, is to the organisation. “The candidates are still mustering decent-sized canvassing teams, surprisingly, even if it’s only to get eaten . . . So it could come down to individual candidates in the constituencies and how well they represented their local communities, with Martin giving a halo effect to that effort.”

Back at campaign HQ, it’s a long, long way from Mara’s “Showtime!”, but they’re still putting on a decent show. Lovely blue background, picking up the lovely blue eyes of Micheál and Brian; well-managed, well-controlled press conferences.

But underneath? Journalists who attended Fianna Fáil’s health policy launch had to ask for a document. When it was produced, it amounted to a hastily stapled few A4 pages, listing FF’s achievements.

THE CONTRAST BETWEENthat and Fine Gael's manifesto launch in the crowded function room of the Royal College of Physicians this week is almost surreal. Six square-jawed males on the platform. Suddenly, it's the Macho Party. The testosterone pumping from James Reilly alone could fuel a war. The jarring absence of a female face is a rare slip-up in a pretty exemplary campaign, particularly since Enda can't mention often enough his visit to the powerful German Chancellor – who happens to bear a suspiciously female name.

So Enda, is this how it’s going to be? “The reason the people are at this particular table is that they are the spokespeople in respect of the five points of the plan. Catherine Byrne is down there, Deirdre Clune didn’t get here on time although she’s on the way . . . Frances Fitzgerald’s here as well” Oh. Okay so.

But the confidence radiating from the party is mighty. In Enda, it takes the form of a calmness and maturity, a sense that he is finally at peace with who and what he is, including his limitations. When someone says “so far so good”, a party handler yelps “touch wood” and jokes about strapping an entire plank of wood to his arm for such emergencies.

But Kenny doesn’t look like a bag of nerves at risk of blurting out a game-changing gaffe. His handlers – previously lurking, nervy, tense presences – have visibly relaxed. Opponents claim that he alone of all the leaders withdrew at a late stage from the ritual grilling about the party manifesto with Seán O’Rourke on the News at One; Michael Noonan went instead. The suspicion is that this sort of perception no longer troubles Kenny. Strategists stress repeatedly and unashamedly that this government is about the plan and the team. No-one claims it’s about Enda Kenny.

Eighteen months ago, when this writer asked Kenny what he would say to people harbouring doubts about his leadership ability, he replied: “I say ‘Go to hell!’. I’m going to lead the best government ever.” It seemed unlikely at the time. But his canny wife, Fionnuala, merely saw a problem with the optics. “John Bruton’s ratings were disastrous before he became Taoiseach, but with the job came authority.”

So are we superimposing the aura of Taoiseach on him, therefore gifting greater authority to his presence? A senior FG strategist says we probably are: “But John Bruton was seen as awful, too, before he became Taoiseach. The image of a big, rough Meath farmer was put on top of what we actually knew to be a quite sophisticated, even intellectual politician. Because we’re the favourites, the aura of Taoiseach-in-waiting is settling on Enda. You can see it – it’s the different way of asking him questions, you don’t get the snide questions anymore, the obvious attempts to trip him up are all gone. They’re listening for answers now as opposed to trying to catch him out.”

It’s an astonishing turnaround for the target of an attempted heave only eight months ago. “Our opponents went into this election with one strong card,” says the same strategist, “that the public had no faith in Enda Kenny as Taoiseach. We’ve demonstrated his ability as leader of a first-class team. And [his team] are all extremely loyal to him now.”

Perhaps. Some would argue that certain senior figures have been rudely isolated since the heave but it’s in no-one’s interest to highlight that now.

The “big thing” that could happen now is complacency, “the danger of getting ahead of ourselves”, says a handler. Even behind closed doors, no-one dares to say “when [we are in government]”; it’s always “if”.

That is the cardinal rule for this final week. A long-time strategist says it’s not just about perception. “Polling always tended to underestimate the performance of this party. That’s not what we’re saying now. It could be that we’re getting what Fianna Fáil did then – the over-estimate. Or Labour – which rarely produces what the polls promise them.”

BUT IN TRUTH, they don't really believe that. Labour is running scared. Sinn Féin is not perceived as a threat (for now). Fianna Fáil is on the floor. FG tails are up. It's evident not just at the press conferences and on the walkabouts (where Kenny is well able to adapt his spiel from a back-of-the-lorry bawl to a more sophisticated, town hall-style, elucidation of the five-point-plan), but in the backrooms of the party's gracious, Georgian headquarters in Mount Street.

In the old, burgundy-painted meeting room, a roster of more than 30 young volunteers, paid in pizza and cans of Coke, sit hunched over laptops, reaching out to a younger cohort through social media. Three of the volunteers, chosen at random, turn out to be 22-year-old UCD law students. The oldest is 43-year-old Jim Walsh, an unemployed software developer, who was propelled by the last Budget into doing something “active . . . and it’s been great to have a reason to get up in the morning”.

Features of the system – designed by an American software company called Election Mall – include an e-canvasser option, “a virtual leaflet drop” in the words of manager, Emma Blain, which they hope will become “a major tool” in this final week. It also includes brand new Facebook accounts for traditional old hands like Michael Ring. He has 150 “friends” already.

Over in the charmingly named Latin Hall, a modern office building in Golden Lane housing Labour’s election headquarters, the Gilmore posters are regularly refreshed on the street below, amid the appropriately gritty social realism of local authority flats. The fourth-floor complex boasts a dedicated, very professional press conference room, complete with a large mural of undulating countryside under fluffy clouds in a blue sky and a carpeted dais with plexiglass lecterns under diffused spotlights.

This weekend, the party is exactly where the long-term strategy intended it to be, says a strategist. For the first time, apart from 1992, the party is relevant in the last 10 days of a general election. And how.

Yet they’ve slipped in the polls, the strategist concedes, and there is “no simple answer for that”.

“Fine Gael has a formidable machine . . . People who have deserted Fianna Fáil have gone – for the moment – to Fine Gael. But that 38 per cent is a double-edged sword. This country hasn’t elected a single-party government since 1977 . . . And if people want a fair and balanced government, Labour has to be a part of that.” Prepare to hear that phrase quite a bit over the next week.

The general sense is that Labour is “windy”, according to one observer and rather shocked at the speed of its slippage. “None of us predicted the implosion of Fianna Fáil support,” said Ruairí Quinn on Thursday. “Our numbers are still up. They basically haven’t changed. But the [gains] have gone to Fine Gael.”

Against the odds, Fine Gael has that majority within its grasp. Even if it doesn’t, the Labour-Party nightmare is that the senior partner will steam into government on a triumphal roll, only half-needing a partner; not calamitous but mediocre.

Labour handlers look spooked. At the RTÉ debate on Tuesday night, the spinners were circling the media at half-time, nervous and jittery, almost seeking reassurance about how Gilmore was doing. “What they seem to have done is stripped away Mr Angry, and left him neutered, almost without a persona,” says one observer.

Perhaps, say others, the original strategy of positioning Gilmore as the anti-Enda – based on Gilmore’s trenchant Dáil performances and the question marks over Kenny’s leadership – has backfired and left them with little room for manoeuvre.

A handler claims they always knew that that persona wouldn’t easily translate to the studio: “It’s a different dynamic to the theatre of the Dáil, we knew that . . . And people at home have no desire to see politicians shouting and roaring on their televisions. But I always thought the Mr Angry label wasn’t accurate anyway. Actually he’s the opposite – mild-mannered, humorous.” And so he is.

But Labour has a genuine dilemma. Continue to hammer away through attack ads and press conferences at Fine Gael and the “lies” about Labour being the high-tax party, and it begins to look like a desperate party on the run; more crucially, it could begin to look like a party unwilling or unable to maintain a stable coalition government. On the other hand, it can’t ignore the attacks. Meanwhile, on its left flank, there is a delicate course to be steered with the unions; a party in need of the floating middle classes isn’t going to get there with Jack O’Connor’s Siptu endorsement resonating in the air. But they take comfort from other aspects of the polls which consistently suggest that the voters’ preference is for an FG-Labour coalition.

More attack ads are on the way. Gilmore still has the remaining leaders’ debate on Tuesday. The party’s heavy guns will be wheeled out around the country in greater numbers. A lot rests on the next few days.

Will there be one Portillo moment (where a big beast falls, as the Tories’ Michael Portillo fell in 1997)? Probably, sighs the veteran Fianna Fáiler. His betting is on Mary Coughlan.