Fianna Fáil vexed, jealous as ‘brilliant candidate’ Lee enters the political fray

THE degree to which Fianna Fáil was both vexed and jealous about the arrival of George Lee into politics was summed up in a couple of scenes from Leinster House this week.

Speaking in a public capacity, Fianna Fáil senator Terry Leyden claimed Lee should have carried “a health warning” while he was economics editor at RTÉ.

“He is a Fine Gael man in a Fine Gael shirt inside his striped shirt,” Mr Leyden told the Seanad. “He has undermined this Government over recent years.”

But the senator’s private view appeared somewhat different when, on the same day, he bumped into Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny at a ceremony.

“He said: ‘God, he’s a brilliant candidate to get; we’d love to have him as well’,” Mr Kenny told reporters to laughter.

There is no doubting that Lee is a massive coup for Fine Gael, and unsurprisingly, he has been made the overwhelming favourite to win the by-election in Dublin South. Equally unsurprising, Lee says he is taking nothing for granted ahead of polling day on June 5. “I was on the TV, I was analysing the economy, and now what I’m looking for is a different job, and I can’t assume that people are just going to give it to me.”

Given his former position, it is also unsurprising that Lee is an exceptionally articulate candidate, saying all the right things. Or almost all the right things.

There’s a momentary slip when he’s talking about the enormous challenge the country now faces. “It is about the future, not about the past. It is pointless at this stage looking back and seeing who drove the car, or how we crashed,” he begins, in what sounds like George Lee the economics editor speaking. But George Lee the Fine Gael candidate has to adopt the party line, because the party very much wants people to remember who drove the car when it crashed.

“It is important about who was driving it,” he corrects himself. “But how it crashed – what were the mechanics of it crashing – it isn’t going to help us move ahead now. We’ve got to move ahead.”

In fairness, though, Lee tries to rise above the traditional tactic of giving the Government a kick just for the sake of it. The people he is meeting on the campaign trail are sick to death of that sort of politics, he says. “They don’t want bickering; they don’t want any of this crap about slagging everybody off,” Lee says. “It just don’t register with them. It rolls off them. The issues are too big…

“They want somebody who they think might be able to add something new… But they’re not nasty. People are desperate for something – some movement, some positivity, some idea.”

(Fianna Fáil candidates who’ve been on the receiving end at the doorsteps might disagree with the notion that people are not nasty. But we digress....)

Lee repeats that he hasn’t been promised a job or a frontbench position by Enda Kenny. He is satisfied he could make a substantial contribution from the backbenches if elected, even though he’s hard-pushed to think of a single backbencher in the current Dáil who has managed this feat.

“Backbench, frontbench or otherwise, I am who I am. I’ll say what I’ll say. I mean to make a contribution,” he says. Does it bother him that his party leader is regarded as being economically illiterate?

“No. In fact, Enda Kenny – I don’t believe Enda Kenny has that lack of economic literacy, but to the extent that people might argue he has, I think, isn’t it great for me? Because it gives me a role,” he quips, before stressing: “I don’t need a guarantee of any job. I’m going to play the role.”

And if polling day proves a disaster and he’s not elected? “I don’t know. But if I don’t get elected, I’m not going back to RTÉ,” he says. “I know that technically people are probably going to say that you’ve a job to go back to. I don’t. I won’t be broadcasting, I won’t be doing economics. If I don’t get elected... I’ll run in the next election, or I’ll do something very similar, but I’m not going to go away.”