The Irish Freedom Party
Give a dog a bad name
Observers of the "Far Right" tell us there are two kinds of right wing party. There's the personality focused, inward looking "extreme right" sort which in our case would be the National Party and then there's the sort they call "radical right".
Radical right parties are centred on the organisation rather than the leader. They're capable of gaining substantial electoral support and are intent on bringing rightist ideas in to everyday political discourse - radicalising the mainstream. The space for such a party obviously exists in Irish politics at the moment. But as mentioned this kind of party is supposed to be all about organisation. Which rules out the Freedom Party.
A few examples of how poorly organised the Freedom Party are will be given below. But rather than just carp on about it it's much more interesting to try to figure why the organisation is so poor.
The talent is there
Some of the disorganisation is down to incompetence and inattention but the one thing it can't be put down to is a lack of talent or ability in the ranks. Not a lot of people know this but there are plenty of professional, very capable members straight out of Trinity and UCD PoliSci departments in the Freedom Party. These and others are drawing up position papers (did you know the IFP has a position paper on Housing?) Some are even branching out on their own and organising other much more successful public initiatives.
So why aren't these people out in front and presenting the Freedom Party as a capable, professional and serious mainstream option?
“I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way.”
The claim here is that it is the toxic labelling of the party by their enemies that has proved so successful in holding them back. It has stopped the best of the party's members from coming forward, putting their heads above the parapet and taking control of the organisation. Among all the negative factors with which the party has had to cope it's the members' fear of reputational damage that has so severely limited it.
Changing the public image of the Freedom Party is doable. We are in a new environment where 75% of the electorate are waiting for an acceptable version of something like the IFP. The opportunity now exists to change how the Freedom Party is seen. But it will also require party members to believe there's enough left in the party name and structures and membership network to be worth the rescue effort.
Situation Normal All Fucked Up
There's a mortifying story out there about the shambles that occured when party officers needed to register the party. It's almost an origin legend. Messed up paperwork, called back in to resubmit, trying to redo forms with minutes to go, too drunk to manage. It's symbolic, a part that stands for the whole, a synecdoche of a fuck up.
There are young, media savvy, IT trained party members and allies in the backround who are nominally in charge of the party's social media output. When they're let at it the results are up there with the best. But what usually happens is that the better known faces of the party bypass this resource and call on their own MSPaint skills to craft would be memes. They ultimately, for good or ill, are responsible for the party's public image. Social media partners: Dunning and Kruger.
Eighteen people associated with the protest movement showed up in Brussels a month ago. They met Hermann and found him very pleasant. He showed them around and got them in to a major conference. Great. Exactly the kind of thing the Freedom Party should be doing. Except organising this had nothing to do with the Freedom Party. It was put together over the phone a few weeks earlier by two women assoicated with the Clondalkin protests. No connection with the Freedom Party at all.
Instead, three years in to this, the party is still only managing to put together outdoor events with sound systems going on and off mid speech, and on and off again, from generator to hand held megaphone to generator...
Over two months ago those who should be in a position to know were saying that within days candidates would be announced for next years local elections. Four at a time. Waves of them. So far there's been nothing - although some speakers at the recent Custom House event may have been standing for council seats. Or maybe it was Dail seats. It wasn't clear to anyone who attended, even those who could hear what was going on.
There is an excellent committed backroom team in charge of candidate selection. Candidates for the local elections had been identified, prepped and encouraged but now that push has come to shove they're backing out. Why? Because what does the party offer them except the negativity of being associated with it. What is there by way of a support structure in compensation?
Those would be candidates appraised what was on offer versus the risk to their reputations, and possibly even their livelihoods, and backed out. Quite understandable.
“And the pig got up and slowly walked away..”
That last one is the most important one. Firstly, because a party obviously needs candidates. But also because the same problem extends to more than just the candidates.
The party has plenty of talent available backstage in a lot of areas. But because of the fear of being associated with the party the talent is not showing up at front of house.
The public are ready to vote for a less tarnished version of the IFP whether that's a rebranded IFP itself or others stepping in to the gap: the Farmers Alliance and the Rural Independents initiative for example. Both of those are fishing in the same pool of voters as the IFP but neither has the IFPs bad name. Organisationally speaking, candidate wise and in how they present to the public, both are streets ahead of the Freedom Party.
The political climate is more receptive than ever for the IFP message. It's the image that's the problem. How can that image be changed? The backroom talent doesn't need any advice or suggestions on how to do that. They're more than capable of it. If looking around them they think the patient is worth saving then your money would have to be on them to pull it off.
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us!
There are people who put a lot of effort in to tarnishing the image of the Freedom Party and marginalising it. Some of them even get paid by the state to do so. The one thing they come back to again and again is pointing out that Hermann is the party leader. That seems to be enough. And based on what's been said above it’s been very effective. That part of the public who have heard about the Freedom Party think of it as inseparable from Hermann. And as to who Hermann is and what he represents? The same section of the public think of Hermann as inseparable from Nigel Farage.
Nigel Farage is a phenomenon. We're used to charismatic politicians in this country but Farage is in another league. He'll wade in to a group of people who hate him with a smile on his face and twenty minutes later they'll be looking for selfies and buying him drink. We can assume that no one in the Freedom Party actually thinks they can replicate the Farage phenomenon.
Where those at the top may be deluding theselves though is by believing that Farage is viewed positively by a large number of Irish voters. Someone who knows the charismatic Farage and has been around him might think that being associated with him is a selling point. It's not. Given the way the media here treat Farage it's a negative. It marginalises. It turns voters off. Nor is membership of a "Farage style" party the kind of thing someone with a career wants to be explaining to their employer.
“But soon you will find that there comes a time For making your mind up” - Bucks Fizz, Eurovision 1981
It's received wisdom that Hermann would be ready to step aside in favour of a more electable leader. If that would remain true when it came down to it is something we'd have to wait and see. There's also the fact that more electable people from outside the IFP have looked at the party, as it currently presents itself, and not seen something worth taking on. What it all comes down to is whether those members who have the ability to rebrand the party and take it somewhere think the game is worth the candle. Is there enough on offer to make it worthwhile?
With the European elections less than a year away decisions on candidates will have to be made soon. If Hermann is a candidate the party is pretty much indelibly tied with him, and what he brings, from here on out. Repositioning and reimaging would then seem to be off the table. One way or the other choices that will define the party and its chances in the future will need to be made quite soon. One way or the other.