Fine Gael was seen as detached and not on the side of the public in this year's general election, according to the blunt finding of an internal party review that has followed months of soul-searching.
Recently-appointed chairman of the parliamentary party Richard Bruton spent weeks meeting TDs and Ministers throughout the summer to get their views. The party won 35 seats in February's general election, 15 fewer than it did in 2016.
Several high-profile front-benchers lost out including minister for social protection Regina Doherty, minister of state in the Department of Finance Michael D'Arcy, and minister of state for drugs Catherine Byrne.
Speaking to the Irish Times, Bruton said there was a “huge gap” between people’s expectations and their judgment of where they were economically: “That is the question we have to address,” he told The Irish Times.
“It used to be in Bill Clinton’s time, that it was said ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ and that would dictate the outcome of an election. We had a strong economy, but clearly there was a huge gap between people’s expectations and what way they were.
Detached
“I think people did perceive the party as not being ‘on your side’ and that is one of the most difficult challenges if a party comes to be perceived as being sort of detached, remote, and not on people’s side. That is a real problem. That is the most important thing we need to change.”
Polling research afterwards found that people's concerns about Brexit had reduced, even though Fine Gael had performed strongly on the issue: "But I do feel a bit like Mickey Harte who said that when you lose a match not everything you did was wrong.
“That is a feature of modern politics that the agenda moves very, very quickly. Your political capital devalues very quickly and that is one of the lessons of the election that we have to bear in mind. You have to be able to respond.”
Fine Gael is now examining the “root changes” that need to be made to create a “personality” for the party, including a “policy lab” that will encourage TDs and Senators to bring forward solutions to society’s long-term challenges.
These ideas will then be independently assessed: “I see it as offering a substantial canvas for the party to bring forward ideas [but] of course the adoption by the party of an idea does not necessarily mean it will be adopted by Government.”
Bruton is now part of a close-knit group within Fine Gael seen as being the driving force behind a revival, including the new general secretary John Carroll, a close ally of Leo Varadkar, who is working on links between the parliamentary party and the rest of the organisation.
Carlow-Kilkenny TD John Paul Phelan is poring through constituency plans and strategies and looking at what went wrong in both 2016 and 2020. Deputy Government chief whip Brendan Griffin, meanwhile, is focusing on parliamentary tactics.
There is another figure in the background: former minister for housing Eoghan Murphy. Sources say his role is in the arena of long-term strategy and policy but he is an integral part of this newly formed "vanguard".
This year the party lost seats in Wexford, Dún Laoghaire, Dublin Bay South, Dublin North West, Meath East, Clare, Galway West and Limerick County, among others. In many, the party's "second seat was the one that came under threat. Each is now being closely examined.
Gender representation
“We are asking what happened, who did we listen to that we shouldn’t have, who is there now, how secure are they, and who is up and coming. We are also looking at the 40 per cent rule because it is never too early to start thinking about these things.”
Political parties face losing half of their funding if at least 30 per cent of their candidates are not female and this will rise to 40 per cent in 2023.
This focus on security and gender representation may partly explain the decision to move Ms Doherty from Meath East to Dublin Fingal. She will run alongside sitting Fine Gael TD Alan Farrell in the five-seat constituency.
Bruton says the party “has to do better” in terms of female representation and especially in light of the loss of well-known TDs like Doherty, Kate O’Connell and Catherine Byrne.
“That is one of the issues that came out, looking at the deeper problems, that we did lose a lot of women candidates. We need to look at how do we get more women candidates in a position where they will win elections. What has been done to date with quotas doesn’t really get you to that level.”
But he admits: “I am not sure that we have thrown up what the magic formula will be.”
For her part, Byrne, former Dublin South Central TD, said the party should "concentrate" on choosing candidates rooted in the community and reality: "The best candidate for the ticket should be chosen wisely and not because of gender, I was never in favour of that process."
More generally, Fine Gael is hoping to turn the coronavirus crisis into an electoral opportunity.
“The traditional Fine Gael meeting in a pub or hotel is dying and it was dying before Covid-19 too,” says a party insider.
“It is easier for people to get to a Zoom meeting at 8pm now for a half an hour. Many young parents could never make it to a meeting on childcare but in a digital space there is a greater opportunity to include them,” he went on.
More than anything though, the Fine Gael leadership wants to avoid past mistakes: “In 2016, we effectively lost that election and it should have been bloodbath in Fine Gael but because Enda moved quickly to survive and to form a Government, we never really reflected on what went wrong because we were preoccupied with the minority arrangement.
“Then 2016 repeated itself in 2020, and Leo is determined to make sure this does not happen the next time around.”
Case study: Noel Rock on where FG went wrong
In the early days of 2020, Varadkar contemplated the timing of a general election, but much of the public was talking about the Black and Tans. Watching on, then Fine Gael TD Noel Rock worried about his seat.
The electoral speculation could not distract from public outrage over plans to hold a commemoration of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police. The event was postponed, but the damage was done, he now says.
Every Fine Gael TD took punishment for the commemoration, while the party itself was “flat-footed and flaccid” responding to the controversy: “The day the posters went up, [we] started under that cloud of pessimism – not just for me but for the entire party.”
Other issues quickly followed, including the “deeply unpopular” planned pension age increase. Meanwhile, many voters felt the previous budget did not offer enough of a break especially given the Fine Gael focus on its solid economic performance.
“People were saying they were hearing that there had been an economic resurgence, but they didn’t feel it,” he says. Relying completely on the party’s handling of Brexit did not help. Just 1 per cent of voters put that down as their most important issue, he remembers.
Saying FG ignored “bread and butter” issues, he said: “Over 30 per cent of people viewed housing as an important issue and yet we didn’t seek to engage people on the issue of housing. We didn’t seek to reinvent the wheel in terms of policy on housing.”
Towards the latter stages of the campaign, Rock says he could “feel gravity pushing down on me”. Varadkar performed well in TV debates, but it was not enough to turn a tide that had turned in Sinn Féin’s favour.
“You can’t mentally prepare. It was the toughest day of my life, without any question. It is a devastating moment where not only have you lost your job, you’ve sort of lost the thing that you always wanted to do.”
Today, Fine Gael needs to concentrate on the basics, Rock believes, “things like housing, childcare and transport rather than esoteric concepts that don’t mean much in people’s everyday lives”.
