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8 February 2001 Edition

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Image is everything - obey your polls

BY ROBBIE MacGABHANN

     
A new launch and rebranding of Fine Gael will mean nothing unless they can convince voters they actually beleive in something other than that they would be better managers of the economy than Fianna Fáil
``Now you've got a good government keep it'' This was the election slogan used by Fine Gael in the 1977 Leinster House elections. Fine Gael didn't win the election. In fact, Fianna Fáil romped home with their largest ever majority. They had campaigned with a much slicker package of promises and give aways, including the undeliverable twin pledges of spending more while taxing less.

The dilemma Fine Gael found themselves in then is the exact place they find themselves this week as the parliamentary party meets to elect a new leader. It is in a sense the beginning of the end for Fine Gael.

Electoral politics was and still is moving away from any real ideological platform. Instead, the larger political parties are trodding a route taken in most other `liberal' democracies: the dominant groups commandeer the electoral process through controlling much more resources than other parties and by using opinion poll technology to continually measure what the majority of potential voters want and offering them this at elections.

Fine Gael's problem is that barring the party's brief surge in the FitzGerald era it has been unclear what the party actually stands for and more importantly what does it stand for that differentiates it in the voters' minds from Fianna Fáil.

This is becoming all the more important as an ever younger electorate has little time for either civil war politics or the Haughey-FitzGerald face off of the 1980s as an influence on their potential voting choices.

Even in 1986, it was widely known within Fine Gael that there was a problem with their image. Having abandoned their conservative right wing dogma for mass politics with a liberal tinge represented by FitzGerald's ``Garret the good'' and ``constitutional crusade'' personas, this was a huge problem for the party.

Privately commissioned opinion polls had told them that the party's image was not a positive one in voters' minds. This was partly due to the fact that the previous five years in government had been bruising ones for the party. The initial response was to plan a long election campaign rather than a short one and drop their green colour for a ``more marketable blue''.

Given that opinion polls had also told them that the personal attacks on Haughey that had proved so successful in the early 1980s would be unproductive in 1987, Fine Gael had in reality little more than a new colour to win votes.

By 1992, with a rehabilitated Bruton in the leadership, Fine Gael were even in more difficulties. Again opinion poll and focus research had told the party that voters were bored and cynical. Bruton was found to be ``grey'' and was dispatched to an image consultant while more new logos and colours were devised.

Part of the perceived problem was that Fine Gael had a rational appeal to voters while Fianna Fáil had an emotional appeal that was more attractive to floating voters.

Once again, Fine Gael went into an election trying to substitute substance with style. The surge of voters to Labour in 1992 showed an electorate searching for something more than new colours yet Fine Gael were unable to deal with this voter reality.

The high water mark of Fine Gael's flight from reality was during the aftermath of the 1992 election when Eoghan Harris organised an ard fheis that was part tragic cabaret and part sad quiz show.

In some sense, the real miracle is that Bruton surrvived as long as he did. He would have been dumped in the mid 1990s if the Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition had not gone into self-destruct mode and gifted Bruton the Taoiseach post.

The fact that Bruton could not hold onto power in 1997 while holding an election in such a positive environment showed just how much Fine Gael were slipping. Unemployment was falling, economic growth was at record levels and the negative aspects of overheating had not yet hit the 26-County economy and still Bruton could not produce a vote surge for Fine Gael.

The sad reality is that even though Bruton changed the colour of his suits and ties, while the party changed the tints of its livery and logo design, Fine Gael has been peddling a product that is little more than Fianna Fáil lite.

Fine Gael offer the same recipe of free market policies, pro-EU propaganda and an ever growing basket of tax cuts, just that little bit more watery than Fianna Fáil's electoral cola.

Now Bruton has been sacrificed because an Irish Times opinion poll published at the end of Janaury showed that despite all the scandals and crisis surrounding the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats coalition Fine Gael were actually dropping in the opinion polls.

Bruton was being dumped because of the opinions of 1,000 people over the age of 18 interviewed at 100 locations aroud the 26 Counties. Bruton said he was recognising a majority decision taken by elected representatives of his party. They were doing this on the whim of 1,000 mythical voters.

Jim Mitchell believes the party has image problems and Michael Noonan gave, according to his supporters, a ``superb analysis as to why the Fine Gael brand name and logo now meant nothing''.

It seems that they too do not realise that a new launch and rebranding of Fine Gael will mean nothing unless they can convince voters they actually beleive in something other than that they would be better managers of the economy than Fianna Fáil.

Fianna Fail have cornered the market on image. There is no room for another. Like the ad says ``Obey your thirst''. Come on Michael and Jim Some real beliefs when you're ready.

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