FG needs ideas as well as image

DAVID CAMERON, the Conservative leader, was interviewed by John Humphrys on BBC Radio 4’s Today a few days ago.

Like a calf painfully learning for the first time what an electric fence is there for, the baby-faced Cameron got a fair old probing from the curmudgeonly Humphrys, BBC’s equivalent to Cathal Mac Coille.

The interview was almost banal. It barely touched on the big issues, hardly at all. There was a method behind that to which we will return.

Most of it was devoted to a row over David Cameron’s habit of, as he put it himself, ‘bicycling’ into work (trust an old Etonian to come out with such an archaic verb).

Since he shot out of nowhere to take over from a string of serial losers, Cameron has tried to project an image of a guy who is almost hip, who is in touch in a right-on kind of way with the zeitgeist.

He’s only 39. Well, fancy that! He cares about the environment and world poverty.

Hasn’t he got Bob Geldof and the trendy young environmentalist Zac Goldsmith on board?

And didn’t he cross the polar plains of the North with a team of huskies to learn more about global warning? Doesn’t he drive one of those fancy Lexus jeeps that looks like a gas guzzler but isn’t? And, to cap it all, doesn’t he ‘bicycle’ to work unlike the pampered Blair royalty?

A while later, it emerged that he doesn’t quite bicycle to work after all. A bit of sleuthing revealed that it happens only once a week.

And even then, Cameron’s fancy Lexus follows him along the route, carrying his shoes and papers. It kind of defeats the purpose doesn’t it?

The interview got more bizarre. Humphrys had searched on the internet and told Cameron of a site that could flog him massive pannier bags (to carry his shoes and papers).

He grumbled about the Lexus, telling Cameron his environmental credentials would be far better if he went around in a less snazzy hybrid, like the Toyota Prius.

The snide point of Humphrys was that Cameron was all image and front. Where were the big ideas or radical policies, that might really set him apart from Tony Blair.

Over here, that’s the kind of argument that you hear Fianna Fáil make about Fine Gael and Labour all the time.

Great for the carping. Great for the fancy poster campaigns. Not so great when it comes to telling us how they propose to tackle it.

Fine Gael’s Árd Fheis in Dublin will give some proof to that particular pudding. The party’s personalised billboard campaign of the past couple of weeks has identified the three main issues that will form the core of FG’s election campaign — health; justice and Government waste (as evidenced by the PPARS and e-voting embarrassments).

Both main opposition parties will downplay the economy as an election issue. That, in reality, has been the Government’s bombproof policy for almost a decade. Low taxes and a boom has allowed record spending. Loadsamoney has also insulated ministers against their own mediocrity and blandness.

Fine Gael’s strategy is an unusual one. It has eschewed micro politics. Other opposition parties have followed the old GAA adage of ‘take your points and the goals will come’. They bombard our inboxes with dozens of statements each day. But FG has plonked itself in the small parallelogram, in search of green flag opportunities. The problem is they don’t come along too often.

The party inflicted real damage with its PPARS campaign but no really juicy example of waste has come its way since Christmas (though the party has been trying to stoke up the e-voting controversy again this weekend). Thus, we get the set-plays of profile-raising advertising campaigns — and we can expect more in the coming weeks and months.

But politicians (and the media) sometimes forget that politics is about ideas and the ordering of society, not personalities or image. Yes, perception will get you so far. Over the water, Cameron can point to his local election triumph yesterday. Over here, Kenny can brag about FG’s success in local, European and by-elections.

Quite. But they’re not general elections. And people are far more sanguine, far less emotional, when deciding who’s best to run the country.

The reality is that FG needs to almost double its seats next year. And for that, it will need big ideas of its own. Otherwise, it’s going to find itself like the Tories, unable to bicycle away from the peloton.

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