Who will win: Leo’s ‘spin’ or FF’s fabled machine?
Micheal Martin is facing pressure to pull the plug on the mercurial Varadkar before it’s too late, writes Jody Corcoran
MICHEAL Martin’s Budget speech, and again to his party’s Ard Fheis, has laid out what will be Fianna Fail’s line of attack on Fine Gael, and Leo Varadkar in particular, between now and the election.
But the Fianna Fail leader is also under mounting pressure within his party this weekend to pull the plug ahead of next year’s Budget on the confidence and supply deal which underpins the Government.
In short, Fianna Fail is in a real bind right now, which will become more evident the longer this Government continues.
The twin-track attack, firstly, will be to portray Varadkar as a right-wing Thatcherite restrained from his true political nature by the controlling influence of Fianna Fail under the deal; and, secondly, to present the Fine Gael leader as an image-obsessed ‘spin’ merchant, ultimately devoid of a socially just vision, and also as somebody who has failed to deliver on his Government’s often repeated announcements.
The Fianna Fail approach contains a high level of political risk, however, and may ultimately backfire against the mercurial political enigma that is Leo Varadkar.
That said, there is no doubt this Taoiseach is more conscious of the message than his predecessors were, and that he has applied a level of media management, direct and indirect, that is unprecedented in this country.
He is non-aggressive in that regard, however, unlike his immediate predecessor; and, to date, he does not seem to take negative publicity badly, not that he has had much, of course. Not yet, anyway.
The truth is, all politicians ‘spin’. It is factored into the deal, as it were. So, the Fianna Fail leader’s focus on Varadkar’s new Strategic Communications Unit, while relevant, may not cut much ice with the public.
Undoubtedly, the unit is a curious beast, with the risk inherent that it will turn out to be no more than a Fine Gael propaganda machine.
Against that, a case can be made for such a unit in the face of the ‘spin’ coming from the wider Opposition. In short, judgment is reserved on the unit. The likelihood is that it is here to stay, irrespective of who governs, and that includes Micheal Martin.
Fianna Fail may mine a richer seam when it portrays Varadkar as an unreconstructed Thatcherite, as opposed to the new European centrist he presents himself to be; one without an overarching fairness vision at that, and also as somebody who leads a Government which has failed to deliver, specifically on housing.
But herein lays the real political risk for Micheal Martin. To explain, one needs to go back a little.
After the 2011 meltdown, he had a number of issues to contend with related to the economic collapse and how that impacted on Fianna Fail.
Foremost was a need to rebuild trust with the public. So, when Micheal Martin categorically stated that he would not lead Fianna Fail into coalition with Sinn Fein (or Fine Gael) that is what he did, upending pronouncements from many commentators who claimed his stance was a ruse. He has recently restated this position, and you can take it he intends to stand by that again.
Similarly, when he signed up to the confidence and supply deal with Fine Gael, he signed up for the passage of three budgets, two of which have now passed.
However, pressure is growing within Fianna Fail — evident at the Ard Fheis — for Martin to, effectively, break his word and withdraw support from the minority gov- ernment ahead of a third Budget.
To do so without valid reason, though, could be interpreted as a breach of trust, and with Brexit negotiations floundering, also irresponsible.
In fact, to breach the confidence and supply agreement would place Fianna Fail at risk of losing some of the trust it has rebuilt since the crash, from a low point of around 19pc in the opinion polls two years ago to around 29pc now.
But what is worse than such a breach of trust?
An argument can be made that Fianna Fail has tempered the worst excesses of Fine Gael in this Government, from five regressive budgets before the election to two progressive ones under the confidence and supply deal.
As Micheal Martin repeatedly emphasised last week, Varadkar has referred, in a fashion, to those caught in a “culture of dependency and victimhood”.
This kind of language is red meat to traditional conservative Fine Gael voters.
In preference, the Taoiseach has also bigged up those who “get up early in the morning”. Such a strategy is divisive, however.
It has also found its way into national discourse: a national newspaper last week totted up €340m given in ‘welfare hikes’ against €335m to ‘early risers’ and presented it under a critical headline.
In my view, not only is this divisive, and potentially dangerous, it also fails to understand the national psyche of fairness and live and let live together.
Remember, thousands depended on social welfare after the crash. They will not easily forget the hardship of those days, even if many of them are now at work.
To play to a ‘squeezed middle’ with a Thatcherite dog whistle is, in fact, to fail to understand the inherently decent nature of the squeezed middle in Ireland.
While it will shore up the more conservative Fine Gael vote, it may just as easily run counterproductive to that party’s intention to carve out a wider middle-class vote.
But this is the bind within which Fianna Fail finds itself: while it seeks to curb what it sees as the worst excesses of a so-called Tory ideology, it still facilitates harsher elements of a certain Fine Gael mindset in government.
Further to that, several initiatives introduced in the Budget on housing, for example, were Fianna Fail policies: increases to housing assistance payments, extra capital spending for social housing and plans to tackle land hoarding. So, while Fianna Fail sits in Opposition, Fine Gael gets to introduce progressive measures to contend with the housing crisis. Who will get the credit if these policies are successful?
Micheal Martin may like to think Fianna Fail will, but the opposite could just as easily be the case: the public may decide it likes the modern cut of Leo’s jib, and the youthful sensibility of Paschal Donohoe, and that each successful measure can be put down to what it generally regards to be ‘government’ — and Fine Gael is the Government.
However that turns out, for Fianna Fail, the contradictions within confidence and supply may be about to get a whole lot worse.
The fiscal space next year, ahead of the final Budget, will be €3bn, or three times more than what was pencilled in last week.
In other words, that could amount to an election-winning budget.
So what will Micheal Martin do: break his word and withdraw from confidence and supply ahead of schedule, and hope that the public will give him the benefit of what he believes to be fairness due?
His instinct is to withstand internal pressure and see out the deal, and then rely of the greatest ‘spin’ operation of all to win the day: the fabled Fianna Fail machine, of course.
Ah, but here’s the rub: does that machine exist anymore, and if it does, is it clear on what Fianna Fail stands for?
‘This kind of language is red meat to traditional FG voters’