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IT SEEMS A long time ago that Lucinda Creighton ended months of speculation by launching a new party with the promise of new politics, governing in the sunshine and a new way of doing things in Ireland.
Renua Ireland’s launch was met which much scepticism, particularly as there wasn’t ‘the big name’ many observers felt it needed to get off the ground.
Instead, we were left with financial guru Eddie Hobbs and the unanswered question of whether he was going to run for the party. He’s definitely not, he confirmed today.
In the six months since its launch Renua has been recruiting members, setting up constituency organisations, selecting election candidates, raising money – although possibly not much – and has also competed in its first by-election, where Patrick McKee acquitted himself admirably.
But the party is facing a number of problems right now.
One of them is finding enough candidates to run in the general election. Renua has selected just 11 of the at least 40 candidates it wants to run in every Dáil constituency and is well-behind the mainstream political parties.
Creighton’s call for Enda Kenny to immediately go to the country is somewhat puzzling when one senior party future admitted today that Renua is not ready for a general election.
When we put this to Lucinda, she was dismissive, insisting:
We’ll be ready, don’t worry about us.
But the simple fact of the matter is that Renua would be scrambing to get names on tickets if the election was called tomorrow. To some extent Creighton’s bravado sums-up another of Renua’s problems.
Efforts to scrutinise the party and its policies are met with broad and sweeping statements about how that’s ‘the old way of doing things’ and typical of an establishment of begrudgers in Leinster House and the media.
When Fianna Fáil’s legal advisor Jim O’Callaghan pointed to flaws in Renua’s proposal to make all of the attorney general’s advice to government public, Creighton reverted to criticising his views as being typical of the establishment way of doing things.
All that said we can’t accuse Renua of not having policies. They smartly took advantage of the August silly season to put out a rash of policy papers that garnered the level of media coverage they wouldn’t normally have got.
The trouble is that all the policies in the world haven’t yet established a coherent message that easily defines Renua’s identity and what its about. Labelling the party as Fine Gael-lite isn’t, at this moment, an inaccurate assessment.
Even with the policy-less Social Democrats we at least know they are committed to an economic model not unlike that in some Nordic countries. That’s a big idea that Renua lacks.
Today, Renua held a think-in ahead of the return of the Dáil later this month. Unlike other parties this was entirely open to the media to report on, a welcome development for those who hung around beyond the opening speeches.
There were wide-ranging discussions on the economy, rural Ireland, homelessness, water and health. But they were all too typical of what you might hear at a summer school.
There’s lots of talk about a better way of doing things and big ideas are put forward without any roadmap for how they are actually implemented.
In his address to the assembled crowd former Libertas leader Declan Ganley – who likes Renua but isn’t running for the party – said:
I love start-ups, this is a start-up with a bold vision and idea… I hope it will succeed in upsetting the status quo.
In Creighton’s words, this start-up is looking at “shaking up the political system, rattling a few cages and hopefully winning a signifiant number of seats at the next election”.
She also described her party as “the epitome” of ambition. There’s no doubt about that but fulfilling it will be a challenge that, on the evidence of the polls, the party has not yet managed to do.
For their own sake, Creighton and Renua should be hoping the election is a few months off yet.
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Replace right wing with left wing and the headline sentence is exactly the same
@Johnny King:
Agreed.
Extremists, on either side, are not big into building consensus.
@Johnny King: until these terms stop making money for the media we will continue to hear about it.
There is no far right in Ireland. Just people with common sense. The brutal truth is those who disagree are part of the establishment!
@Irish Axe: Oh, there are far right here alright.
They burn down hotels and hostels.
And attack those they chose to dislike.
@Irish Axe: Yup, typically transparent attempt to convert various lawlessness and extreme anti-social behaviour into ‘common sense’. At least you didn’t fall back on ‘patriotism’.
@Irish Axe: Wrong. Dumb fks without a decent bone in their body.
@Irish Axe: #0.9%
@Irish Axe: you’re right as the far-right only got less than 1% of support. Common sense voted 52% for FFG so eat that!!!!!
@9QRixo8H: It’s so p@ťhetically funny seeing the usual sč̣obie brigade constantly harping on about the far right bogeymen, when in reality they refer to ordinary people that don’t want our country further destroyed by foreigners.
It’s a psychotic condition, often associated with taking hallucinogenic drugs, and is especially prevalent amongst a number of cohorts.
These include existing illegal immigrants, people working in the NGO illegal immigration industry as well as our own lifelong dole merchants who believe that there is a limitless amount of money and homes for a limitless stream of illegal immigrants.
@Thomas Sheridan: I think you hit nearly every dog-whistle point. Well done!
@Irish Axe: There is a right wing, they believe everything on social media and all sorts of weird and wonderful story’s.
A lot of it is completely off the wall.
One great lie that did the rounds was bus loads of immigrant’s been bused around to vote as instructed. Depending on where you are , it was the greens, FF, FG, SF and even a few independents were accused of it. Off the wall stuff!
If you read their literature , they are far right and bigotry and discrimination are not common sense.
The problem is they moved the centre. Nothing wrong with being right wing in the traditional sense. It’s good for those of that persuasion to have suitable candidates. Because the main parties made a bollix of immigration policies, it opened the door for far right cabbages to make themselves known. The far right will simply drop off if we get immigration fixed, a big ask, admittedly. I don’t think expecting sensible border controls to be a right wing thing anyway. All parties should be in favour of that.
@ecrowley ecrowley: No, they didn’t move to the center.
(Economic) Right wing parties want open borders.
That gives employers a greater pool of people seeking employment, keeping wages lower than they would otherwise be.
That gives businesses larger markets for their goods and services, increasing profits.
That creates more demand for housing, benefiting landlords, developers, banks, estate and rental agents, solicitors…
It is harmful to people already here.
But we don’t count.
Had to stop reading such a pompous, cracked, old age mouth scutterer rambling. There’s alot wrong that’s gone on/is happening in the workings of this country, and no matter how you paint it, reality is sf/sd’s are up in councils seats while ffgrns are down over 100 between them. This will continue going into a general election with right sided parties (mainly independent Ireland) gaining ground slowly also.
@James Reardon: The government parties are down 67 between them. I think you’ll find that that isn’t ‘over 100′.
@Brendan O’Brien: oh well, still down a nice chunk. Good to see one of the journal comment dwellers on standby for correction. *thumbs up
Seems anything right-leaning is “far right” for this current Government that does literally everything against its own system.
Hypocritical click bait article.
Nope, our right-leaning govt have 52% of support, but your far-right has zero percent of support!!! And we will go more rightwing in bringing in more landlordism and vulture funds because that is what is needed and you far right don’t understand this
@9QRixo8H: “You you you”, don’t ever recall posting my political stance. Do you make it a habit projecting yourself onto others, putting words into peoples’ mouths? Sound like a clown doing that.
@Kieran Menon: Peadar constantly sounds like a clown, I wouldn’t place any stock the ramblings of such a cr3tin.
Left wing? Right wing? No difference, really. Both are ultimately equally illiberal and authoritarian in their outlook. Each knows what’s good for you because you don’t, and they believe society needs to be strictly managed in accordance with their narrow vision, and if you don’t get with their program, you will be disciplined. You may even need to be re-educated! Strangely and somewhat slyly, they never tell you all this before they get into power, though. The older I get, the more cynical I become…
Activist journalism. The heads on those
“journalists”. All nerdy nutjobs.
He’s going mad that his parties go 0.9%!!!!!! His twitter is FULL of extreme-right reposts but sure he’s not far right he’s normal would never support a holocaust or racial segregation, right? RIGHT?
So F ing sick of this ‘far right’ rhetoric. Most of my families’ husbands and wives are from outside of Ireland… guess what though?? They came here with a legal Visa. This current Government and their Civil Servants couldn’t appoint one person who could even organise a school register legitimately let alone the electoral register. I for one am done.
One of the commenters in another article was throwing around the term insanity when it is pointed out that the taxpayers are funding the modelling community to say the planet is burning up, boiling, and things like that. This three-ring circus of academics, politicians, and the electorate is a remarkable spectacle as an exercise in dysfunctional social engineering.
The trap is to believe in left and right politics when the dynamics are academic politics operating through a social-political conduit, and reactions to this are seen as right politics. Journalists like the idea of left/right politics, but it is a distraction from people who like to be fair rather than ideologues.
Look at how academia works and how nature is incidental.
Restricting female bodily aurltonomy is not far right, who celebrated the success of Franco against the democratically elected government of Spain, the Vatican and the Catholic Church in Ireland, seems that the Irish never knew that who led them were far right for many years.
Thoroughly enjoying the demise of SF
@John D Doe: The party that increased its representation at both local and EU level?
Burning down abandoned hotels is nothing compared to what SF were doing during their ‘Long War’ .
There are five councillors elected who are critical of immigration. That is five out of one thousand.
And the thing is they are right, we have not enforced our own laws on immigration.
Far right (and Far left) means concentration camps – think Hitler, Stalin & Co.
Anyone throwing that terminology around in this country should be locked up – just so they know what they are saying.
$tup!d is the new clever and if you disagree your $tup!d
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