Don’t rock the FG boat or you’re out, like Kate
KATE O’CONNELL is a bit like Marmite; you either admire her fiery rhetoric and takeno-prisoners attitude to her opponents – or you regard it things. with disdain, as distinctly unbecoming for a parliamentarian, among other But even her most trenchant critics, those who recoiled at what was one of the most unpleasant and unedifying Dáil episodes in recent memory, occurring as the abortion legislation was being passed, when she famously spat at pro-life advocates ‘we won, ye lost… it must be hurting’ will agree that Kate’s not your standard issue Irish politician.
To her credit, there is nothing shifty about Kate O’Connell, she is not unctuous or false: she could never be accused of trying to be all things to all people. She shoots from the hip, without appearing to worry about the cost in terms of votes or internal party support. She’s also a tough cookie and works very hard.
THESE attributes would, you might think, make her ideally qualified for the bear pit of political life. It’s tempting to think that if she was a man, she’d be the toast of Fine Gael rather than its bête noire, a reject who not only was overlooked for the Senate but, as she told Claire Byrne, is ‘not the desired candidate’ for the vacancy that has arisen in Dublin Bay South thanks to Eoghan Murphy’s leaving.
‘It appears that preparations have been made for a long time that it would be impossible for me to win a convention,’ she claimed.
But perhaps her being consigned to purdah is also a symptom of our conformist style of politics, where obeisance to party leaders, being team players, keeping party discipline and holding party interests sacred are the holy grail.
When I accompanied O’Connell on a canvass in Sandymount during the last general election, voters seemed to appreciate her straight-talking, slightly maverick persona.
OK, there were plenty of complaints at the doorstep but they related to the party’s performance in power. Nobody pulled Kate up for being outspoken or for her paint-by-numbers liberal values. At one house, a most genteel lady complimented her on her fighting spirit and said she trusted her as she’s no pushover.
The proof was in the pudding when Kate lost the last seat to Jim O’Callaghan by a few hundred votes, a performance that seemed to guarantee her place on the party ticket next time out.
Except it hasn’t. It appears that O’Connell’s unique selling point – her independent, some would say reckless or brash spirit as displayed in her clashes with the party leadership – has been her undoing, causing her to exclude herself from fighting the upcoming by-election as a Fine Gaeler.
It seems astonishing that she is being left to her own devices like this especially since the party’s review of its poor performance in last year’s general election showed that it lacked ‘personality’ politicians and was seen as detached and did not have the public’s interests at heart.
AS colourful public representatives, wholly committed to their constituents go, you really can’t do much better than O’Connell who is also a perfect flag-bearer for her party’s ideological mix of right-wing economics and liberal social policy.
No disrespect to James Geoghegan who seems destined to get the nod to run – he may very well be a cracker on the campaign trail – but his selling points seem to amount to a safe pair of hands with an impeccable Fine Gael pedigree.
We are forever hearing dire warnings about the grievous state of the mainstream parties, endangered by the rising tide of leftwing parties on one side and of populist Sinn Féin on the other.
But if the Fine Gael hierarchy is so threatened by a female politician – whose one crime is to rock the proverbial boat – that it would jettison rather than nurture her career, then political oblivion might be all it deserves.