FF riding on tide of arrogance and hubris

FOR 18 months, when a series of opinion polls showed the Government parties doing badly, the reaction from Fianna Fáil ministers was predictable.

They either ignored the results or recycled Charles J Haughey’s line that the only opinion poll that really matters is the election.

But then came the autumn and BertieGate. And a funny thing happened. The veil lifted. The tide rose. The curtains were opened. Fianna Fáil, so long slumming it in the low 30s, suddenly shot up to 39% support in polls in the Irish Examiner, Irish Times, Sunday Business Post and the Sunday Tribune.

It couldn’t be attributed solely to a national outbreak of all feeling sorry for Bertie. The Examiner poll, for example, predated the revelations about his loan.

Was this a seasonal blip largely fuelled by the BertieGate controversy? Or was it, as Fianna Fáil ministers were saying this weekend at its one day Árd Fheis in City West, a turning of the tide. One minister told me that we are now reaching a critical stage in the election cycle, when the electorate are coming around to the ‘make your mind up’ time.

“There was definitely a sympathy factor for Bertie,” said the minister. “But it showed up the weakness of the opposition as far as we are concerned. People are beginning to ask themselves about what a government led by Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte would be like. We have a record of ten years of success. They have nothing.”

One opinion poll does not an election victory make. But the atmosphere at City West on Saturday was buoyant verging on arrogant verging on — dare we say it — hubris. The way some ministers spoke, the way it was all sold, almost gave you the impression that the election was in the bag. You heard the kind of ‘10 more years’ stuff, as if what happens in May or June next year will be a coronation for Bertie Ahern and his party.

It was billed as a special one-day Árd Fheis, ahead of the real thing next March. What that meant was that we got just one day’s worth of always-on propaganda rather than two. The notion that policy is decided, or even debated, at these conventions is laughable. This doesn’t just apply to Fianna Fáil but to all political parties in modern politics. Conventions are no more than PR exercises. Here, there were a couple of token motions on the ‘clár’ but the vast majority gave ministers an opportunity to congratulate themselves.

In fact, not only were policies not debated, there was not a single new policy of note that came out of the Árd Fheis, with the possible exception of Bertie Ahern’s announcement of a children’s referendum on Friday evening. The Taoiseach’s keynote address on Saturday night was remarkable for its lack of meat-on-the-bone specifics.

In the past year, Fine Gael tried to declutter its approach to next year’s election and decided to concentrate on three key issues. Fianna Fáil have gone one better and reduced the key issue to only one.

It is the economy. You have never had it so good, they say. And the only way it will continue that way is if you continue to put your faith in the Government. It is as simple as that. No matter how poor the performance is in key areas, the party’s strategists have long ago decided that the economy — especially a buoyant economy with a healthy surplus — will trump everything else: be it health, crime, or value for money.

In one of the key sections of his speech, Ahern honed in on this:

“Our prosperity can never be taken for granted. It is not invincible — and it is not indestructible. Unfortunately, our opponents do not share our belief that prosperity must be protected through measured actions and practical policies. They believe the only challenge left is to spend it all.

“… I say to our opponents, you have no idea of how to achieve prosperity, how to sustain prosperity, how to expand prosperity… We will never return to a reckless government which spends every Euro today without any concern for the consequences of tomorrow.”

The other major theme of the weekend was attack politics, a very noticeable sledging of the opposition parties. There was a nasty edge to some of the stuff on Labour and particularly about its Democratic Left wing, personified by its leader Pat Rabbitte. Sure, some of it — especially John O’Donoghue’s speech — was pantomime. But it was also clear that Fianna Fáil was being very specific in its targeting. Another minister explained that the party is focusing on the 15% soft or floating vote. They have identified potential Labour voters that FF claims may be tepid about Rabbitte and the influence of the former DL TDs. They have high hopes of enticing their support to the FF camp.

If Bertie Ahern’s keynote address was short on specifics, it contained all the usual messages to keep the party faithful — an impressive 5,000 — happy and sketch out some of the major themes of FF’s electoral campaign.

Of course, there are pitfalls. In his address, the Taoiseach tackled the most obvious one very early on, disposing of the BertieGate controversy in one terse paragraph. “We would all, I am sure, lead perfect lives if hindsight was foresight.”

Right at the start, Ahern said he would not dwell on the “extraordinary achievements of the past decade”. For most of the next half hour, that is what he did.

For, the logic of the Fianna Fáil campaign is that it must show where we were, where we are under this Government, and where we can go. Instead of concentrating on the task ahead in the North, he looked at what a final agreement will bring in terms of better cross-Border roads, canals and initiatives. There was a long list of what has been achieved in transport, health, schools, broadband and garda deployment. That was coupled with a smattering of humility. The Taoiseach actually admitted that not everything in Government will always provide instant answers.

There was also a great emphasis on fairness, a conscious effort to continue the themes of the Inchydoney Strategy and not get too carried away with all the prosperity stuff,. The ‘aren’t we all doing well’ message has grated with some of its own base who don’t share that rose-tinted world view.

Finally, we return to the question of hubris. Could it be that Fianna Fáil is over-confident? Sure, 39% in the polls is the highest support level it has enjoyed for three years, but it’s still nowhere near the high water mark of 2002, or the polls that preceded that election. Even if FF were to get 39% in next year’s election, that would lead them looking around for support. With the PDs struggling to hold its own, FF may need to court others. And it’s no surprise that most of the postulation centres on Labour, the butt of most of the FF slating on Saturday.

But you have to marvel at an amazing month in politics. This time last month, there were real questions about the survivability of FF in Government and about Bertie Ahern himself. Now, the party was all but anointing itself as the next Government, with Bertie Ahern re-established as its greatest asset.