Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Finally somebody came out and said it. Finbarr Fitzpatrick, former General Secretary of Fine Gael, cut to the heart of the party's leadership problems when he told The Sunday Business Post recently that John Bruton "is tagged with a particular image of a rural rancher. He does not embody or personify a Fine Gael that people can find relevant or attractive."

But Fitzpatrick could have gone much further. Either he wasn't given or didn't take the opportunity to explain why this perception of Bruton as 'a rural rancher' so bedevils Fine Gael, for John Bruton is a most unconvincing standard-bearer for Fine Gael's new conservatism. He may extol free market values and crusade for the slashing of state bureaucracy and subsidies but who'll believe it from someone 'tagged . . . [as] . . . a rural rancher -tagged as one of the most subsidised group of all in Ireland.

Bruton's inability to transcend his background is why Fine Gael's Dublin vote has been decimated. Perceptions were simple and damning. John Bruton might chop away at the Irish state's finances and social support systems but he'd always fight for more money for the farmers in Brussels. It was and is no recipe to gain votes on Dublin's Northside.

political victim

Recent marginal improvements notwithstanding, this same unbalanced profile of Fine Gael support has continued through the recent disastrous polls. The party has maintained its support among larger farmers but lost heavily in every other social group. The result: Bruton's tenure as leader has exposed Fine Gael as a sectional party.

This perception becomes even more striking after a peek at the Progressive Democrats. The PDs are an urban not a rural party, who've targeted the young professional and business classes in the suburbs. Fine Gael have most effectively confronted the PDs in those Leinster five-seaters with the most prosperous farming communities, like John Bruton's own Meath, where O'Malley's party didn't elect a single deputy.

But because Fine Gael succeeded there, they lost elsewhere. The real clue to their abysmal performance in the last election came from the West. Even in those constituencies where they weren't expecting competition from Labour or the PDs, they couldn't take seats from Fianna Fail. Instead there was a surge to Labour in the most unexpected places. Like Cavan-Monaghan where Labour almost won a seat. Or the surprise election of Dr. Bhamjee in Clare.

All this leads to a most curious conclusion that the party's strategists might ponder. Fine Gael, far more than Fianna Fail, may be the political victim of the depopulation of rural Ireland. Thus this paradox: those market forces that John Bruton so enthusiastically supports, have undermined and even erased his party's vote.

His brand of economics can't seem so commendable to its victims. Those who leave the countryside either don't vote, or favour another party if they're forced to find work in Dublin. Meanwhile those who remain fine little reason in the changes that surround them to switch to Fine Gael.

true believers

John Bruton can't be expected to rewrite his background but a potential Taoiseach just might be expected to appreciate the problems of those less fortunate than himself. Yet again, however, his inability to transcend his background handicaps Fine Gael.

One could see this exposed in a recent Irish Times. On the same features page where Bruton was making an appeal to yuppie voters, columnist Fintan O'Toole coincidentally was focusing on the depopulation of West Clare.

Of course, Bruton couldn't be expected to foresee this unlucky juxtaposition. Even so, the contrast between the two articles and the two Irelands presumed in each was glaring. O'Toole saw the problems of Clare as economic, whereas Bruton's analysis was on improved communications between people and politicians. O'Toole was specific whereas Bruton was banal, penning the sort of naively idealistic guff that might be forgivable in a Clongowes' civics essay but not from the leader of the major opposition party.

People had become cynical, argued Bruton which truly translated meant they didn't trust Fine Gael. And for good reason. Waffle about communications problems doesn't win votes in Clare.

The bad, sad truth for Fine Gael is that the party is now battling for survival on three fronts. Firstly Labour have recaptured the social democratic vote Garret Fitzgerald stole from them. Secondly the Progressive Democrats have successfully skimmed off the yuppie vote. Thirdly even their share of the small farmer vote is threatened.

Will the party's commission have the right answers? More pertinently will is ask the right questions? A marketing-person's report that concentrates on improved party organisation and presentation is unlikely to halt the party's slide. Bruton might prefer if the commission confirmed the party's rightward tilt but only true believers will accept an Irish brand of Thatcherite economics from a rural rancher who can be relied on to scream bloody murder if the European Commission tampers with the farmers' loot from the CAP.

surface corruption

Besides, Bruton's Fine Gael got wrong-footed in both the Goodman and, to a lesser extent, the Greencore affairs. Both were obvious issues for Labour and DL but, without a farming vote to conciliate. Des O'Malley, even in government, could easily decide to challenge Goodman and upstage Fine Gael as the party of the honest right.

Bruton prevaricated. He could hardly antagonise those farms who sold their cattle to Larry Goodman. In consequence, his own image as opposition leader was blurred and, in the witness-box, Bruton was perceived as closer to Haughey and Reynolds than the politicos of other parties.

Bad luck, his supporters may claim, but this particular brand of misfortune will always be lurking for John Bruton. A significant amount of Irish beef is dumped into intervention or benefits from EC export subsidies, the areas in which Goodman specialised - but John Bruton, the arch-apostle of economic efficiency, was never likely to question these distortions of the market.

Of course Bruton wasn't alone. Most of the other politicians preferred to concentrate on the surface corruption not the system that caused it.

Uniquely vulnerable, Bruton never showed the imagination or the political ingenuity to stake out a position that might make common cause between farmers and urban voters.

All Fine Gael's four Taoisigh, Costello, Fitzgerald and the two Cosgraves were Dubliners. Its two other leaders who improved the party's electoral fortunes, Alan Dukes as a technocrat, and Richard Mulcahy as an old IRA fighter, could also claim to adding to the party's appeal.

Or to put it more exactly, Fine Gael functions best when it has a leader who appeals beyond its ranks and a deputy to reassure party loyalists. John Bruton's problem is that he remains the best deputy leader Fine Gael have.