Vincent Browne - Politics

Politics

Browne was involved with the Dublin Anti H-Block Movement during the 1981 Irish hunger strike. In 1994, he sought a nomination for the Fine Gael party in that year's European elections or the possible general election of that year (it was thought a general election might follow the collapse of the Albert Reynolds' government). He was rebuffed by the leader of Fine Gael and future Taoiseach, John Bruton. He became a vocal critic of the party.

A staunch critic of Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, in 1982 Browne appeared on The Late Late Show to discuss the effectiveness of TDs where he poured scorn on Kenny, claiming he was "purporting" to be a TD. In October 2010, he was forced to make a public apology to Kenny after jokingly asking whether Fine Gael was requesting that he go into a dark room with a gun and bottle of whiskey. This was in reference to Fine Gael's position in the polls, where they were in second place to Labour, and a previous leadership challenge to Kenny by Richard Bruton. Kenny refused to appear on the leaders' debate hosted by Browne on TV3 during the 2011 general election campaign.

He voted "No" in the 2012 Irish European Fiscal Compact referendum.

On 23 October 2012, while presenting Tonight with Vincent Browne, he referred to Israel as "the cancer in foreign affairs", and said Israel "polarises the Islamic community of the world against the rest of the world" and that the Jews "stole the land from the Arabs" with the creation of Israel. Israel's deputy ambassador to Ireland considered Browne's comments to be "racist, anti-Semitic remarks". Browne responded that he was not anti-Semitic, but a critic of Israel. He admitted that his choice of language could have been better but said his criticism was justified - "What I resent is the suggestion that because you're critical of Israel, you're automatically anti-Semitic. I don't think that's acceptable". Furthermore, Browne said it was "blackmail" to try to brand everyone who was critical of Israel as anti-Semitic.