Politics is full of cliches. One that pops up time and again, in every democracy on the planet, is that when a party is struggling and unpopular, somebody will suggest that it is time for that party to “get back to its core values”. This usually involves removing a leader who the faithful regard as having been seduced by unpopular and fanciful ideas, and replacing him with a true party man (or woman) who will – as John Major once said – get “back to basics”.
There’s a bit of that afoot now, in Fianna Fáil and in Fine Gael, as both parties continue to sink in the polls and the fiasco of the Presidential election continues to reverberate through backbench whatsapp groups and grassroots (to the extent there is much of a grassroots left in either party) feedback. There is a little bit of a movement to get back to said traditional values, and political basics.
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