Up until yesterday evening, the BBC's Robert Peston has been the Cassandra of the British economy. From the sub-prime mortgage collapse in America to the subsequent credit crunch and on to the global recession, the Beeb's business editor has sounded like an oracle of doom. Throughout the last turbulent 18 months, viewers and listeners have tuned into and analysed Peston's reports the way seafarers pay careful attention to weather forecasts. So when Peston started to sound upbeat, at least about the banking system, on Thursday night, governments, financiers and normal human beings sat up and took notice.
Imagine then the shock if Peston turned around this weekend and announced that he was stepping down as BBC business editor to stand in a key byelection for the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats. Whichever party enticed him from his post into politics would justifiably think they had scored a major, morale-boosting publicity coup.
In fact this is exactly what has happened in the Irish Republic this week. George Lee was RTÉ's economics editor. Like Peston, Lee has pointed out the serious weaknesses in his nation's economy and its vulnerability in the overall global economic system. Even during the latter years of the celtic tiger boom, Lee warned of wasted opportunities, lack of social investment and an exorbitant property market that could, and eventually would, be the downfall of the Irish economic miracle.
His critics in the main ruling Fianna Fáil party have complained bitterly (and unfairly) that even before Lee announced his decision to enter politics he was broadcasting anti-government party politicals in his reports. Lee, an assiduous journalist and talented on-screen broadcaster, was, however, merely behaving like the little boy who kept pointing out that the emperor had no clothes. The venom directed at Lee this week simply reflects the desperation within the ranks of Fianna Fáil as it faces two crucial byelections, local government elections and the European poll all on one day – 5 June to be precise.
Lee has been selected as Fine Gael's candidate in the Dublin South Dáil byelection next week, which Ireland's main opposition party stands a great chance of winning. His elevation to the Dáil will mark an end to 17 years at RTÉ, although Lee sees this new challenge as an extension of his work for the public broadcaster.
"I have spent 17 years in RTÉ driven by public service. I am willing to spend another 17 years in somewhere else other than RTÉ driven by public service," he said this week.
For Fine Gael, Lee's decision has been another major fillip in a year that has seen them soaring in the opinion polls. Conversely, Fianna Fáil has been given a further headache on top of Lee's intervention over the attitude of their coalition partners, the Irish Green party. Only two weeks ago, John Gormley, the Greens' leader and Irish minister of the environment told the Observer that his party remained committed to staying in government. Gormley even dismissed the opposition's critique of his government's handling of the economic crisis. Gormley stressed that no alternative constellation of parties heading another government could do any better in the face of the malign global economic forces battering the country.
But a fortnight seems to be a really, really long time in Irish politics. On Thursday, Gormley's ministerial and party colleague Eamon Ryan moved to distance the Greens from Fianna Fáil. The minister for energy and communications refused to call on Green voters to give their second preference transfers (Ireland votes on proportional representation in all its elections) to their Fianna Fáil partners. Instead those that vote Green ought to "make their own mind up", according to Ryan.
The Green party sought to play down Ryan's remarks, pointing out that he was not precluding anyone from voting for Fianna Fáil if they wanted to ... but, er, well, it was up the punters at the end of the day who they gave number two on the ballot paper to.
Putting a bit of clear green water between themselves and Fianna Fáil doesn't mean the Greens are ready to pull the plug on the coalition. Nor will disastrous byelection, European and local government election results force the prime minister, Brian Cowen, to dissolve his government and go to the country.
In the longer term, Cowen and his party are clinging to the hope that the very thing that has landed them in trouble, the economy, will paradoxically turn around their fortunes. If they can decontaminate the Irish banking system's toxic debts, if they can kick-start the lending to small business and those seeking mortgages, if they can once again attract hi-tech multinational capital to the Republic, the Fianna Fáil-led government might be able to argue that they had acted in the national interest, above squabbling party interest to save the economy then they may be rewarded in a national election.
The only trouble is that, after 5 June, it is likely that facing them across the floor of the Dáil will be a new addition to the Fine Gael team, one who has a sound grasp of economics and who can use his celebrity status as Ireland's former Cassandra to pick over and ultimately denounce Fianna Fail's emergency rescue plan.
Comments in chronological order (Total 2 comments)
8 May 2009 11:36AM
This is a huge blunder by George Lee.
He will easily win the seat but FG will never hold the three seats in a general election. This will lead to all sorts of infighting within FG in that constituency and bad blood over the parachuted-in star candidate.
If he does take and hold the seat he will never be accepted into the front line of the front benches in his area of expertise.
This is RTE and Ireland's loss. A man with a great ability to explain the subtitles of the Emperor's Wardrobe has been banished to a life of following the party line and defending policy.
11 May 2009 9:20AM
I wish Robert Peston would step down. The BBC seem to have a requirement that their business correspondents perfect a truly eccentric delivery before they are allowed near a microphone. I breathed a sigh of relief when Evan Davies moved on, only to have him replaced by a man who sounds like a primary school teacher being strangled as he patronises a class of particularly slow children.