47 George Lee

In early May 2009, when George Lee announced that he was leaving RTE to run for Fine Gael, the idea began to take root in the Irish consciousness that George could become the answer to all our problems. This being just four months after the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States, the notion of finding a fresh young hero was something to get carried away by. The fact that George wasn’t black was just the beginning of the problem.

George was already a national icon from his frequent reports on the state of the economy on radio and television. These were always clear and factual, and frequently offered devastating indictments of the government’s stewardship of the national fortunes. George was the bespectacled boy who had a dream about the emperor’s Finance Minister with no backside in his trousers, and shouted it out on the six o’clock news. This made George a good economics reporter, but not necessarily a good national saviour.

Having George join its ranks might have been enough to suggest that Fine Gael was the answer to all our problems, which, for all the awfulness of the incumbent government, would have been stretching things. But by then, the Irish people were so desperate for answers they would have pulled the arm off anyone who seemed to know anything and was prepared to talk intelligently about it.

Apart from his undoubted capability as an economic analyst, there was something endearing about George. He had fire in his belly. He appeared to be sincere in his belief that the Cowen administration was the worst in the history of the State. His declaration that he wanted to be able to tell his children that when his country was in trouble he ‘got involved and tried to fix things’ resonated with many of his fellow citizens, despite the growing cynicism of the times.

In newspaper articles shortly after he announced that he would be a candidate for Fine Gael in an upcoming by-election in Dublin South, George outlined his manifesto for saving Ireland. He attacked the government for its record, just as he had when he was Economics Editor of RTE, but did not seem to realize that, as a politician, he would need to go further than criticism. George said that unemployment had doubled in the previous year and predicted that it might approach 600,000 by the end of 2009. But he offered no plan to create jobs. He said the government had offered no hope, but he did not have any hopeful thoughts of his own. With an election to fight and a half-page in a national newspaper to play with, you might have expected George to come right out and say what he proposed to do differently. But he didn’t. He just said we needed an energetic new government, ‘capable of fresh thinking’ and ‘strong enough to drive change’. But what kind of fresh thinking seemed unclear and he didn’t seem to be thinking many fresh thoughts.

George criticized a recent emergency Budget, with its savage tax hikes, cuts in welfare and mortgage relief and its promise of a property tax. ‘This is not acceptable,’ George emphatically declared. But he did not say what he would accept. People might have been forgiven for thinking that, if George had a realistic alternative to all this misery, he should not go on keeping it to himself, but should spit it out so we could all get back to the party.

Then, briefly, it seemed that George might be about to suggest something concrete. While the rest of the world was engaged in expanding public investment and cutting taxes, the government was doing the opposite and was therefore making things worse, he explained. This was taking billions of euros out of the economy at the wrong time, and would ensure the downturn lasted much longer than anything we had seen until then. It would stifle hope, discourage enterprise and could ‘easily turn a recession into a depression’.

You didn’t need to have been the Economics Editor of RTE to know this. For nearly a year, the dogs in the street had been barking about Brian Lenihan going around like a demented DIY enthusiast, sawing in turn at each of the legs of the bockety table in an effort to stop it wobbling. And the cats on the other side of the street had been gleefully screeching back that soon the table would have no legs at all.

So George, once in power, would – what? – cancel the levies and restore the Christmas bonus? George didn’t say. He merely went on to remind everyone that he had been the boy who said that the emperor had no clothes. He had ‘spoken directly and impartially’ to people as clearly as he could. As danger loomed, he had ‘consistently highlighted the risks of inaction and complacency’. But his warnings were ignored. Actually, no, George decided, the government had chosen to portray his impartial and clear messages as ‘an effort to talk down the economy’. It sounded as if George wanted to get them all back for being mean about him.

George seemed clear in his mind that we needed to get the country ‘back on track’ and that this could not be done with the present lot in power. That is why he wanted to offer ‘in a small way’ the change and the leadership the country needed.

But, when you rummaged through the wrapping in search of George’s solutions, all that seemed to be there was George’s intense belief in his own abilities and insights.

He said that, if we wanted to put things to rights, the best thing was for him to become part of the Fine Gael team and get elected as a TD for Dublin South. It was clear to him that Fine Gael under Enda Kenny was the party best placed to provide the kind of leadership and vision the country needed.

George won the by-election to much fanfare. The people of Ireland smiled for the first time in many months, and then went back to work and waited for the revolution.

Nothing happened, and this nothingness was followed by more of the same. Eight months later, George emerged, virtually in tears, from a broom cupboard he had been given in a building on Kildare Street. Nobody would listen to him, he said. Nobody cared what he thought about anything. He was in total disagreement with Fine Gael party policy and nobody gave a toss. Everyone was still being mean to him. George ran screaming out into Kildare Street, saying he was jacking it all in and returning to his job in RTE.

George Lee’s experience tells us many things about the deep malaise at the heart of Irish politics. It illustrates the madness that arises from the absence of true idealism in the Irish body politic that a man known only for being paid to criticize economic policy can come to be seen as a national redeemer. But it also highlights the cynicism of politicians who think they can use such a figure to give the impression of vision where none exists, and also perhaps the vulnerability of journalists to the power of their own delusions. It took about a year for the complete George Lee drama to unfold. The only thing that changed, in the end, was that George had a free space for life in the Leinster House car park.