These are worrying times for Fianna Fail. It may not yet be time to hit the panic button but it lost enough seats in the local elections to be seriously alarmed. Its share of the vote crumpled by 10 points to just 31% in June. Of prime concern is the fact that it is being harried by the continued emergence of Sinn Fein as a political force in the republic.
But Fianna Fail is also alarmingly uncertain of what it is trying to be: part of it believes in a model of low taxes to encourage strong economic growth, part wants to tax and spend on already bloated, yet inefficient, public services. Part wants to confront the trade union movement, introduce more competition into the economy and privatise state assets, and part wants to embrace the unions and keep things as they are.
It is a party that lacks focus. The strategists have chosen to interpret June’s results as evidence that it has leant too far to the right. Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, appears to agree. He has manoeuvred Charlie McCreevy, the most free-market inclined of his ministers, out of the cabinet and into Europe. His long-awaited cabinet reshuffle will most likely continue the trend: his ministers will be charged not with running the country but with winning the election, so public money will be spent freely on short-term improvements in the most visible, and most creaking, public services.
It is clear that Ahern will target accident and emergency departments in hospitals for immediate relief, because that is where the public has most experience of the health service. School building projects, too, are likely to be accelerated and industrial peace will be at a premium, so trade unions will be able to stall much-needed privatisation and deregulation programmes.
The party’s structures will be overhauled, its headquarters regionalised and more ministers dispatched to meet the public. This will not be a plan for party renewal, rather a short-term strategy to get through the next election. It may work, but it will do nothing to solve the deeper problems faced by Fianna Fail and, to a similar degree, Fine Gael. If the two parties are to attract young people into politics and if they are to put forward high-calibre candidates at the elections they will need to move beyond strategies and into the far trickier realm of ideas.
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At the moment both parties are like marketing agencies desperately seeking a new slogan for a tired brand: the real challenge is to reinvent the brand. Unless they can talk with passion and belief about policies and ideas that can transform peoples’ lives, they will not connect with the electorate, young or old.
The absence of ideas — indeed of ideology — in the Irish system creates a political lethargy that is fodder for Sinn Fein and local-issue candidates who feed on the politics of opposition and disenchantment.
The prospect of a general election tends to freeze out new ideas from governing parties, but Fianna Fail’s strategists should devote at least part of their time to working out what, precisely, the party believes in. They need to explain why Fianna Fail wants to be in power and what it wants to achieve with power. These are questions the current leadership cannot answer, and the result has been a government in drift.
Unless it can come up with coherent answers and some strong ideas, Fianna Fail will continue to be picked off by the smaller parties and both it and Fine Gael will be forced into ever messier compromises with politically divergent smaller parties if they want to form a government.
A cynical mind might argue that such a future requires the larger parties to avoid ideas, so as to make future compromise painless; that, however, is the route of self-fulfilling prophecy. Fianna Fail’s strategists, and its leader, must aim higher.