IS IT possible that the party ultimately to be decimated arising from the present economic crisis will not be Fianna Fáil but Fine Gael? There is growing evidence to support this ostensibly counter-intuitive proposition.
Nine months ago, in the wake of the general election, it would have taken a brave and perhaps stoned analyst to make such a prediction. The conventional wisdom was that the FF brand had become “toxic” to the point of culture-shock.
On the surface, the facts appeared stark: Fianna Fáil had “destroyed the country”, an offence the electorate appeared to regard in a lethal light.
One reason for not always trusting political analysis is that analysts are by definition compelled to say things in some approximate harmony with current trends. And if the electorate delivers an unprecedented drubbing to a party that has historically been at the centre of things, it is inevitable the commentariat will summarily pronounce sentence in accord with that judgment.
This is disproportionately likely with Fianna Fáil, since, for sundry cultural reasons, many commentators harbour a thinly disguised odium for that party (this being, in many instance, the condition that brought them into political commentary in the first place).
But the people are a funny breed, tending to hold old grudges rather more lightly than they make out, and developing new ones with astonishing alacrity when sentiment or self-interest so dictate.
Events can cause politicians and parties to go from hero-status to zero-tolerance in a manner that can unexpectedly rehabilitate the previously contaminated and damned.
Those who continue to write off Fianna Fáil might recall the last major economic crisis in the late 1970s-early 1980s. That, too, had FF pawmarks all over it, arising from the 1977 election manifesto and the dithering of Charles Haughey after he became taoiseach in 1979. These transgressions were followed hard by the Gubu era, and these factors unleashed a four-year period of Fine Gael-Labour government. And yet, Fianna Fáil, returning to power in 1987 under the same Charles Haughey, succeeded in occupying power for 17 of the next 20 years.
Electorates, like teenagers, fall in and out of love easily, and the fates of governments depend far more on public emotion than objective facts. Moreover, it is astonishing how rapidly a mood can change, even though the supposedly pertinent facts remain relatively unchanged.
In February, everything seemed clear: Enda Kenny and his new-broom Government were mandated to clear the debris of a disastrous period of FF rule. Circumstances suggested an open-ended honeymoon, with FF morally silenced and no significant new pretenders on the horizon.
Nine months on, a different theme asserts itself. As time passes, more and more plausibility accumulates to the idea that the continuing crisis is of a European – rather than an Irish – character. The final ignominious routing of Fianna Fáil involved, of course, other factors, but these too begin to be cast in a different light. The recent two-part RTÉ documentary about the final days of the last government was mostly interesting for the way it ignited a previously undetected residue of sympathy for Brian Cowen.
Judging from comments I’ve picked up going around the place, there appears to be a significant view out there that the programmes went too far in personalising the case against Cowen, and perhaps by extension a view that, now that Fianna Fáil has been punished, there may be a chance of some of its convictions being overturned on appeal.
Last February, Enda Kenny cut a persuasive figure of a reforming leader, who would restore public faith in politics and rescue Ireland from the precipice of Armageddon. Out there in Europe, the sense now is that his Government has turned things around, restoring confidence in Ireland as – in Kenny’s mantra of February – “a place to do business in”.
But back at the ranch, a different mood music builds. The Taoiseach’s showboating in Berlin on Wednesday (largely motivated by terror of another EU referendum) will do little to dispel the growing impression that, rather than serving the people in accordance with its electoral commitments, this Government is fundamentally motivated by ingratiating itself with the big beasts of the EU – simpering unctuously when they pat its head and promising the further enslavement of the Irish population should this be demanded.
It has not escaped public notice either that, apart from embarking on U-turns in relation to many of its pre-election commitments, the new administration already manifests symptoms of cronyism and arrogance for which both Coalition parties had previously excoriated their predecessors in office.
Fianna Fáil always had this uncanny ability to develop alter egos, usually arising from internal dissent and counter-revolutionary movements that grew internally to become new versions of Fianna Fáil. The aforementioned Charles Haughey came to power in 1979 as a result of just such a movement. The performance of Seán Gallagher in the presidential election showed that public hostility towards Fianna Fáil may be softer than presumed, that there exists an unexpected scope for the Soldiers of Destiny to reinvent themselves, purge recent sins and once more inveigle themselves into the affections of the electorate.