Fine Gael wracked by internal unhappiness as it faces an existential crisis

It surfaces most weeks at the weekly gatherings of the Fine Gael parliamentary party. Of late it’s been about passports – TDs are under ferocious pressure from their constituents waiting for them; regularly it’s about the baleful influence of the Greens, as some FG TDs see it, on Government policy – turf has been a flashpoint recently; and sometimes it’s about the party’s flagging standing in the opinion polls, which has seen a steady decline since the Coalition took office – of the three big parties, Fine Gael is bringing up the rear. But what it’s really about is the sense of malaise that has overtaken much of Fine Gael.

Though the unease over the Garda investigation into Leo Varadkar – which has resulted in a file being sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions for consideration – hovers in the air, it is not much discussed. A prosecution of Varadkar – necessitating his resignation – would be a calamity for the party. But the current concerns are, in a way, more existential. They concern the future of the party and its very identity.

Elected representatives see it when they call meetings in the constituencies and local areas, intended to boost their profile, rally the troops and get a message out in local and social media. One reports huge local advertising and dropping thousands of leaflets to publicise a meeting with some party bigwigs – and 10 people turned up. Such stories are commonplace throughout the party. Another councillor reports 20 people turning up at a similar event (“and six of them were councillors”). Of the more than 1,000 members in his constituency, he reckons maybe 50 are actually active.

“Morale is very low in the grassroots,” the councillor says. “There’s a lot of disillusionment.” A minister reluctantly admits the same.

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“Ah sure, it’s terrible,” says one rural TD. “It’s collapsed. The only consolation is that I think it’s worse for Fianna Fáil.”

Another TD confirms the tale of sparsely attended meetings – “total disinterest” is the description used. “I don’t think anyone is coming out.”

A concerned party grandee embarks on a pessimistic run-through the electoral prospects for the party in several constituencies – “no seat in Donegal, no seat in Tipp, maybe no seat in Sligo, no second seat in Laois-Offaly, no second seat in Carlow-Kilkenny, no second seat in Wexford, down to the bare bones in Cork... It’s backs to the wall.”

Several sources confirm what one party insider says: “A lot of people are saying it’s time to go into opposition.”

But other senior figures dismiss this angrily. “A party that says that has given up,” he says.

Gloomy background

It’s against this gloomy background that the team around party leader Leo Varadkar are making preparations for the event later this year that they believe can be the starting point in a revival of Fine Gael’s fortunes and a resuscitation of the organisation – the return of Varadkar to the taoiseach’s office.

Varadkar has never really accommodated himself to the number two role in Government, and his period in the job has been accompanied by the growing sense of aimlessness in his party and downward pressure on its poll ratings. But in six months’ time, he will get what few people ever get – a second chance at being taoiseach.

Varadkar gave a signal last week about how he might approach the second chance. In an interview with the Irish Independent, he returned to the theme of tax cuts and help for middle-income earners that recalled his successful campaign for the leadership of his party and also resonated with many TDs as an appeal to the party’s core supporters. Noticeably, he used the pungent phrase that irked opponents as much as it appealed to Fine Gaelers – he talked about the “people who get up early in the morning”.

“The average person working full-time in Ireland... earns about €45,000 a year. They’ll often pay a fair whack of tax, but won’t qualify for many benefits from the State. I actually want to prioritise them,” Varadkar told the Independent

“I certainly want us as a Government, in the second half of that Government, to commit to significantly reducing the cost of living for working families and middle-income families in Ireland.”

Later he added: “It is about making work pay. You know, people who get up early in the morning, go to work, put in 20, 40 hours a week, should earn enough to have a decent standard of living.”

Varadkar is not usually someone who says things by accident and the use of the words “people who get up early in the morning” was deliberate. During the leadership campaign in 2017, the phrase attracted criticism from some commentators and political opponents who viewed it as a pledge to cut taxes on upwardly mobile Fine Gael voters at the cost of social investment for poorer sections of society.

Some, even within his own party, viewed it as a nod towards more right-wing policies; remember that his then-opponent responded by seeking to appeal to the party’s social democratic “Just Society” tradition (Simon Coveney lost, of course.) Others pointed out that the reason many people had to get up early in the morning was that they were commuting long distances to work because of the then nascent housing crisis. Imagine what that’s like now. For whatever reason, it is not something Varadkar has said much since then. Its use now is a signal, says one ally, that he is going “back to basics”.

“People who hate us criticised the people who get up early stuff, and we took that seriously,” says a senior figure. Not a very clever way to operate, he adds.

‘Core messages’

Another person with a good claim to know his mind thinks that Varadkar is contemplating what he calls a move back to “core messages” for Fine Gael voters – pro-enterprise, pro-Europe, for the middle class, make work pay, law and order. He describes it as Fine Gael’s 20-25 per cent of the electorate.

But the source says this is something that Fine Gael always struggles with: trying to be for everyone doesn’t work, but zoning in on the core voter makes some people feel uncomfortable.

Whatever the eventual strategy, the signal has been widely welcomed by several people in the party who spoke to The Irish Times last week.

“I’d absolutely welcome a return to talking to the people who get up early in the morning,” says a councillor, adding that he thinks the party has been unclear “who we stand for”. The “early in the morning message”, he says, will appeal to Fine Gael’s “core voters”.

“Trying to be all things to all people – it never works,” the councillor says. A senior frontbencher says much the same.

But another senior figure cautions that signalling a new emphasis is one thing – the party will have to deliver concrete results if there is to be any results from it. There will have to be tax measures aimed at middle-income earners in the budget, and the Government will have to make meaningful progress on reducing the cost of living, especially focusing on childcare and on the cost of education.

“Okay, we’re talking to FG voters but we actually have to do the stuff they want,” the source says.

And all these things are easier said than done. The (Fine Gael) Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe and the (Fianna Fáil) Minister for Public Expenditure Michael McGrath will shortly embark on the most difficult budgetary process in the Coalition’s short lifespan as cost-of-living pressures and the ending of Covid-era borrowing run up against the unending demand for increases in public spending from all across Government. If Varadkar wants to make a show of helping the people who get up early, he will have to pay for it by politically costly restraint elsewhere.

There is another complicating factor for the Fine Gael leader as he contemplates he return to the taoiseach’s office, with all the profile and responsibility that entails. As taoiseach, he is not just the leader of Fine Gael – he is the leader of the entire Government. He must take account of Fianna Fáil’s and the Greens’ desires and political needs. He is bound by a programme for government. If he does only what is best for Fine Gael, the Coalition won’t last long. And he must lead the three-party Government up to a general election in which its constituent parts will be rivals for votes.

“He gets another chance,” says a rural councillor. “But it’s make-or-break.”