a move from a tribal to a bureaucratic order.

But it is also more than that:
Call for end to 'cute-hoor' politics - The Irish Times - Tue, Jul 20, 2010

Fine Gael backbencher Lucinda Creighton has revived tensions within her party with a sharply-critical speech at the MacGill Summer School arising out of the presence of a Cork property developer at a fund-raising event.

Mr Michael O'Flynn is company chairman and managing director of Cork-based O'Flynn Construction, which transferred debts approaching €1billion to the National Asset Management Agency (Nama). He was recently reported as attending as sponsor of €1500 fourball at a golf fundraiser at the K Club, organised by Fine Gael.

Ms Creighton said: "There can be no room in Fine Gael for cute-hoor politics. These are the politics which have defined and tainted Irish public life like an incurable cancer.

"We cannot be satisfied with low standards in high places. Fine Gael in government must be much, much more than simply `Fianna Fáil Light'.

"We cannot, on the one hand, condemn Fianna Fáil for entertaining developers in the Galway tent, while on the other hand extend the biscuit tin for contributions from high-profile developers, who are beholden to Nama. The Irish people expect more from Fine Gael; they demand more, and they are right.

"Fine Gael cannot equivocate about the standards we wish to bring to the running of our great Republic. We need a real `New Politics'- of substance rather than sound-bites.

"We need a politics that is about serving the people of Ireland, not simply about replacing Fianna Fáil.

"It is time for a politics built on courage, integrity and truth. That is the politics which I signed up for and the sort of public service which the Irish people so desperately need and so badly deserve," she said.

Michael O'Flynn has committed no crime and for all I know was a bona fide developer who got in over his head when times were good.  His business went bust.  It happens.  What Lucinda Creighton - one of a new generation of quite articulate if conservative politicians appears to be saying is that Fine Gael shouldn't associate with people like that because developers have traditionally congregated around Fianna Fail and influenced Fianna Fail policies favouring speculative building and banking practices.

What galls most people is that Michael O'Flynn is probably still quite wealthy personally even as the taxpayer has been forced to take on a Billion of his dodgy debts.  Its the privatisation of social gains - increase land values due to rezoning or state infrastructure development - and the socialisation of the losses of people like Michael O'Flynn that people object to.

The whole basis of limited liability, contract law, and the right of private banks to play key roles in the public infrastructure of the state which is being called into question.  In this context it IS the liberal values of capitalism which are seen to be the corruption of the more traditional moral order where your word was your bond and your liabilities were personal.

Index of Frank's Diaries