Buoyant pre-election talk kicks off FG party conference

The ties were that bit straighter, the hair freshly blow-dried, and make-up perfectly applied by those who had made sure to arrive early. Ah yes, there is always a slightly slicker feel to a pre-election national party conference.

Election fever is certainly in the air and Fine Gael is confident it has “very, very electable” candidates. Tánaiste Simon Coveney praised the seven EU election hopefuls who stood at his shoulder in Whites Hotel in Wexford yesterday evening. The magnificent seven, four women and three men, posed on the hotel’s staircase, they smiled for photo ops and sat at the top table during the opening session.

“I think everybody here is very, very electable. Many of them have already stood in elections and have been very successful in the past so there is a huge amount of experience and I would be very ambitious about our chances for everybody behind me, so I am not going to start picking numbers but I would struggle to pick any of these candidates that I think won’t be elected,” said Mr Coveney, as he peered back at Mairéad McGuinness, Mark Durkan, Deirdre Clune, Frances Fitzgerald, Sean Kelly, Andrew Doyle, and Maria Walsh. Buoyant pre-election talk from the deputy leader.

But the mood had gone as flat as the long-neck bottle of Guinness which a man sitting in the second last row was pouring into a glass by the time Mr Coveney got up to speak again. The Tánaiste had been introduced by one of the Fine Gael EU election candidates and former leader of the SDLP, Mr Durkan. The Irish are known for the gift of the gab and Mr Durkan sure knows how to talk; maybe his election tactic is to bore the electorate into voting.

But Mr Durkan and the Tánaiste were just the warm-up acts before Taoiseach Leo Varadkar speaks to party members today. Interestingly, he last night announced on Twitter that he had changed his handle from @campaignforleo to @leovaradkar. Is this a hint that he is seeing May’s elections as a warm-up for a national ballot before the autumn?