Poliitical opportunities opening up in Mayo due to FG's 'disarray'

TWO years to the month since the last general election, Fine Gael looks to be in disarray from the top down.

It’s an utterly bizarre position for a party that had no obstacles in the way but itself.

Self-sabotage may be the only route left after so long in power, and leader Simon Harris has had a difficult run of it.

First came the phone call to cabinet colleague Patrick O’Donovan, the Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, during a crunch EU Presidency meeting.

Then came the minister’s collapse, followed by days of Harris failing to own up to the call that preceded it. Goodwill towards him has been tarnished within his own party.

Then came the move from the grassroots in Fine Gael’s south Dublin heartland.

The motion called on the party to affirm itself as a “centre-right party in the Christian democratic tradition”.

It received considerable press coverage and was billed as an attempt to push back on the “woke left”, shed the “progressive centrist” label, and align the party with the prevailing wind that has lifted Aontú and Independent Ireland in the polls.

Instead of being ushered through to a vote at the Ard Fheis, the motion was blocked by the party’s executive council, as reported in the Irish Times and Irish Daily Mail.

Harris, ever aware of the electorate’s direction of travel, asked the council to reconsider, but to no avail.

I recall the anger among some grassroots members over the Presidential election, on the counting floor of the TF. Local apparatchiks believed Heather Humphreys was hung out to dry and that the upper echelons of the party were not working for the base.

Some will argue the schism dates back to Leo Varadkar’s ascension as leader at the expense of Simon Coveney, the members’ choice.

Yet judged on trajectory and results, Fine Gael is surely the envy of its opponents.

The party will have been in power for 16 years come February. In that time it has taken the country back from the brink, overseen record employment with a series of coalition partners, and been electorally successful at every outing since 2011. There should be no internal rift, only admiration for a job well done.

Instead, the anger within its ranks is palpable.

The Ard Fheis will be another attempt by Harris to rejuvenate the party, much like the ‘Harris Hop’ of 2024, but a sense of fatigue already hangs over his leadership.

The polls don’t look healthy either. Fine Gael has slumped to consistently below 20%, a far cry from its target of 25% at the next general election.

Alarm bells have been ringing internally, and the fuel protests were a sign of where things were heading.

Now solicitors, teachers, nurses, civil servants and gardaí are all set to continue with varying levels of work-to-rule or all-out industrial action.

These were once the comfortable classes, the people who got up early in the morning. Now they are angry at a government they see as out of touch.

With a budget that fell flat and no end to the sectoral disputes, the government has handed the opposition a free hit. Its major hope is a splintering between right and left that would eventually present the coalition parties as the sensible middle option.

But will Aontú and Independent Ireland keep rising? The latest combined poll of 15% places them amongst the heavy hitters in Irish politics as Aontú approaches double digits for the first time.

We will get a sense of their intentions at the next local elections.

In Mayo, Aontú used April’s fuel protests to identify future candidates in areas far from its south-east Mayo base, and will likely field someone in every constituency.

Independent Ireland is expected to do the same. Still, there will also be opposition from the left in this county too, something noticeably absent from the 2024 ballot.

Castlebar Independent Councillor Harry Barrett has openly signalled his intention to run at the next general election.

A recent Facebook post asked: “Would you vote for a candidate in this county who would dedicate themselves to reducing the cost of living for ordinary working families?

"One who would demand radical action on ESB charges, rent and food prices.”

It is one of the most explicit announcements by any councillor, three years out from a general election.

Robeen Independent Councillor Patsy O’Brien will also be a formidable independent candidate before the end of the decade, though there will be hesitation and weariness around standalone independents after this government.

The mudguard of any government takes a battering.

That has been the way of Irish coalitions.

But for now it is the surge of the right-leaning parties that has Fine Gael’s grassroots worried about its ‘identity’.