Fine Gael must find a story and stick to it…

Enda has pulled out a lot of stops including, perhaps, pulling in the odd favour from an old friend. His big mistake was trying to take out his capable deputy, Richard Bruton (though to be fair, he may not have had much choice by that stage). In parts it carries the smack of desperate injustice, or at least a very bad metropolitan dose of inveterate culchie hating… Kenny managed not only to pull together a party decimated by under the leadership of Michael …

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Fine Gael: yet more blood to be spilled on the carpet…

Well Harry was right… And we’ve not seen the end of it yet, by a long way… This evening ten (out of 17) Fine Gael front benchers have walked out and looking in no uncertain way for the head of Enda Kenny… The Emergency have the shorthand below: Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across …

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Fine Gael – Richard Bruton sacked!

RTE report that in the last hour Enda Kenny has sacked Deputy Leader and Finance Spokesman Richard Bruton. This comes after Bruton had told Kenny he no longer had his support, and certainly brings the matter of a Fine Gael leadership challenge to a head. Per the report The move means Mr Bruton will not be in a position to table a motion of no confidence in his party leader at tomorrow’s front bench meeting. It may indicate that Enda …

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What are the prospects for a smooth change in FG?

I suspect that it is obvious at this point that the possibility of a change at the top of FG has increased in the last 48 hours and I suspect, despite the way things are being played in the media, the likelihood of this change over being a smooth and relatively bloodless one has increased too. I believe that Enda Kenny knows that his race as currently constituted has been run and a significant change in approach is needed. It would seem plain to me that neither he nor the party at large simply can’t overcome the incorrect perception of him that has fixed itself in the mind of the electorate. I say this as a fan of the man, I believe he would be a superb Taoiseach but too large a portion of the electorate can’t see that and no matter what we do we appear to not be able to make the electorate see that. So the key question then becomes what do we do about it?

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Fine Gael’s impending crisis of leadership…

For understandable reasons tomorrow’s news in Northern Ireland and Britain will be dominated by the long awaited arrival of Lord Saville’s long awaited (and stashed for politically motivated reasons) report on Bloody Sunday. We will no doubt be doing our best to  bring you the coverage. But the big events in Irish politics may be happening south of the border. Part the first: the full meeting tomorrow morning of the Fine Gael parliamentary party who are thought to have been …

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