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Brian Cowen’s speech to Humbert Summer School
Read more about: Bertiegate, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour Party, Laoighis-Offaly 
Fianna Fail have made available the prepared text of Cowen’s remarks in Ballina this afternoon. One could question what the value added of the pugnacious speech is, especially as the event is presumably intended to leave some of the partisan politics aside for a little while. Nevertheless it does usefully collect the FF (and ex post media) conventional wisdom about the election in one place: that the opposition was never credible, that Bertie won the debate, that the Bertiegate revelations backfired, and that the electorate swung to FF once they managed to break through the negative media narrative. Beyond that, a couple of specific things worthy of note.
Cowen is sticking to his allegation that the Bertiegate revelations were politically motivated –
It remains a fact that confidential material was selectively leaked by a person or persons unknown with the sole intent of causing Bertie Ahern significant electoral damage. Only material which might cause damage was leaked, while other material was withheld.
That’s a highly specific allegation, including an attribution of motive. Perhaps we’ll know more in September when Mahon resumes. But does Cowen actually know something or is it bluster?
We have made mistakes over the years, but we’ve also got many things right.
He never lists any of the mistakes. Especially not Aer Lingus privatization. (the speech contains some boilerplate commitment to Shannon).
Finally, in a section probably written before Pat Rabbitte’s resignation, but nonetheless functioning as obituary –
Pat Rabbitte will clearly never admit that his decision to move to a more stridently anti-Fianna Fáil strategy through a formal pact with Fine Gael removed any possibility of significantly improving Labour’s performance – but this is an unmistakable lesson from the election. In 30 years Labour has never once gained through a formal pre-election pact with Fine Gael and this record was extended again in May.
Which relates to all the discussion on this blog at the moment. Some might say that it was the fatal pact with Albert Reynolds that did them in, but does their electorate have that long a memory? Nevertheless it’s clear that a lack of dynamism in the Labour vote has crippled any alternative government. The irony is, as Worldbystorm said, Bertie likely would have preferred a deal with Labour for reasons of both simplicity and packaging (being the last socialist in Ireland and all).
So did Cowen just wink to the Labour leadership candidate pool not to forget that his party could still come courting in a few years time?
Now that’s what I call interesting!
Cowens analysis has a point though, it was a campaign that was almost universally good in the national media. Rabbitte played the PR game brilliantly and Enda didnt embarass himself at all.
Then came the debates where FF really managed to eke out a win, despite media outlets calling a draw. This underlines two things for me, one the media is not the barometer of voter sentiment at all but the response of educated political observers with certain ideas of correct campaigning and secondly the FF means to win elections is to go straight to door steps.
Cowen implicitly understands this and the next leader of Labour needs to understand it too. I think he is also very interesting on the Shannon issue. He supports the current line, supports Dempsey etc but excuses willy quite explicitly. Im sure many in Transport blew their tops at Willy questioning the quality of advice but Cowen doesnt seem to mind. Perhaps an indication of his own ideas/loyalties as leader (and a fellow 19,000+ vote getter)
Here’s the Irish Times story which covers the interesting Cowen remarks re Shannon that Cian refers to (which were outside his prepared speech). Speaking of Shannon, there’s a very slight window that might have opened to cut a deal with British Midland to run a flight from there. BMI have announced that they are axing plans to run their own new US service from Heathrow next year, fearing that Heathrow is too overwhelmed with the security/baggage problems and then the changeover to T5 to run the service properly. One wonders if they have a little spare capacity now that with the right inducement could be brought to Shannon. They offer the only real prospect of long-haul competition for Ireland outside of the One World (BA-EI) alliance.
Cowen’s speech was full of triumphalism, and the usual bluster from biffo. He did not allude to the fact that he and Bertie went to see Dr. Sir Anthony O Reilly prior to the election.Then the Indo changed and we had the Eoghan Harris scenario, which was paidback by a seat in the Senate.Caligula made his horse a senator,Bertie made this chamelion donkey a senator for his coat trailing.
Speech by Tánaiste Brian Cowen TD at the Humbert Summer School
In the weeks after the General Election leaders of Fine Gael rushed around the country finding every available platform to give us their interpretation of what had just happened.
Speech by Brian Cowen at 16:00 Yesterday
Where others decided to take time to reflect, they set about trying to redefine victory to include returning to opposition. They also sought ever more creative ways of maintaining heightened rhetoric of the campaign. Quite apart from the fact that they have been trying to sell self-serving nonsense, I believe that this tactic points to a fundamental failure to understand the message which the people have sent all of us who are active in public affairs.
There is no single explanation for why this election brought a result which defied the conventional wisdom contained in the overwhelming body of predictions. But what we now know for sure is that there is a major gap between the manner and content of much political debate and an electorate which is operating on a much more sophisticated and independent level.
That electorate did not buy into the idea that we live in a state of near permanent crisis and preferred instead to focus on the longer-term. At the end of an election cycle longer than ever previously endured, the people rejected much of the permanent campaigning they had been subjected to: Instead they reflected. They took a cold look at the direction of the country; and they evaluated the respective leaders on the basis of who enjoyed the most public confidence. The result was a dramatic change in public opinion and a truly historic outcome for Bertie Ahern and Fianna Fáil.
2007 Challenges Conventional WisdomAfter the 2002 contest, many interpretations were developed to try to explain the fact that a government had won re-election for the first time in over thirty years. Indeed, in 2002 the Fianna Fail led government was the first European government to be re-elected in greater numbers in a quarter century. One interpretation that was particularly popular was the idea that Fianna Fáil had supposedly been given an easy ride by the media.
That explanation is not likely to be resurrected after the last election. No one could conceivably say this about 2007. Two very detailed analyses by RTE and MediaMarket show a picture of at times relentlessly negative coverage for Fianna Fáil. Equally clear from this publicly available research is the softness of the coverage of Fine Gael in general and their leader in particular.
In the rush to confirm a narrative which had been in development since the 2004 local elections more fundamental factors were missed which came out with force during the campaign and especially after the leader’s debate.
Fianna Fáil didn’t win this election because of a single factor, but because of a combination of our record; the policies we put to the people; our candidates and organisation in the 43 constituencies and; of course, because of the exceptional leadership of Bertie Ahern. These are the factors which enabled us to fight and win a difficult election.
RecordThe opposition adopted the strategy of trying to dismiss our years in office as amounting to nothing. According to their words, everything bad was the fault of the government and everything good has happened in spite of the government. This superficial dismissal was never going to wash with the electorate. In addition, they presented a picture of a country where the problems far outweighed the progress.
We have made mistakes over the years, but we’ve also got many things right. There has been a partnership between the hard work and commitment of the Irish people and their government and this was always going to be a strong foundation for us. Being in government often means having to say no to interest groups. This is something the public appear to understand more than the opposition, who seemed to be unable to say no to any group. Enda Kenny’s speech at the INO conference stood in marked contrast to that of Brian Lenihan and the public could see who was more serious about the balancing of interests required to govern a country.
A period which saw sustained increases in employment, reductions in poverty, increases in pensions, lower taxation and sound fiscal policies was a strong record to be standing on. However, while we were proud of our record and were always going to defend it, we were determined to fight this election on the basis of our plans for the future.
PoliciesThe public have a right to expect us to be ambitious for our country, but we equally have to be realistic. We decided to outline a significant programme of action which would not match the breadth and scale of the alternative. A core point for us was to show the public the programme as a whole, rather than follow a cherry-picking approach. We also very deliberately did not match the launches and advertising campaigns of the opposition in 2005 and 2006, because we believed that there was no public appetite for the endless politics of a permanent campaign.
When it was launched, our programme was attacked by some for containing so much and supposedly being in contrast to our previous words. This criticism completely missed the point. We were moving from the business of completing a defined term to a campaign seeking another term. Setting out a five-year programme involves a significant number of areas and funding. It is not an annual budget statement and it is exactly the time to outline substantial new commitments. In terms of the idea that we were being irresponsible, the fact is that we said we would promise significantly less new spending than others and that is what happened. It was the first time in history that someone offering less has been accused of auction politics.
An important part of our programme was to be fully transparent about the order of priorities and set out a clear macroeconomic framework within which we wanted to operate. When clarification was sought during the campaign, as it was on a number of occasions, I and others gave more specific details about what would happen in different circumstances.
We did not go for the soundbite approach to policy, trying to focus on a couple of issues targeted at swing voters. We offered a more complicated platform which showed how we see our country developing in the years ahead. As we got to the end of the campaign this had a significant impact, standing up to scrutiny and standing in contrast to our opponents. That is one of the reasons why the Contract with Ireland offered by the Fine Gael leader did not survive the scrutiny of daylight, once it was challenged by the Taoiseach in their debate.
OrganisationWith so much media coverage taken up with other matters, our ability to get a policy message to the public was more constrained. There is no doubt that the Fianna Fáil organisation throughout the country was central to us overcoming this hurdle. We are living in an era where parties find it harder to mobilise activists, but ours remains the only political organisation in the country which is active in every community. During this election it had a very significant impact. One example of this is the distribution of 1 million leaflets by unpaid activists in the last 10 days.
CandidatesThese activists worked on behalf of an incredibly strong field of candidates. The absence of most of them from ballots in the 2004 local elections was significant and their return for this contest was a huge boost. We sought to offer a balance of experience and new faces – as well as ensuring that we didn’t waste opportunities by running too many candidates. We had strong tickets throughout the country and this was a central part of beating expectations to win seats like Monaghan and Meath East as well as hold many seats which were written off by pundits.
LeadersOne factor which has been rightly pointed to in post-election analysis as having been decisive was the leadership of the largest parties. Every serious survey has shown that when directly faced with a choice of either Bertie Ahern or Enda Kenny for the position of Taoiseach, the public went overwhelmingly for Bertie Ahern.
They did so in spite of the unprecedented pressure which he had come through in the first weeks of the campaign. The public showed that they have an innate sense of fair play and perspective which is willing to hear all of the information before reaching a conclusion. It remains a fact that confidential material was selectively leaked by a person or persons unknown with the sole intent of causing Bertie Ahern significant electoral damage. Only material which might cause damage was leaked, while other material was withheld.
No person should have to go through what Bertie Ahern endured in those weeks and we can learn a lot from the public’s balanced and reflective response. After ten years, the public were not going to be rushed into making a judgement on the Taoiseach. They know him pretty well by now and they understand that he is not motivated by personal gain. They have seen the progress made under his leadership. He has never been a specialist in the soundbite approach to politics, but he has more than made up for this in the substance of his achievements.
The formation of a new Northern Executive and the events at the Boyne were reminders to the public of his truly historic contribution to the building of peace and reconciliation on this island. At Westminister they saw how he represents us with distinction as a statesman, showing how ours is a confident, forward-looking, European democracy which will not let age-old barriers get in the way of lasting progress. The testimonies of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and George Mitchell in our broadcasts resonated because their sentiments were shared by a public which knows that the choices made by Bertie Ahern as our Taoiseach, and not chance, stand at the heart of much of what we have achieved in the last decade.
I have no interest in trying to diminish Enda Kenny. The politics of personal destruction should have no place in this country. We’ve seen too much of “play the man not the ball” in recent years and I honestly believe that it impresses no one. But when it comes to choosing the leader of our country comparisons have to be made between the candidates. In Election 2007, there was no doubt as to who the public believed was the more capable, informed, experienced and in-touch of the candidates.
The DebateThis was confirmed by the reaction to the leaders’ debate in the week before polling. I believe that this reaction was so overwhelming because it marked a decisive break from the type of media campaign which the public had experienced in the previous few years. It was a serious debate about substantive matters. It was also a very unusual occasion by being a genuinely mass political event. Over 1 million people watched it, and the 62% rating it received is very rare in modern elections.
In the debate, Fine Gael policy and their leader were put on the spot and subjected to hard scrutiny for the first time in five years. After three weeks where Fianna Fáil’s attempt to talk about policy had been dismissed in a mass of comment informed by selective and deliberately damaging leaks, we were able to talk about the issues of real concern to the public. It should not be surprising that they watched and listened intently to a debate that revolved around real issues, and that they formed strong opinions on the basis of what they watched with their own eyes and heard with their own ears.
No one now seriously questions that the Taoiseach systematically dismantled Fine Gael’s election strategy that night. He showed a real command of the detail of the policies that most concern the public. He did not offer easy solutions and was willing to answer hard challenges. He treated the public like adults who are willing to hear complex information instead of a constant drip-feeding of soundbites.
The general failure of the media to understand the impact of the debate should raise more questions than it has. Leaving aside the few who actually called the debate for Enda Kenny, the consensus was that nothing much has happened. The Irish Times led with “Kenny scores on confidence and Ahern on detail” and the Irish Independent with “Ahern shades it but fails to land knockout”. Some commentary even promoted the idea that viewership would have fallen significantly after 10 o’clock, thereby reducing the debate’s importance.
I believe what this reflected was an attachment to what the Americans refer to as an “inside the Beltway” approach to politics. In the Irish context, this is a view that what matters most is the received wisdom of those who spend all day talking about politics. This received wisdom had it that Enda Kenny and Fine Gael had broken through to the public and that Bertie Ahern and Fianna Fáil were fatally wounded. It was exactly the confidence and style that Kenny was reported to have shown in the debate that was praised in regular editorials commenting on the fact that he had made himself Taoiseach-in-waiting because of a performance in the Dáil. The immediate post-debate assessment merely reflected the same interpretation which had become dominant in recent years.
Scrutinising Both SidesAccording to the Irish Times’ polls, between April 26th and May 21st Fianna Fáil gained 7% and Fine Gael lost 4%. This was an unprecedented swing for an election campaign. I believe that some of this swing would have occurred before the campaign if the scrutiny which the Taoiseach subjected the opposition’s policies to in the debate had been part of coverage in the weeks and years before the election.
I don’t want to talk too much about this, but I believe it is a fair reading of the opposition’s strategies to say that avoiding having to answer detailed questions about a comprehensive programme wasn’t just a chance occurrence, it was a deliberate strategy. For example, both Fine Gael and Labour went through the entire 2002-2007 period without once publishing a detailed alternative to the annual Budget. Instead, they moved to a policy of budget soundbites, where they acted like groups listing demands but not accepting the responsibility of prioritising.
Earlier this year we published a list of just 100 of the demands or promises which the opposition had made, together with detailed and publicly accessible costings. The response we got to this was the quite extraordinary one that we had no right to try to hold them accountable for what they had said. The more we tried to engage in a debate on what the self-declared “ready to govern” alternative was proposing, the less scrutiny they received.
Ultimately, the leaders debate ensured that the public was finally given access to scrutiny of both alternative governments and leaders. It marked a victory of substance over style and it exposed a general failure to understand that the Irish public refuses to conform to a superficial view of how they see politics and politicians.
FG performance and the Labour PactFine Gael is right in pointing out that it gained a very significant number of seats in this election. However, it has failed to mention important points concerning this performance.
The 2007 result for Fine Gael is only dramatic because of the equally dramatic and historically low base set in 2002. Many seats that were lost because of appalling vote management were recovered and the party managed to avoid many of the elemental mistakes of the previous election. For all of this, they fundamentally failed to convince the public of the necessity of a complete change of direction for our government. The populism which won so many positive press reviews never connected with a significant body of public opinion – probably because it was so obviously opportunistic.
Their biggest achievement was to attain unquestioned leadership of the opposition – so that anti-government votes would be significantly more likely to go to them than elsewhere. The key person in making this happen was not a member of Fine Gael, but the leader of the Labour Party.
Pat Rabbitte will clearly never admit that his decision to move to a more stridently anti-Fianna Fáil strategy through a formal pact with Fine Gael removed any possibility of significantly improving Labour’s performance – but this is an unmistakable lesson from the election. In 30 years Labour has never once gained through a formal pre-election pact with Fine Gael and this record was extended again in May.
Post-ElectionThe people had their say and their representatives did their duty in negotiating a programme for government which recognises that no one party was given a majority. In particular, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party were able to conclude tough but productive negotiations which respect our different mandates on the basis of an ambitious but responsible programme for the next five years.
We have moved on to the business of shaping the next five years while others seem to have returned to business as usual. There has been no reduction in the hype and attacks which so marked the opposition’s previous term. It seems that there is no issue too complex which cannot be reduced to a populist soundbite.
If we have learned anything from this election it is that this is an approach which has an impact which lasts only until the first real scrutiny appears.
Governing a complex, modern democracy such as ours requires commitment to serious debate, especially where new threats emerge. The rush to judgement might win more headlines, but it doesn’t aid informed debate and it doesn’t win elections.
EconomyIt is right that the economy is receiving a lot of attention at the moment. We are a successful economy because we are part of the global economy and therefore we cannot expect to be immune from the impact of economic cycles. The challenge to politicians is try to react responsibly and not do damage by well-meaning but badly thought-out reflexive initiatives.
Over the last ten years we have successfully come through a number of international downturns, most notably the recession of 2002/3. Ireland suffered less and came out stronger than most countries because we kept our focus on the long-term.
The old model where the state attempted to control every short-term economic change failed here as it has ultimately failed everywhere it has been tried. There is no doubt that the international economy is facing into a period of potential difficulty and there is equally no doubt as to what our priorities should be.
First of all we have to push forward with work to increase the productive capacity of the economy. The National Development Plan remains central to achieving this goal. It will ensure that we maintain a level of capital investment well above European averages, using this in particular to develop infrastructure and skills.
We also need to show a sense of restraint both in terms of fiscal policies and our individual demands. There is nothing more short-term than spending or pay increases which bring satisfaction today but undermine our ability to maintain high levels of employment.
In the last month there has also been a lot of comment about the future of Shannon Airport and the West as a whole. Earlier this week the Taoiseach announced an initiative designed to ensure that full information concerning the economic importance of different routes is available. I want to reiterate his commitment to the development of Shannon and the fact that we see it as an important part of the infrastructure of a growing and prosperous West. I was happy to work with the board and management of Knock Airport in recent times which has resulted in significant further investment being allocated to the development of that airport. I believe this will increase its significance as an economic driver of development to this part of the West also.
The inclusion of the West in a separate region for the purposes of both investment programmes and preferential rules for supporting business creation marked a major breakthrough in policy. Today the BMW region is in the middle of benefiting from a systematic and ambitious programme of development. The investment framework is set out in the National Development Plan, including Transport 21 and the planning framework is outlined in the National Spatial Strategy which is being incorporated into our long term investment plans.
In area after area of vital social and economic infrastructure real progress for communities throughput the region is being achieved.
Under the NDP the West will see further major infrastructure projects undertaken. The Atlantic Corridor road project, further investment in the railway system, new bus routes, investment in education and a wide range of initiatives to develop the West economically and socially are envisaged in the implementation of the NDP.
Today the population of the West is rising for the first time in living memory. Where as recently as five years ago, unemployment in the region was over 1½% higher than in the rest of the country, it is down to within 1/2%. The CSO has also shown that the income gap with the rest of the country is falling and that differentials in the cost of living and housing mean that the gap is actually narrower again.
There are people who would counter by producing their own statistics and claim that nothing is changing. This is simply not true. I believe passionately in the future of the West and part of this is the need to push forward with systematic programmes of investment and prioritisation.
For the first time in decades the agenda in the West is development not decline. I and my colleagues in government are absolutely committed to working with the people of the West over the next five years to make sure that this development continues and is built upon.
ConclusionElection 2007 was a challenge to how we discuss and understand the practice of politics. The people disagreed with the received wisdom of how they should and would behave. Ultimately the politics of long-term policies won over the politics of the short-term news-cycle. An almost obsessive discussion of tactics had little impact while a substantive debate on the issues, when it eventually emerged, had a profound impact.
I believe that we have achieved much in partnership with the people. As we said during the election, Ireland is a better place today than it was ten years ago and it can be even better. The public quite simply didn’t recognise their country in the heightened and negative rhetoric of the campaigning that went on for most of the five years before polling day.
Since May Fine Gael have chosen to adopt the approach of claiming victory and pushing on with the same strategy. That is their choice. For our part, we believe that the public expect politicians to use the period between elections to concentrate on the business at hand rather than trying to provoke a permanent campaign.
There was nothing easy or inevitable about it, but, ultimately, 2007 was a victory of substance over style – and this is a very welcome message about the health of our democracy.
ENDS
Labour in coalition with FF agreed to a tax amnesty. I think that this may have seriously damaged the party. It was a serious error of judgement in my view. I note that Brian Cowen failed to mention this.
Argubly Labour’s decision in 1932 to prop up De Valera helped FF to wrest the working class vote.
If Cowen had a chance to give that speech now what a laugh it would be. It was typical of him, master of his brief, midlands mauler, took no prisoners and what have you. Would he be not ashamed of himself backing Bertie. But of course he was part of that triumvirate opf Bertie, McCreevy and himself who ruined this country for decades to come. Our children and grandchildren will have to pay for it. 300,000 unoccupied houses, jobless njumbers rising. And Mr. Cowen saqw fit to sing from the back of a lorry in Offaly, “I did itg my way”.