Party strategy meetings tread water as voter anger gives way to indifference

World of Politics with Harry McGee

I’m writing this from Waterford where Fianna Fáil is holding its annual September strategy meeting – or think-in to use the more vulgarian but widely inaccurate term. In the past the parties have coordinated them so that none have been held on the same day and that each would have its news cycle.

And back then, they worked for weeks to come up with some policy or organisational announcement – an ‘eye-opening initiative’ as we love to call them – that would feed the news cycle.

But not anymore. Now their currency has been devalued. No Inchdoney Strategy. No criticism of decentralisation. No alternative budgetary strategies. Or party strategy papers – at least not for public consumption.

Everything that is of real merit is discussed in private. And what is given to the media is a well-gnawed bone.

So it was no great surprise to learn that all three major parties would hold their think-ins on the same day, on Monday of this week, two days before the return of the Dáil after the summer break.

Sure – Enda Kenny disclosed during his dinner to Fine Gael that the general election will not be held until March 2016….in other words the Government will go to its full term. That’s hardly a surprise given that governments with such a strong majority usually go for as long as possible.

What has happened to devalue these meetings so much? Well a combination of things. For one, the debacle of the Fianna Fáil think-in (or was it drink-in?) in 2010 did a fair bit of damage and spoiled the brand.

Fine Gael felt stung last year when the Daily Mail ran a cynical story bemoaning the fact that with the country in recession the party enjoyed a five-course meal. The reality was that the correspondent who wrote the story had no qualms about partaking fully in the meal, which was in fact a seven-course affair, but downgraded by the Mail to a five-course affair for nothing other than reasons of alliteration in the headline: Five Course Feast for Fine Gael. The Mail did a similar number at the Labour conference the following day.

So the parties have become wary of overselling or overhyping their events. The result is that they have become a husk, a shell of what they were before.

There are also the peculiar circumstances that pertain this year. Unlike other years, there are two major events which will take place within weeks of the Dail returning – the Seanad referendum on October 4 and the Budget on October 15.

Unsurprisingly, the main stories that emerged from all the meetings either concerned the referendum or the Budget. It was exactly the same at the Sinn Fein think-in last Friday week.

It is the private sessions of the meetings that are the most pertinent because it is there that TDs and Senators get a chance to discuss strategy for the forthcoming Dail term, voice their concerns or criticisms of policy or the leadership, and also plan for upcoming elections – and for now, the soonest are the local and European elections that take place next year.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune