Labour advances as FG looks to the past

FIANNA Fáil’s feeble showing in recent opinion polls can at least be explained by having been in power for much of the past 20 years.

Fine Gael’s dismal performance is much more complex and worrying. Near obliteration in 2002 appears to have engendered a return to antediluvian ‘conservative’ values and, shamefully, civil war politics. Fine Gael now looks like a museum piece, with an apparently defunct liberal wing.

Consider this series of horrifying events. We had that toxic and historically inaccurate letter on Brian Lenihan’s invitation to address the Michael Collins commemoration by Senator Liam Twomey. Nobody in Fine Gael condemned it .