Scale of referendum result catapults Fianna Fáil into an identity crisis
ON THE Friday evening of referendum voting day, I bumped into a well-known TD from a mainstream party. He wasn’t wearing a sticker, outside a polling booth or campaigning. He was leisurely cycling in his constituency.
I accosted him accusingly: “Where have you been for the past five weeks during the Eighth debate?”
He instantly replied: “Like any sensible TD – keeping my head down.”
The following day’s count revealed his constituency had voted Yes by more than 75pc. I suspect in leafy suburbs, where he garners most votes, the tally was at least 80pc in favour of change. The referendum result ripped up the script of how cute-hoor TDs should handle divisive debates. Politicians are miles behind the people in a changing society.
Some 21 Fine Gael TDs (including ministers) refused to publicly declare how they were voting – even more still refuse to reveal their position on unrestricted access to abortion up to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Brave public representatives campaigning for repeal were privately cautioned they were illadvised and their activity could jeopardise re-election. Most TDs spent their time ducking and diving media invites on the grounds of “unavailability”.
In the corporate world, leaders learn that fast change is constant. Respond effectively to innovation or consumer trends or you’ll lose market share or even go out of business.
Technology sets the pace, digital replaces analogue, big data is king. Email displaces postal, online sales swallow the High Street.
Health and environmental trends drive low calorie food and “green” product development. Adapt or die.
And so the gauntlet has been thrown down to our politicians: Can any one of them harness the referendum zeitgeist and energise voters in the next election to sign on the supplementary register or fly home to vote as we witnessed in the referendum?
The youth and gender-quakes are remodelling the landscape for voters under 35. Politicians are still chasing the game.
This is the context in which the next meaningful elections will be held in May 2019, when local and Euro seats are up for grabs.
Once the summer recess is over, politicians will be in campaign mode for the next Dáil power play. There is every likelihood of an autumn/spring general election.
The utterly predictable Catholic hierarchy’s response to the referendum simply exposes the hypocrisy of à la carte Church members who have problems accepting religious principles that are core values. But the Primate Eamon Martin deepened the disconnect by so misunderstanding the spontaneous celebrations in Dublin Castle as anything other than women’s liberation from generations of alienation and stigmatisation in dealing with crisis pregnancies.
Politicians must be alert to the differences between what is sinful and lawful. Modification and updating of the latter is their job, while the former remains immutable.
Traditionalists fear for the values of an orderly society, and the danger that respect
and morality could disappear in a tailspin into a secular state.
We are seeing a divesting of schools from religious patronage; a dispensing with the Angelus on RTÉ. There has been a purging of the restrictive ethos in voluntary hospitals’ clinical protocols.
It all adds up to a ruthless exposure of Church/ State collusion, the latest manifestation of which is the adoption scandal.
It’s the politicians’ job to ensure good ethics are embedded in civic society, irrespective of religion, through laws to reflect and codify our values.
A domestic abortion regime is likely to be established prior to the next election – moving this 35year problem to the out-tray of politics.
It will be replaced by Brexit, housing, health and money matters.
But such a linear analysis does not account for our asymmetrical politics.
It does not allow for identity politics or “change” campaigning. Party political branding must connect with the thrust of a newly awakened generation of switched-on voters. Strategists must get under the skin of modernity.
This presents an existential crisis for Fianna Fáil. Micheál Martin’s courageous volte-face in January, pivoting from ‘prolife’ to unrestricted access to abortion up to 12 weeks, saved Fianna Fáil from zero prospects of the 12-seat gains it must make in the more liberal east coast and Dublin constituencies.
REST assured, the iconic Merrion Square photograph of 31 Fianna Fáil Oireachtas members sternly rebutting change will be a totem on social media. Opponents will not delay in pigeonholing them as a dinosaur.
For many TDs, an antiabortion stance was borne out of opportunism, with a view to undermining Martin’s leadership – even potentially dislodging him if the referendum was defeated. But they got it badly wrong.
Yet Fianna Fáil cannot dismiss its conservative credentials. Half of its voters, its deputy leader, finance spokesperson, and a majority of TDs and even its Ard Fheis, firmly said No to choice and compassion.
They risk young urban women turning to Mary Lou McDonald and Sinn Féin as their voice for change.
Up North, Sinn Féin has already eaten the SDLP’s lunch, despite the historic contributions of John Hume and Seamus Mallon. It also appears to have devoured the Labour Party down here.
Despite the high-profile of Alan Kelly and others on contemporary issues like the cervical cancer scandal, or Garda whistleblowers, Labour’s poll rating was recently reduced to an unprecedented 2pc.
Fianna Fáil’s initial response has been denial while Sinn Féin’s surges in cities could cost them dearly.
The party needs to decide what it says on the tin. Does it espouse the 66pc liberal or 34pc conservative causes? It faces being caught on the wrong side of social history.
As the final remnants of the de Valera/McQuaid hegemony are stripped away, Fianna Fáil needs to hastily clarify its direction.
For example: remove baptismal barriers to school admissions or provide a bulwark for those who want to retain a Catholic ethos in education? Searching social questions can no longer be lost in the fog of ambiguity.
Facing in both directions risks ridicule or – even worse – irrelevance.
Mr Martin could do worse than reflect on Dick Spring in 1990, when faced with a similar identity dilemma in taking on the Opposition.
Mary Robinson’s presidential campaign, becoming the first ever woman elected, was a masterstroke and eclipsed Fine Gael. The red rose logo propelled Labour to the spring tide of a record number of TDs in 1992.
Contesting the presidency might serve to unify, reenergise and re-brand FF back to the future.