Get over your liberal prejudice or you’ll never understand Ireland

THERE is a new Labour Party candidate running in my local elections area and I have received two pieces of campaign literature from her.

When I received the first leaflet, sometime before Christmas, I was struck by how down-to-earth she looked. Her hair was scraggy and tossed and she was dressed in a casual jacket. It was refreshing in this age of political image-handling to see somebody who wasn't afraid to be themselves in their campaign photograph. The overall impression was of a tough, hardworking, but probably effective community activist. I was well disposed to giving her at least a high preference.

Then a few weeks ago, in the lead-in to the election itself, I got a second leaflet from her through my letterbox. I was stunned. The transformation was phenomenal. She has had a dramatic makeover. Her hairstyle and hair colour were completely different. She wore what looked like a fashionable business suit. Her whole look had been transformed and the transformation seemed designed to achieve one objective she now looked more middle-class. It was the later, overhauled photograph which was used on her election poster and I suspect it will be the one which appears on the ballot paper tomorrow.

What is it about our politics that made the Labour Party, at least in this largely middle-class electoral area, feel it necessary to make over its candidate in order to make her more appealing to the electorate? It is just one small symptom of the latent urban snobbery which sometimes raises its head in our politics. The recent spate of media attacks on Royston Brady is another.

Royston is certainly a candidate who rouses strong passions. Personalised attacks from political opponents go with the territory of electoral contests and much of the criticism has even been fair comment. However, there is also a large element of class bias in much of the media comment on Royston and his campaign. Putting it more bluntly a lot of people are just being snobs about Royston Brady.

It is ironic that it is those who claim to be liberal and champions of diversity who are most uncomfortable with the notion that the electorate, in their democratic wisdom, might actually elect this inner-city Dublin kid to the European Parliament. One financial journalist let the liberal mask slip a few days ago on Sam Smyth's Sunday Supplement radio show on Today FM. She disputed the accuracy of the polls which are giving Royston such a high rating.

"I haven't met anyone who is voting for him," she said.

But of course she wouldn't, would she? Most journalists live, work and socialise safely among their middle-class college graduate peers. They wouldn't have much exposure to Royston-voting circles. If they happen to meet or mingle with any Fianna Fáil voters, they are more likely to be among those attracted to Eoin Ryan's pedigree.

Of course Royston is not the first politician, and certainly not the first Fianna Fáil politician, to fall foul of urban liberal snobbishness. In fact, the omens are good for his political future he shares this distinction with at least two former Fianna Fáil taoisigh.

Bertie Ahern has had to put up with this snobbery for much of his political career. Although they pretend that it is substance which matters to them, Bertie Ahern's lack of style in his earlier years made him the butt of their dinner party jokes and of their opinion-writing. They dubbed him anorak man, sneered at his accent and questioned whether he had sufficient gravitas for senior office. Despite them, he managed to rise to the country's highest political office and to pull off some considerable political achievements. It shows how wrong they were that he is now on the shortlist for the presidency of the European Commission.

Albert Reynolds, too, suffered much disparaging from the same quarters. They questioned his qualifications for the job of running the country because he had made his initial fortune in dancehalls. They sniggered as they flung the country and western tag at him. They enjoyed quoting out of context his reference to being a "one-page" man. They showed snobbish disdain every time he made a verbal error and blew each utterance out of proportion. Yet Reynolds managed to pull off a number of truly historic political achievements, particularly in Northern Ireland.

SOME of the media resentment directed at Royston Brady arises because he has used the media very well but on his terms. He served their purpose when he was being controversial and outspoken and they served his. For the first three-quarters of his mayoral term he was lavished with soft-focus interviews on commercial radio stations and several pages of photo spreads in VIP and newspaper magazines. For a period late last year all newspapers seemed to be ringing the Lord Mayor for his comments on something or other and he wasn't shy about giving a view.

Although he appears to have turned down all requests for studio interviews in recent weeks it is not true to say that he hasn't subjected himself to rigorous interviews or set out his beliefs. Earlier this year I read extensive print media interviews with him, in publications as diverse as the Irish Catholic and Hot Press magazine.

Although the latter interview was particularly controversial in places, both interviews were more revealing than most of those given nowadays by senior politicians there was none of the suffocating careful-speak.

These interviews told the story of an inner-city kid from a hard-working family who managed to get a break by making a career for himself in hotel management. This provided him with the opportunity to travel and to experience life in New York. The interviews also told a tale of a troubled, unsure youth. In these he also set out how, and to some extent why, he went full-time into politics. Like most politicians it included a love for the political game, some sense of wanting to improve things for others, and of course an element of personal vanity.

In those interviews and in other coverage, Royston Brady managed to communicate many qualifications relevant to being a strong voice for his native city in Europe. He showed an outspokenness and a rounded human experience in the real world. He also showed some political inexperience but then, the European Parliament need not only be a place for those at the end of their political careers.

This weekend, Dublin is likely to elect a combination of experience and youth to the European Parliament. One of the newcomers may be Labour's Ivana Bacik, a distinguished Professor of Criminal Law in Trinity College.

The other newcomer may be Royston Brady. Our shrewd electorate have shown that academic qualifications are neither an absolute necessity nor an absolute bar to being their representative in Europe. The voters' choice may not meet with the approval of the liberal elites. But that's democracy for you.