My natural party is Fine Gael. Please don’t hold that against me. I grew up in a Fine Gael household. My father, who was a journalist, almost became press secretary to Liam Cosgrave, but alas for him, the massive defeat Cosgrave suffered in the 1977 General Election put paid to that.
My grandfather, who was also a journalist, knew Michael Collins well, and in fact, met him the day before Collins was shot dead.
Growing up, our house came down on the side of Garrett in the Garrett vs Charlie fight, even though Charlie and my father get on well.
But now, and for many years, I have regarded myself as a Fine Gaeler-in-exile, with no true political home anymore. I know quite a few people in a similar position and they’re not all in my age group.
My reasons for being in a sort of exile were reinforced by last week’s protests. Fine Gael once again proved what a spectacularly out-of-touch party it has become. Once upon a time, Fine Gael would have listened to farmers and known what was on their mind. For sure, you will be able to find staunch Fine Gael-supporting farmers who strongly disapproved of what some of their fellow farmers were doing last week. But still, Fine Gael should have seen this coming and so, of course, should Fianna Fail. I also know many Fianna Failers-in-exile.
The leadership of the two parties must have been shocked when a Sunday Independent poll last weekend found that 56pc of the public sided with the protestors.
To honest, I never thought I would become the sort of person who sympathised with the protests we saw last week, but there it is. I did think it was wrong to blockade Whitegate and Rosslare because that was putting a disproportionate burden on ordinary people and I thought would lose the protestors support. But overall, I thought the protests were justified as a way of making a government that won’t listen, listen.
A person like me, a natural Fine Gaeler, that is, and a conservative to boot, is meant to be against disrupting the country. I’m supposed to be fully on the side of law and order.
The economist, David Higgins, made some good points in his column in The Irish Independent on Tuesday when he said no conservative should have supported what the protesters were doing because they were so disruptive.
He added that no fiscal conservative should support an approach that wants to cut taxes and boost spending because that is the way to financial disaster. He’s right about that, of course. My approach is that we should slow down the current very fast pace of spending increases and in that way create more room for tax relief, including to the huge excise duty on fuel.
We seem to have forgotten in this country that every penny the State takes out of our pockets in tax must be justified. Successive governments now seem to almost think it is the other way around: that is, we must justify keeping our own money.
It is particularly galling that a party like Fine Gael, which is supposed to be on the side of taxpayers, isn’t. Fine Gael is basically trapped in the suffocating social democratic consensus of our political system which extends, of course, to social issues, something conservatives find intensely alienating.
Fine Gael even wanted to curb free speech when Helen McEntee was Justice Minister. Incredible.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fail were caught on the hop by these protests. But they were also caught badly on the hop by the protests outside asylum-centres. People in small towns don’t like waking up one day to discover their local hotel is no longer a hotel and no-one had bothered to consult them, and to be told into the bargain that only ‘racists’ would be against such a thing. Imagine being lectured to in this way by high-handed politicians representing constituents that will never have to worry about asylum-centres being put anywhere near them?
The Government was caught on the hop again when its two referendums were shot down in flames two years ago.
In last year’s presidential election Fianna Fail and Fine Gael were completely humiliated. A big left-wing (and rebel) vote went to Catherine Connolly. Maria Steen could not even get into the race because, well, the political establishment doesn’t like her sort of person: too conservative, too Catholic, too awful. Those of us who do like her (at least 20pc of the electorate according to polls) got the message. You hate us as well.
It is the sheer contempt that the leadership of both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail show conservatives that has us feeling so badly alienated. Not that they care. They want us to go away and die in a corner. Yes, we know what you think of us.
But then they shouldn’t be so surprised when people like me end up sympathising with last week’s protests. And don’t be surprised when exiled Fine Gaelers and Fianna Failers end up voting for the likes of Aontu, or Independent Ireland, or whatever other local candidate strikes our fancy and is at least somewhat in sync with our values.
Why in the world would we vote for Fine Gael and Fianna Fail when they have become so bad at governing, so out of touch, so ideologically captured, and at the same time so arrogant and contemptuous of those who used to support them? You’d be mad not to rebel against that.