Having acquired the status of contender Fine Gael must show why they should win, writes Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent
'We are all under scrutiny", Enda Kenny told his parliamentary party in Portlaoise. And none is more so than Enda himself.
Written off as a dying party after the 2002 electoral disaster, Fine Gael had set about a long process of building towards recovery. It succeeded in attracting new members, in reorganising the party's structures and getting many potential Dáil candidates elected in last year's local government elections. The prospect of a pre-election alliance with Labour would make it relevant to national political debate, it hoped.
But September has accelerated its recovery timetable considerably. The Government decided to launch a concerted attack on the alternative government, deriding it as an incompetent, tax-raising, job-destroying outfit. Perhaps the most important effect of this was to place in the public mind the idea that this alliance could indeed form an alternative government. The Rip-off Republic TV series fed into the agenda Fine Gael has been pushing for some time. An opinion poll last weekend again suggested that a Fine Gael-led alternative government was possible.
But with this new high profile has come the intense scrutiny Enda Kenny spoke about. The Government parties and the press are demanding to know where Fine Gael's policies are, what they stand for. If you succeed in being seen as a contender in politics, you will face criticism and intense questioning that will severely test your credibility.
Several times in the last few days Enda Kenny effectively acknowledged that it was no longer enough to campaign under the "Time for a Change" slogan. The party had to produce policies and proposals that would show what it was for, not just what it was against. Yesterday he promised a steady stream of policy documents between now and the general election, possibly 18 months away.
But there will be no early unveiling of a grand plan for Irish society. Party sources say they plan to release specific policies from time to time to maximise their impact. Releasing one huge document, like an election manifesto, would ensure that large chunks of it went unnoticed, they argue. The best bits would be plagiarised by the Government parties and reproduced as their own. Meanwhile, those same Government parties would have 18 months to identify weak points and plan their campaign of ridicule.
So the party intends to produce policy documents sporadically to ensure that - as with a solar eclipse - when one does appear a lot of people will go out of their way to have a look at it.
Frontbench members, backbenchers and advisers in Portlaoise this week were believing their own propaganda more and more: that they may well be real contenders by the time the next election comes around. With that smell of success in the air, difficulties in the way of agreeing policies are fading away. While Fine Gael and Labour have long held differing views on the social partnership process, they published a common position on it last week. The Fine Gael parliamentary party - at least as much in thrall to the small shopowners' lobby as Fianna Fáil - agreed in Portlaoise on Tuesday to shift its position and support abolition of the Groceries Order and to allow some below-cost selling. This position runs contrary to the instincts of many in the party. But with the party now convinced that it is possible for it to win government power, policy differences will not get in the way of adopting an electorally popular position.
They have yet to begin difficult policy talks with Labour and possibly with the Green Party.
While they are only committed to producing a joint statement of general principles with Labour, they will have to agree common positions on much more than that. During an election campaign reporters will use press conferences to ferret out differences between the parties on a variety of issues.
And if an election campaign begins with those parties retaining major differences on important issues such as taxation, this will be cruelly exposed by the Government's hyperbolic propaganda machine. Michael McDowell's claim on Tuesday that a Fine Gael/Labour coalition would increase taxes and provoke an economic slump matched the Taoiseach's claim the previous week that they would engineer Ireland's entry to the Third World "in jig time".
Fine Gael and Labour must therefore have a simple and coherent answer to the tax question.
Fine Gael would prefer a simple pledge not to increase taxes - Richard Bruton said yesterday that his party would not put up income tax, corporation tax, or introduce wealth or property taxes. Labour has also ruled out income tax and corporation tax increases but leaves open the possibility of increasing taxes, if not on wealth itself, then on the incomes or capital gains made by wealthy people.
Fine Gael and Labour must try to agree to a common hymn sheet on the tax issue: either they defend the idea of some extra taxation on the wealthy as one which will not bring ruin to the nation, or they firmly rule it out and end the argument. Going into the campaign with different positions will hand a large pile of ammunition to the Government's attack troops.
Fine Gael sources say they have shown an extremely flexible front to Labour in talks that have dealt with policy so far. They say the party will be very slow to get "hung up" on many issues as they seek a coherent platform - and agreement on important issues that will arise during the campaign - to which both parties are signed up.
Enda Kenny is also paying some attention to the Green Party in his public pronouncements.
While that party will not join any pre-election alliance, party chairman John Gormley emphasised again last weekend the Greens' strong preference for government with Fine Gael and Labour.
In his speech to his party on Tuesday, Kenny expressed his belief in the potential of "creative ideas in the area of promoting alternative energy". In an interview in this newspaper last Saturday, he also drew attention to party policies which were "parallel" to some being pursued by the Greens.
Party strategists can now reel off the 30 constituencies where they believe they can make gains at the next election.
But despite the obsession within the political class about local issues and constituency matters, if Fine Gael cannot raise its vote nationally by a significant amount, it will not make those gains. The increased scrutiny Fine Gael now faces could simply expose the lack of substance currently at the heart of the alternative government. But it could also spur them to rectify the problem and produce a comprehensive and coherent plan.