John McGuirk

One can easily understand – and empathise – with Lucinda Creighton’s frustration.  Irish politics is not – to put it mildly – overburdened with either vision or talent, two things which even her harshest critics would have to concede she possesses.

That Fine Gael have allowed this degree of alienation to exist between the leadership and their Deputy from Dublin South East is a problem for the party, one which calls into question Enda Kenny’s once-vaunted man-management skills and one which threatens to blow up in the party’s face at any time, as was demonstrated this week.

To be fair, Lucinda cannot claim to have been overlooked by her leader after her election. She was handed the job of European Affairs spokesperson – a job which played to her career-long obsession with all things European, and gave her the chance to establish a major profile for herself in the Lisbon referendum which at that stage still lay ahead. Lucinda could and should have taken advantage of that job and used it to build an image of competence and political skill. She did not, however, emerge as a major player in either of the two campaigns that proved neccessary to get the treaty over the line. Whether that is symptomatic of somebody who didn’t seize the moment or somebody who was stifled by her leadership is something that could be debated.

I know Lucinda quite well. It’s no secret that I worked quite hard to get her elected. She possesses many qualities I admire – passion, conviction, and a coherent and ordered view of how society should be run.

(Having a coherent view of how society should be run is something too often derided as “ideology” in Irish discourse, as if having a set of guiding principles is a bad thing. It’s one of the most dysfunctional traits of our polity that such people are regarded as outside the mainstream, while those who adopt any principle, so long as it is popular, are regarded as sensible and moderate.)

However, that conviction too often expresses itself as stubbornness, the passion is too often turned to visceral loathing of opponents, and the worldview is, from time to time, corrupted by blind adoration of all things European. Those are faults, to be sure. Yet those people who regard Lucinda as immature or naive are the ones making the error – for she is neither. She is first and foremost a conviction politician, who (rarely for an elected official) genuinely doesn’t care all that much about being “liked”. She is secondly absolutely fearless – she doesn’t get hurt by criticism in the way most of us do. And finally, she is relentless. If she decides that she wants something, she will concentrate on achieving it 24/7.

All of which is to say the following: Lucinda has, I suspect, crossed a rubicon in her own mind. She has realised, possibly belatedly, that she cannot expect a great deal of national party support for her own re-election campaign, and that she can probably forget about advancement within the party under the current regime. Whether this is because of her own lack of loyalty or Enda Kenny’s incompetence is largely irrelevant. She’s decided that she’s going to look after herself, because nobody else is going to do that. She’s decided that she’s going to say the things that she needs to say to get re-elected in her own constituency. And she’s decided that she’s going to say what she thinks is best for the country, regardless of what position her party holds.

As somebody who’s fought Lucinda, and fought alongside her, I suspect that the lady is not for turning. And in many ways, it’s refreshing to have somebody like that in national politics. In another way, you have to hope she’s not headed for the cliffs.