George Lee

:rolleyes:

Iā€™m not totally across all of this and it did come as a bit of a shock to me a few months ago to discover George Lee was a TD, so I have questions (and I couldnā€™t be arsed reading all of this thread, though from a quick glance it wouldnā€™t necessarily enlighten me) -

What will George do now - does he carry on as an independant?
Is Enda Kenny buggered?
If so, will Richard Bruton take over? Do FG have a chance then?
Will FF win the next election if Kennyā€™s in charge of FG?
Any new political parties on the horizon?

Hey buddy,

1.Georgie boy has quit as a politican so now Dublin South have one less TD. Not sure if they will bother with a by election at this stage. FG are -1 at the moment. Indications are that the remaining seat in Dublin South will go to Labour at next election.

  1. Most definitely. His wife looks like the kind that uses a strap onā€¦ As FG leader, not terminal damage yet, though it aint good news. Unless Bruton turns against him he is safe it looks like. Id say Bruton is far more comfortable as a potential Minister for Finance than potential Taoiseach too so that is also in Kennyā€™s benefit.

  2. Recent polls suggest the gap between FG and FF has closed considerably. If this trend continues Kenny will be in trouble. Some media outlets (Oā€™Reillyā€™s) very pro FF at this stage too especially since Lenihanā€™s illness.

  3. If anything the next general election could see the demise of the Greens and SF continue further. No new political parties on horizon. The Irish electorate seem content voting along Civil War lines. Expected backlash against FF wont be as severe as predicted.

Business as usual then. Good to hear, thanks KIB Man.

I donā€™t think I could agree with a statment more Runt.

[size=ā€œ1ā€][size=ā€œ3ā€]Health Warning: the following is IN MY OPINION[/size][/size]

This whole thing was a ramp up that began with Olivia Oā€™Learyā€™s radio column 2 weeks ago; and I donā€™t think Olivia and George Flea are stangers. In fact the late Paul Tansey was one of George Fleaā€™s cheerleaders.

A career in RTE is now serious undermined by his outing with Fine Gael. Iā€™ve heard that the News room donā€™t want him back and the only possibility of air time is on Radio 1ā€™s 5 7 live.

He couldnā€™t hack it, like his buddy Charlie Bird. Two pampered spoilt public servants that when they left the cosy entourage of wardrobe assistants, tech assistants, syocphantic bootlicking journalism grads, and a preening RTE hierarchy, they landed on their arses, and were too useless to climb up onto their own two feet on their own.

What are the odds that George Flea and Charlie Bird hitting the lecture circuit following a new book, that of course will be syndicated in a foreign owned paper.

I think it all has less to do with Brutonā€™s more robust ecomonic ability and Indaā€™s lack of interest, than Georgeā€™s ability to cope with continuency matters, the most depressing being Olivia Mitchell and Alan Shatā€™er.

Without the glowing headlines and studio lighting George Flea turned out to be nothing. Like Charlie Bird.

The voters of South Dublin were dupped, but then they probably deserved it.

walking back into RTE with his hand out is the most damaging part in all this for Lee.

he would have saved a bit of credibility by going solo, there are enough gigs out there for economic bullshit merchants who cant or wont hack it in the real world where real decisions need to be taken(look at McWilliams).
but the man is walking back into rte with his hand out looking for any kind of role at all where he knows he will be muzzled and opinionless but of course earning 150k pa.

George Lee, zero credibility. I hope to jaysus you would go away now but i doubt very much you will.

:lol:

one other thing I havenā€™t read anywhere yet, I think our constitution prohibits having more than 1 empty seat in the dail
itā€™s possible Georgieā€™s resignation has precipitated a by-election in donegal SW and in dublin south

Leeā€™s betrayal adds to cynicism he intended to fight

People voted for George Lee to change Irish politics ā€“ neither he nor Enda Kenny grasped that, writes FINTAN Oā€™TOOLE

IF YOUā€™VE had the chance to go around the country in the last few months discussing the state of the nation, you will have felt the rage that is out there in middle-class Ireland. You will have realised that things are so desperate that even media types are objects of some kind of hope. This has happened, not because the public has lost its suspicion of the media but because there is no one else to look to. The need for someone to trust is as palpable as the fury at those who have previously betrayed it.

George Leeā€™s sweeping victory in the Dublin South byelection last June was, of course, the most spectacular evidence of this phenomenon. It was an expression of both profound rage and of almost touching trust. There was, on the one hand, a desire for someone outside the system to get in there and give it a kick. And on the other, there was the notion that we needed someone who knew what was going on, who could make sense of the acronyms and unfathomable numbers that were buzzing around our heads like venomous hornets.

The union of these two forces was, for Fine Gael, a marriage made in heaven. It was a perfectly polite revolution, a radical gesture that was also a cry, not so much for an overturning of the established order, as for intelligence, integrity, competence and decency.

That this project has exploded in clouds of mutual bewilderment, sending jagged shards of shattered egos flying in all directions, tells us two things. The most important of them is that the political system has no idea what is happening. Even while the ground is shaking, it continues to run along the established tracks of thought.

Fine Gael, we realise, actually thought that George Leeā€™s apotheosis was about Fine Gael. They saw his triumph as being essentially nothing more than a particularly brilliant political stroke. Beyond its immediate nature as a morale-booster for the party and a beautifully embroidered pillow to shove over the mouths of those who whisper that Enda Kenny isnā€™t up to it, it had no larger meaning. Its concrete manifestation ā€“ George Lee TD ā€“ was just another bumptious backbencher. Beyond his celebrity function in recruitment and fundraising, he was simply a rival foot on the greasy poll. He must learn to serve his time, pay his dues and work the system.

This says a great deal about Enda Kennyā€™s ultimate unfitness for leadership, the leadenness that marks him, not as an alternative to a political culture that has failed us so disastrously, but as part of it. The unwillingness to use Leeā€™s obvious intellectual talents and to build on the trust he has built with the public points to a small-minded nexus of jealousy, caution and smugness. It reveals a party assuming that it will be in power after the next election and need do nothing except avoid trouble.

But the failure of the whole project also points to a lack of imagination on George Leeā€™s part. There was a certain naivety in believing, in the first instance, that a classic catch-all, conservative party like Fine Gael is particularly interested in a cutting-edge economic analysis that acknowledges what Lee surely knows ā€“ that the old orthodoxies cannot provide solutions to the crisis that they caused.

But there is also an apparent lack of understanding on Leeā€™s part of his own power. He seems barely to have understood what it was that made 27,000 people vote for him. They didnā€™t vote for him to be an economic adviser to Enda Kenny. They know very well that there are good and honest economists who could be hired for that role without being elected to anything. They voted for George Lee to change Irish politics. The two qualities they looked for and found in him were simple ā€“ he was an outsider and he could be trusted to speak the truth as he saw it.

This gave him immense power ā€“ and it also in part explains why Fine Gael couldnā€™t handle him. He was much bigger than the party and in a sense almost completely independent of it. No one gave a damn whether he did constituency work or sat on committees examining the minutiae of legislation. In particular, no one gave two hoots whether or not he was expounding Fine Gael policy. He was George Lee, tribune of the enraged and disorientated middle classes.

Walking away from Fine Gael is fine, but walking away from this much bigger, freer, more exciting job is not. He should have been thrilled to be free of a party that had begun to regard him as an exotic pet that it had been given for Christmas and wasnā€™t sure quite what to feed.

Paradoxically, the partyā€™s misuse of him gave him the excuse he needed to leave it and actually represent the people who trusted him with their votes. They elected him to embody a new kind of politics ā€“ free-thinking, plain-speaking, honest, uninvolved in clientelism. By betraying that trust, he has added to the cynicism he intended to fight.

Kenny gets the unanimous backing of the FG front bench, expect Lee to be torn a new one in the next few days by a handful carefully chosen back benchers. An awful mess but great entertainment.

Heard Lee on Darcysā€™ show this morning. Just a couple of things he said of interest.
He didnā€™t meet Enda Kenny from the time he joined FG to the time he was elected. :o
He spoke to Richard Bruton once for 2-3 minutes from the time he was elected to his resignation.
Apparently producing papers/suggestions in areas that are the realms of others leads to a further ostracizing.
He said he thought he was joining a political movement which turned out to be a collection of individuals all out for themselves.

It is clear that Leeā€™s arrival into politics to much fanfares obviously rankled with the likes of Bruton and Mitchell.

without a doubt he got cold shoulder from Bruton and the other inner circle FG honchos.

as an outsider he obviously never saw that coming but a good lesson there for the next celeb that is sweetened up.

Thought the interview showed how naive Lee was. He never clarified what role he would have before agreeing to stand for election. He assumed that he would have a significant role in formulating FGā€™s economic policy but didnā€™t stop to wonder how Richard Bruton might respond to this. To be fair FG let him think all this in the run up to the election but you would think he would have got some guarantees before he committed to standing.

The whole set-up seems bizarre, he was sold a pig in a poke, however, he doesnā€™t seem to have tried to do anything about it and threw in the towel fairly fast.

Not to mention his credibility as a journalist working for the national broadcaster (if he goes back to RTE) has to have taken a huge nosedive by showing allegiance to one of the political parties. Probably why he tried to distance himself from Kenny and FG every time he was interviewed yesterday.

George has a big eggslusive here.

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How the mighty are fallen.

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RIP Clucks-ton.

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Laid to rest .

Marmalade is toast.