Miriam Lord’s Week: Showtime as parties nurture narratives

With a general election just around the corner, best feet were belting forward at all the think-ins. The main parties will be pleased to have survived them without any major mishaps, having made good use of the opportunity to loudly proclaim their match fitness and readiness to serve. Observers at the various gatherings noted a particular pep in the Coalition's step, with Fine Gael exuding quiet optimism and Labour regaining some lost confidence.

Few of them could have envisaged such a scenario a couple of years ago, although their leaders and strategists will say events are merely going according to carefully laid plans.

As the economy continues to blossom, senior politicians who counselled panicking newcomers to hold their nerve and await the recovery are feeling rather smug now. The next step is to frighten the electorate into staying with them, a process which has already begun. The message is that the current Government is best placed to “manage the challenge of the upturn” because they are the ones who brought it about. The alternative is “chaos”.

But our outwardly confident Coalition is haunted by the Curse of the Challenge of the Upturn. They've fought elections before on the back of a resurgent economy, only to be kicked back to Opposition when the going gets good. Will it happen again? Enda Kenny desperately wants to be the first leader of Fine Gael to win two consecutive terms in office. You can see it in him. He entered full campaign mode on Thursday night with his "Goodbye showtime, hello stability" speech to Ibec – not the snappiest of slogans, but we know what tack he's taking on the journey to polling day.

Bertie Ahern took a similar and successful route in 2007 with "Now, the next steps" only to deliver a series of wretched stumbles. But the economy was already faltering back then. Today, Enda Kenny sounds very bullish about his "next phase". He's still wedded to the power of five though, despite the battering his much vaunted "five point plan" took after the last election. In this version, he's promising voters a "five year economic plan" which will "secure the recovery" and keep him high-fiving schoolchildren into the foreseeable future.

So it was all about nurturing the recovery at the closing press conference following a determinedly uneventful think-in. With Michael Noonan and his gnomic utterances adding ballast at the top table, the Taoiseach – apart from an unexpected and provocative declaration on the abortion question – sailed through the questions. We soon found out why the general mood was so mellow. Just before they left the platform, Kenny leaned over to Noonan and showed him something on his iPhone. The two men studied it, smiling broadly. Ministers Frances Fitzgerald, Charlie Flanagan and Simon Coveney also looked quite pleased with themselves. The Taoiseach had just been sent the figures for last Sunday's opinion poll in the Sunday Business Post. And they were heading in the right direction for both Coalition parties. That's what had them all so happy.

Missing protesters

Where were all the protesters over the last fortnight? If it hadn’t been for valiant wasps at the photocalls, the politicians would have gone entirely untroubled. Fine Gael met for two days in Adare in Limerick. You wouldn’t have known they were there. Police presence around the Dunraven Arms Hotel was very discrete, with the public order boys in their Garda boiler suits cooling their heels in vans parked out of sight behind the building.

Sinn Féin were similarly untroubled by protesters at their hotel on the Dublin to Belfast road, while not one disgruntled general election candidate bothered to disrupt the pre-season calm at Fianna Fáil’s event in Sutton.

Labour went down to the woods in Wicklow for their two day “away day” and managed to attract about four local protesters at the gates of the Glen View Hotel. Farming issues were the main concern, but they didn’t hang around for very long. Apart from the dreaded “workshops,” nothing much happens between meals at the think-ins.

The social element of these occasions is important, with party colleagues from around the country meeting up again before the political season gets into gear.

Sinn Féin impressed the media at their gathering in the City North Hotel on the outskirts of Dublin. The party is not known for extending either hospitality or workspace to journalists at their events. But this year, the hacks were pleasantly surprised to find both. Dinner was very nice, we hear, with a decent selection of dishes. The curry went down very well. It was beef or hake in Adare; beef or salmon in Sutton; and lamb, chicken or hake in Wicklow. Would there be an election on the horizon, be any chance?

The best clarification of the think-in season was given by Michael Noonan when he recalled that famous March 2011 telephone conversation with Jean Claude Trichet about burning the bondholders. He had earlier told the banking inquiry that the then ECB boss warned him not to pursue the option of imposing losses on senior bondholders as there would be serious consequences for Ireland. "Then he used the metaphor of a bomb going off in Dublin" the Minister for Finance told journalists in Adare. Then he paused, before adding helpfully, "He obviously meant an economic bomb."

Carving up Mayo

Michael Ring has started early. The poor crathur has been badly hit by the redrawing of the constituencies, with Mayo down from five seats to four.

"Ballinrobe, Cong, Shrule, Kilmaine and Glencorrib are all gone and that's big FG country. I've lost over 3½ thousand votes" wails the man who vacuums up votes so effectively he could offer consultancy services to Dyson. We noticed him in deep conversion with his boss and constituency colleague, Enda Kenny, during one of the many lulls in the think-in. Anything to do with carving up the redrawn turf between the three sitting TDs? (Michelle Mulherrin completes the trio.)

Ringo is saying nothing, but the word from Mayo is that the United Nations is only in the ha’penny place compared to the ongoing negotiations. The Taoiseach has his man on the ground, Ger Deering, conducting his side of the talks. Canvassing rights should be divvied up by October 19th, when the Mayo convention is due to take place in the McWilliam Park Hotel in Claremorris, which is one of the contested areas, along with Charlestown and Ballyhaunis. That convention will be the last Fine Gael final one. If the Taoiseach were minded to call an election for November (though he strongly insists it will be next year), October 19th in Claremorris might just be the night for him to do it.

Dogfights over Croker

Meanwhile, in Dublin, the election race has taken something of a Churchillian direction. They will fight it on the beaches, they will fight it on the street, they will fight it on the doorsteps and now . . . they are fighting it in the air. Move over Battle of Britain, the Battle of Ballybough will take to the skies tomorrow in time for the All-Ireland final between Dublin and Kerry. Senator Mary White, Fianna Fáil's candidate in Dublin South, hired an aircraft to fly an advertising banner over Croke Park during the Dublin-Mayo semi-final.

“Cut the Inheritance Tax – Mary White” was the message. “I got great feedback from people, many of whom didn’t know that it’s a terrible stealth tax. They are very concerned – I had a standing room only meeting about it in Mount Merrion Community Centre last month” she says. “We’re putting together a petition which I will formally present to Michael Noonan before the budget.” She’s sending up her inheritance tax banner again. At half-time, she hopes.

But Mary has company this time; Dublin North-Central’s Finian McGrath, who peppered lampposts with cardboard McGrath Dublin jerseys for the semi-final. “I discussed it with my election team – we thought it would be very expensive, but it’s not”, he told us yesterday. “We nearly killed ourselves putting up and taking down the jersey posters in the early hours of the morning so we’ve decided to risk the plane for the final.”

Finian’s banner will fly over Croker ahead of the game – when the sky is the limit and Dubs supporters are in fine form. “I’m hoping it’ll zoom over the Northside and fly particularly low over Clontarf and Marino.”

We understand the company involved has sent literature to politicians advertising its services. If any more take up the offer, there’ll be one hell of a dogfight above Dublin tomorrow. But Kerry’s Michael Healy-Rae thinks the whole thing is pie in the sky. He won’t be chartering any planes, trains or automobiles on the big day. “The people that will be inside Croke Park won’t be looking up at any airplanes. They’ll be looking down on the field and the legs of the Kerry players as they win Sam for the Kingdom”, declares Michael with utmost confidence. “Anyway, there is no place for politics in Croke Park. The day they start talking politics inside of the gates will be the finish of us all.”