Madam, - As political parties often lose sight of their purpose in the heat of a leadership struggle, I would like to offer the PDs some dispassionate advice on their options.
The party came into existence to bring the Thatcher/Reagan neo-liberal revolution to this country. In a nutshell, this means increasing the share of wealth derived from profits and decreasing the share paid out in wages. The tricky bit is that you have to combine this attack on wages with puritanical guff about rewarding hard work rather than idleness, which is of course the exact opposite of what neo-liberalist policies actually do.
Since there are far more voters dependent on wages than on share dividends, how do you gather mass support for such policies in a democracy? How can you make the turkeys vote for Christmas? The US Republicans have attempted to square this circle by picking intellectually modest (stupid, if you like) leaders such as Reagan or Bush Jnr. They find it better to send out a likeable fool who has no understanding at all, than someone who recognises the contradiction at the centre of the party's appeal for the votes of working people.
If you don't pick a fool you have two options. You can pick a slippery, duplicitous type who can pretend he or she has a Green or compassionate side while actually peddling the same old class war from above (David Cameron?). The other option is to pick an intellectual type. This can be fatal. If you pick an immodest intellectual type they will certainly let the cat out of the bag, and maybe even tell the great unwashed that it is a good thing that the gap between them and their masters is constantly widening (John Redwood?).
There may well be none of these types going forward for the PD leadership, but I hope I have been of some help in clarifying how similar parties approach the problem. - Yours, etc,
TIM O'HALLORAN, Ferndale Road, Dublin 11.