We’ve had enough cynicism and arrogance — it’s time to hit back

MY esteemed colleague Terry Prone is usually right. Her analysis and insight often beats me to the punch on a Monday morning and leaves me green with envy.

My usual reaction is "I was just about to write that and now I can't". For once, though, I have to tell Terry that she couldn't be more wrong. On Pat Kenny's radio show on Friday, she said that if Pat Rabbitte's attack on the Government and the Ceann Chomhairle "was intended to benefit Labour, it was a misjudgment because it didn't".

Now, Terry will tell me, of course, that I'm getting all touchy because she is being critical of my political boss. (And I know I can get a bit touchy betimes.) But on this occasion, what has really surprised me is the sense that I've seen a bit of political folk memory being established, and commentators as astute as Terry (and a lot of othe s) have missed it.

Political folk memory is an odd thing. Odd, but powerful. Political folk memory often happens when a single event encapsulates or triggers off an attitude of mind in the public...

Padraig Flynn's attack on Mary Robinson at the end of the 1990 presidential election; the announcement of the X case; the decision of a coalition government in the mid-80s to abolish food subsidies and later accept a 19% pay rise for itself; Michael McDowell climbing lamp-posts in the last election.

I could give a lot of examples of the kind of thing I mean. There are some events so powerful you remember forever where you were when you heard of them the assassination of JFK is the best-known example and there are others that just lodge in the mind. They're smaller, but in their own way just as significant.

If you were on the hustings over the last few days, as I have been, you'd be in no doubt whatever that Pat Rabbitte's attack was one such event. I've just spent four days following him around, and in 20 years' political experience I have never seen such a spontaneous reaction. People abandoning their cars and running over, small crowds forming at the entrance to supermarkets, people going out of their way to stop and talk. And all saying exactly the same thing "good on you"; "about time"; "keep it up."

These are not the sort of elections where TV cameras follow the leaders around every day and there have been times in the past few days when I've been wondering how come there's never a camera around when you need one.

Like outside Croke Park on Sunday, when supporters of Westmeath, Kildare and Wexford all came over and spontaneously pledged support hundreds if not thousands of them. The Dubs, of course, had their own way of expressing it. More than a few came over and offered Pat Rabbitte advice on how to keep his cool! As a political operative, my regret about the row was that it didn't really reach the media until the 6.01 News on Wednesday just as the fieldwork for last week's MRBI poll was concluding. So there was no way of measuring the effect of the row in quantitative terms. But I'd be ready to make a bet that it will have a distinct and measurable effect in the local and European elections. In fact, I believe it will be seen after the event as the turning point in what had been, up to that moment, an issue-free campaign.

Issue-free, that is, except in this sense these elections have been about people's anger. There is a deep and simmering hostility in people against the Government, and what made people sit bolt upright when they saw a visibly angry politician on the television on Wednesday night is the fact that they have been waiting a long time for someone to really lose their temper with this shower. People feel betrayed and let down, in a way that they haven't felt for a long time. And that's the reason Fianna Fáil's figures in the local and European elections will hit a historic low a lot lower than the opinion polls are suggesting.

The range of broken promises is part of it the 2,000 extra gardaí, for instance, or all the broken-down schools that were promised top and immediate priority. Never in the history of politics, it seems, has so much been promised to so many by so few and never before have so many been so casually broken.

It's the casualness that people hate most.

This is not a Government that only just arrived in office, having made its promises in good faith and then discovered there was no money in the coffers. When they were making their promises, this Government knew they couldn't keep them and they never intended to anyway.

And the same sense of casual arrogance has pervaded their second term.

EVERYWHERE you go, voters say the same things about the Government, and especially, it has to be said, Fianna Fáil. (A lot of voters, it seems to me, have stopped thinking about the PDs as a separate party at all.)

Punchestown crops up all the time as a kind of code word for a Government that couldn't give a damn about public opinion.

Electronic voting has become synonymous with crass incompetence.

The savage 16 social welfare cuts is seen as entirely symbolic of a Government that is completely self-indulgent where its own pet projects are concerned, but utterly miserly when it comes to people in need.

Then the most recent episode is of course the discovery that they used the diplomatic bag to send a personal letter from the Taoiseach to civil servants around the world, looking for votes.

Can you imagine the Fianna Fáil of old De Valera, Frank Aiken agreeing that was a proper thing to do? Even the suggestion that a Government party might be seeking to politicise the civil service in such a crass way would have been anathema to them. It's a small thing in one way the number of votes at stake is not going to affect anything but once again the casual arrogance of it is a demonstration of how far their standards have fallen.

The Royston Brady campaign may turn out to be another example. Is it really possible that someone can be elected without anyone ever hearing what he stands for, without him ever having to answer a question or make a commitment to anything at all?

There's a very good Tim Robbins movie called Bob Roberts about a man who is running an entirely meaningless but somehow deeply sinister election campaign while an independent reporter is trying to stop him. The tag line of the movie is, "vote first, ask questions later".

It might work for Royston (though I doubt it). As far as the rest of us are concerned, there is no possibility that Fianna Fáil can persuade us to vote first, ask questions later. They tried that trick before and got away with it.

But the message from the people to Fianna Fáil in this week's elections will be a different movie tag line.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.