Fine Gael should avoid promising the earth: ThePost.ie


TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2007/03/25 > Fine Gael should avoid promising the earth

Fine Gael should avoid promising the earth
Sunday, March 25, 2007 -
The party, whose electoral fortunes have never fully recovered from the patriotism of the Tallaght strategy, is being lectured again by Fianna Fail about electoral promises; the same party that drove the country into recession in the 1980s.

But ire can’t be allowed to cloud Fine Gael’s judgment - the party would do well to heed Brian Cowen’s warning. Next week, Fine Gael will become the final major party to unveil its pre-election thinking at the last of an interminable series of party conferences.

Being last certainly has its downsides - Fine Gael has had to watch from the wings as others have set out their stalls and secured the coverage. But being last has its upside too. When Enda Kenny stands up to speak next Saturday evening he - unlike the other party leaders earlier in the year - will have the full electoral landscape set out before him. If he’s clever, he’ll see that landscape has changed, even in the last few weeks, in a manner reminiscent of the 2002 election campaign. Those wily hands in Fianna Fail are playing the continuity and stability cards for a reason. The public are seized with caution.

Kenny will ignore that development at his peril. The 2002 election proved one thing conclusively - economic uncertainty is not a negative for the government. Economic catastrophe may hurt a government, but uncertainty merely reinforces people’s aversion to risk.

So while the opposition parties have made short-term hay about the recent spate of job losses, they know too that job losses also play to the government’s key message - the need for stability and continuity. For Fine Gael, the problem is not new. Historically, it has been Ireland’s ‘sound money’ party. The perception that, in the 1980s, it was unable to deal with the economic mess left behind by Fianna Fail has damaged Fine Gael as the leading opposition party.

Fine Gael didn’t do what Fine Gael is supposed to do. Directly, it led to the establishment of the Progressive Democrats, the single development that has contributed most to Fianna Fail’s electoral hegemony over the last two decades. Regaining that authority is central to Fine Gael’s mission to lead an alternative government.

Recently, Fine Gael and Labour have rightly focused on the economic success and conservative nature of the Rainbow government. But there is little point in doing that if, in the immediate run into the general election, you allow the ‘Johnny come lately’ of fiscal probity, Fianna Fail, to steal your clothes.

So when Kenny stands up to address the ard fheis next week, what he doesn’t say will be as important as what he does say. There should be no sweeping promises on taxation, no grand schemes and certainly no outlandish spending commitments.

Too often, Fine Gael has fallen foul of trying to be just too clever. In 2002, Fine Gael made a plethora of promises for solely political purposes - the taxi drivers and Eircom shareholder’s compensation packages stand out. They destroyed the party’s economic credibility.

More recently, even the party’s stamp duty package sails too close to that ill wind. Why the obsession with stamp duty? It is a tax being paid by hardly anybody at all! But the Fine Gael package displays the party’s, and Richard Bruton’s, addiction to economic tinkering. By offering a three-year solution, it ignores the one thing the property market needs most - stability and continuity.

There was a time when taxation was an instrument of fiscal policy, adjusted to meet the needs of the economy at any given time. Now it’s time for Fine Gael to take that tool away from the political strategists and return it to the political economists.

The truth is that Fianna Fail’s charge against the opposition is a spurious one. How can the party that times major strategic announcements, like the National Development Plan and, previously, the Health Strategy, to coincide with elections, lay charges of ‘over-promising’ against others?

What Fianna Fail knows though is that, as a government, it can get away with announcements like these. They seem ‘governmental’. Everything promised by the opposition seems party political. Kenny should recognise that fact, not fight it. On Saturday night, he should stick with the message that this government wastes money and that Fine Gael can be trusted with the public finances. No grand plans, no grand announcements, especially on taxation.

Implement Rabbitte’s new lower rate cut only when we can afford it. Indeed, now that Rabbitte has left the bands and allowances arena, perhaps the most conservative and radical thing for Fine Gael to do would be to occupy that space. Consistency in a world gone mad, as the ad puts it.

Can Kenny do it? Obviously the temptation to set out an ambitious platform for an opposition leader is huge. Others have done it before him and Kenny must have a sense of it being his turn. But to do so would be failing to notice the shift in mood among the electorate that has contributed to Fianna Fail’s recovery since the autumn and its election victory in 2002.

The truth is that Kenny hasn’t done a bad job as Fine Gael leader. When he took over, people queried whether the party had a future. For a while, it looked again like Fine Gael could lead a government. Unlike any Fine Gael leader since Cosgrave, he has the Labour Party boxed in. But to show restraint next weekend will be a serious test of his leadership once again.

It is not often in politics that the long-term and short-term requirements of a political leader align themselves, but for Kenny next week, such a time has arrived. Keep it simple, and most importantly, keep it steady.