Gerard Howlin: Fine Gael has forgotten its purpose. No other party communicates so much or says so little
The Irish Times · Gerard Howlin ·
No other political party communicates so much while saying so little, or has become so disconnected from its faithful
In advance of its ardfheis this weekend, Fine Gael circulated the report of its commission for renewal. The report makes practical proposals about organisation, but no substantive statements about ideology or purpose, despite hand-wringing about its lack of identity or electoral purchase. One phrase that is repeated throughout the document is “we must connect with people’s lived experience”. It is a good summary of a problem the party has no real idea how to address.
It is no longer connected in the real world to those who were once its purpose and foot soldiers. Now party-political organisation is a mirage presided over by communications people – those who have little affinity to the party and less to the groups that until recently defined it. The result is no political party does more communicating with less effect than Fine Gael. It has a premonition of its demise, but it appears to think communications and structures, not policy and leadership, are the answers.
The identity crisis it faces is far greater than a problem of communications. The centre right, which was once Fine Gael’s natural hinterland, is now an abandoned political space. Fianna Fáil intermittently cohabitated there, but it was never ideologically committed. The Progressive Democrats briefly supplanted Fine Gael’s credentials in the 1980s and 1990s, but that party lost its edge, and eventually its credibility in the embrace of Fianna Fáil. Fine Gael consistently, but not always effectively, stood for economic rectitude, small business, big farmers and the professional classes. It was the party of the State, while Fianna Fáil claimed to be the party of the nation.
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