Elections have exposed FG under Leo as a tactical mess
WHEN politicians claim something is not important, generally it is time to start reading the small print.
This is most assuredly the case when it comes to Leo’s by-election Nightmare before Christmas.
Fine Gael is attempting to claim that by-elections are a sort of frolic in which the electorate go a little mad. In fact, the by-elections have, in tandem with the council elections, exposed serious structural and tactical flaws within the party.
Once you cut through the ministerial spin, these elections were a pre-Christmas nightmare for Fine Gael, in which the party experienced a total shut-out in four constituencies.
Fianna Fáil and the Greens tipped away silently off the field of battle with three of the four seats, while there were encouraging signs for their Labour allies in the critical seats of Fingal and Wexford.
Worse still for Fine Gael though, the astonishing contributions of Verona Murphy have left the party tainted with accusations of playing the race card.
It is something that will not impress a significant number of supporters who vote for the party because they believe in a politics of values.
In a reprise of the nightmare of the PDs, those supporters are tiptoeing away from Fine Gael towards a Green Party who are intent on putting Fianna Fáil into power.
The Greens are eating Fine Gael’s dinner and
FG appears incapable of seeing that it is happening, let alone doing anything about it.
Instead, these elections revealed that Fine Gael, under Leo, are a strategic and tactical mess. Worse still, much of the damage has been of their own doing.
In looking at the damage done by Ms Murphy, it should be noted that the Taoiseach himself opened the race card door with his comments about Albanians and Georgians. With an example like that, who could blame Ms Murphy for taking the approach she did?
The bloodletting required for the necessary excision of Ms Murphy, the Taoiseach’s choice, is now likely to haunt the party in the run-up to Christmas.
The party is also likely to be haunted by
Swing Gate, which continues to poison the reputation of Fine Gael of being a party of values.
Instead, too many years in Government has created the scenario in which Fine Gael has become more like Fianna Fáil than Fianna Fáil itself.
The one exception to this is the art of winning elections.
The party’s new Emperor Leo was supposed to create a situation in which Fine Gael would beat Fianna Fáil at the great game of winning seats.
Instead, the chaotic situation in Wexford is symptomatic of a candidate crisis in which Fine Gael is now so desperate in 10 constituencies that they are trying to persuade Independent odds and socks to run for them.
By contrast, even in Fingal and Dublin Mid-West, which Fianna Fáil did not win, the party performed well.
The local elections should have acted as a warning to Fine Gael that they were out of touch with the people.
Instead, in a claim that would have embarrassed the naked emperor, Leo claimed Fine Gael had won.
Increasingly, and not for the first time, Fine Gael are starting to resemble the famously stupid French Bourbon dynasty who, even after one of them got their head chopped off, forgot nothing and learnt nothing.
As we all know, that didn’t end well for them.
‘Leo himself opened the race door for Verona’