The party’s over as Cowen Factor fails to convince voters that FF’s got talent

THE “wow” that greeted the news of Fianna Fáil being beaten into third place by Labour in the Sunday Business Post’s RedC poll was an odd “wow”.

It was a “wow” without exclamation marks or raised eyebrows; an acknowledgement of a move from impossibility to reality.

Even that news wasn’t as bad as what was delivered late last night by Sean O’Rourke’s Week in Politics programme.

A packaged report laden with statistics, put together by political correspondent Brian Dowling, was presented, based on work done by the Professor of Political Science at TCD, Michael Marsh.

Marsh has effectively compiled a “poll of polls”. Having tracked every reputable political opinion poll since 1974 up to the last month, he then put them on a graph. RTÉ’s version of that graph, last night, demonstrated that – once in a very blue moon – a picture is worth a thousand words.

The Marsh/RTÉ graph starts with an upright on the left showing the popularity of Fianna Fáil in percentage terms. At the bottom is the time line from 1974 to the present. In the space between the two are clusters of little circles, each representing an opinion poll.

The yellow line linking those polls establishes the overall trend over the past four decades. This line is fairly stable in the first half of the period. From 1974 to 2000, while fluctuations are evident, they are minor, tending to happen inside a band showing a substantially constant approval rating of between 40 and 50%. Volatility within a band of stability, in other words.

From 2000 up to March 2010 the trend is steadily downwards and from 2008 to March 2010 the pace of decline gets faster and steeper. This aggregation of the data cannot be disregarded, any more than a particularly cold winter can allow us to dismiss the overall climate change trend towards global warming.

Thus, while it may provide transient comfort for Brian Cowen to observe that when he was elected Taoiseach in May 2008 Fianna Fáil support – which had dipped into the 30s – bounced back to 42%, the relentless downward direction of the yellow line demonstrates the erosion of Fianna Fáil’s core vote from close to half the voting population, over two decades, to where it rests at this point, in the low 20s.

Against the steady, steep decline since 2000, Bertie Ahern’s election results in 2002 and 2007 indicate only that Fianna Fáil, under his leadership, managed to hold the line, temporarily.

It did so because Bertie Ahern, before the full force of the tribunals came to bear on his reputation, made Fianna Fáil seem a world away from the old CJ days of corruption and pocket-lining.

The “Bertie Factor” made his party transfer-friendly. Smart vote management helped too, but the underlying trend was still downward.

One of those elections, remember, was in 2002, when Fine Gael walked into a wall of public rejection and commentators spoke of Fianna Fáil heading for an overall majority. The nation was awash with money and confidence and yet Fianna Fáil, despite the Bertie Factor, could only get slightly ahead of their worst-ever result in terms of share of first preference votes.

Last night, Marsh made the point that if at the height of the boom – when half the people were almost out of the tax net – Fianna Fáil couldn’t substantially increase their first preference share, they’re pretty much goosed in the current climate. He made the point in more academic language, but the message was grimly clear.

Which brings us to the Brian Cowen factor. Hardly a week goes by without someone asking me on radio or TV what communications advice I’d give our Taoiseach, were he to hire me. The question always presupposes a crisp, simple answer lasting no longer than 30 seconds – a bit like the idiotic suggestions that if Gordon Brown stood up straighter and smiled a bit, he’d seduce great swatches of the disaffected electorate back to Labour.

The truthful answer is that if Brian Cowen underwent a makeover so profound as to make George Clooney seem a bit skanky by comparison when it came to looks, and Blair, Obama and Clinton a bit tongue-tied by comparison on the communications front, it wouldn’t make a ha’porth of difference to Fianna Fáil’s prospects.

Even in the CJ days, remember, the party consistently pulled between 40% and 50% of the vote. While the decline before this decade was incremental and has now accelerated, it was already solidly established long before Cowen became leader.

Fianna Fáil don’t just face one Hobson’s choice. They face a bunch of them. The best option for the current Cabinet is to stay put as long as humanly possible, earning their salaries, building up their pensions, doing what they perceive to be the right things and hoping for some kind of upturn. No individual around the Cabinet table can credibly, at this point, talk of radical change, since they have been part of every decision that change would move away from. In other circumstances, Brian Lenihan just might be able to do it, but that’s not an option at the moment.

That means hanging on until late in 2012 and carries the prospect of three more dire budgets. If Fianna Fáil go down that road, then not only will they lose the next election, but the incoming coalition of Fine Gael and Labour could be in power for a decade, benefiting from whatever upturn eventually comes.

IF THE general election were to come sooner, then the incoming coalition would have to bring in the three dire budgets, Fianna Fáil could move down a generation, rediscover itself in opposition, and have some prospect of unseating the coalition after one period in office.

Rediscovering itself in opposition would not be easy, because the party would have to identify which of the confluence of factors causing vote erosion is within their power to ameliorate. Has their vote aged without succession being assured?

Without the “republican” claim, are they without a unifying theme? In an era of EU directives, local regulators and omnipresent media, is power seen to reside elsewhere? After two decades of FF-led coalitions, does the traditional Fianna Fáil voter believe that their party has lost its identity and is at the mercy of whatever smaller party or independents keep it in power?

Establishing an identity that meshes with the public mood would be no easy task.

Re-establishing public trust would be even more difficult. More importantly, however, going speedily into opposition would require risk-taking self-sacrifice on the part of every minister, minister of state, TD and senator: many would face the prospect of losing their seat, their income and a portion of their pension.

The long-term health of Fianna Fáil requires them getting into opposition and into concentrated re-definition and re-branding immediately.

That’s an unacceptable career choice for each and every Fianna Fáil TD and senator.

Which is unfortunate. Because – if the Fianna Fáil party is to be as important to the history of the 21st century as it was to the 20th – it is an imperative.