Fine Gael is finished.
Nature abhors a vacuum. It also doesn’t think much of anything in creation that shuffles around aimlessly with no real purpose in the scheme of things.
Fine Gael has no real purpose.
During the Garret Fitzgerald years it could lay claim to the liberal agenda.
It pushed for contraception, divorce and abortion in a liberal packet of three.
The people of this state accepted the first two as part of the natural progress of this society from under the weight of John Charles McQaid’s stern glower.
If we are good at anything it is cherry picking. We have accepted, however narrowly, divorce and gleefully partook of free supplies of legal johnnies, pills, caps, creams & the snip.
As Oul’ Garret himself found out this society still remains resistant to adopting a British model of terminations on an industrial scale.
So the attainable of this modernising drive, two thirds of it, has been achieved.
What was unthinkable in 1980 is now commonplace - it passes without comment.
With this done there is little observable that makes Fine Gael distinct as a Free State party - the original free State party.
The difference between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail is that Fine Gale AREN’T Fianna Fail.
It is as simple as that.
“Vote for us because we ain’t the other lot”
I have no Blueshirts in my background, a member of my family was founding member of Fianna Fail and in dev first cabinet.
I have never been a member of Fianna Fail and would never accept any invitation to join.
I believe they were flawed from day one as a vehicle for re-unification-ach mar a deitear sin e sceal eile.
Fine Gael has no purpose now that civil society in this state is Post-catholic ands the state is left, largely, to get on with its secular business.
That Fine Gael is finished is also the opinion of a no less a trueborn Fine Gael than John Waters of the Irish Times.
John from Roscommon has stated that as an eleven-year-old he cried when dev beat the Blueshirt Higgins for the park in the 60s.
Now John –with his background firmly in the Pro-Treaty side-is stating that, of course, Fine Gael is kaput, offski, outa here.
On the North Fine Gael has been the proverbial man short for nationalist Ireland.
From John Bruton (remember him?) wetting himself on meeting Lizzie’s mum to the vicious anti-republicanism of Noonan this party has nothing positive to offer.
Absolutely nothing.
If there is any deal to be cobbled together then a huge vote of thanks has to go to the fact that Brian Cowen was in charge of Iveagh House.
Andrews was a disaster-Cowen has been a star-there simply isn’t any chance that anyone with his grasp for what the Brits really are about could wear a blue shirt.
Which brings me to the current leadership thing in Fine Gael.
This is hiring a new captain for the Titanic after it hit the big Ice Cube.
Who is gonna be the new leader of Fine Gael?
Is simply doesn’t matter.
It really doesn’t.
Here in Donegal Fine Gael has soaked up a Protestant vote that-otherwise-considered itself to be disenfranchised by partition.
That-in itself-isn’t enough to justify being the State’s 2nd largest party.
Not being Fianna Fail isn’t good enough reason to vote for them either. Many people will continue to do so, but the numbers are dwindling.
They have as much reason to expect a long and healthy existence as the Democratic Left in 1996.
The Stickies breathed free because Section 31 delivered them votes that should have-logically-went to Sinn Fein.
Now with the conflict over and the ban lifted the DL has disappeared.
Fine Gael can forget about forming any sort of coalition government unless there is a complete U-turn in its fortunes.
Such things are rare in politics. Long-terms trends can be seen people form political allegiance in their late teens & twenties in most societies and it is a, matter of personal choice as much of background.
Here-especially in rural Ireland-your political allegiance was one of birth.
You were Fianna fail or Fine Gael depending on what your grandfather thought of Collins or de Valera.
In modern Ireland young people are much less likely to do that.
Despite Lawlor and brown envelopes Fianna Fail still are number one for young people-number two among our young people is Sinn Fein.
If the contest for the voters of tomorrow are between Fianna fail and Sinn Fein then the agenda here in the 26 counties doesn’t have any room for Fine Gael at all.
The growing freedom of thought of our young people-without any Civil War baggage and the pan-nationalist front on the North has rendered Fine Gael redundant as a depository for any major trance of votes here in the 26 counties save for the backward, the inbred and the old.
They are tired and-like Sinn Fein’s nationalist opponents in the Six Counties the SDLP-they have no long-term future.
There may well be a “re-alignment” of Irish politics at some point, but that is a long way off.
In the meantime politics, like nature is a tough world.
Extinction is the natural order for the slow, the stupid and the redundant.
Fine Gael is finished.
Phil Mac Giolla Bhain
