Enda: The accidental Taoiseach

Winter of discontent ahead for Enda Kenny and the Coalition, writes Michael Clifford

HE WALKED onstage, and the assembled gathering rose to their feet as one. They were a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ as Enda Kenny took his place at the podium, his hands raised, acknowledging the welcome, bidding them to retain their seats.

The scene occurred eight days ago in the O2 arena in Dublin, which was hosting a special concert on the eve of the American football game between Notre Dame and Navy in the Aviva Stadium. The vast majority of those present were American. They are accustomed to greeting their leader in settings like this with whooping and hollering. And they were undoubtedly chuffed that the leader of lil’ ol’ Ireland was taking time out to address them.

This was Enda Kenny doing what he does best. He gave a rousing speech, cheesy in places, but touching all the right bases. The only scary bit was when he smiled. Kenny has a scary smile, as if it was applied by a plastic surgeon on mind altering drugs. But it’s a minor detail of the overall package.

At the conclusion of the address, the gathering of 8,000 or so happy souls rose again and clapped hands as if their lives depended on it. Enda drank it in.

A national leader has many functions. Enda Kenny excels at the set-piece speech, where nothing much of substance is at issue. It’s a skill not to be underestimated, as leadership is sometimes about little more than making people feel good about themselves.

His problem is with many of the other tasks of leadership. Last week was a disaster for the Government. The U-turn over health cuts, which should never have been made in the first place, was a horrendous way to set out on a hazardous journey to December’s budget. Health Minister James Reilly was undoubtedly the main culprit of the fiasco, but once again, questions were raised about Kenny’s ability to man the tiller. Or, to put it more bluntly, is he manning the tiller at all?

Kenny is unlike any other taoiseach of the modern era. Brian Cowen, his most recent predecessor, was long regarded within Fianna Fáil as being pre-destined to lead. Bertie Ahern’s whole career in politics was focused on one day leading. John Bruton was highly regarded as a heavyweight within Fine Gael and Garret FitzGerald’s intellect and lineage made him a shoo-in. Charlie Haughey was a gifted politician who might have been the greatest of them all if he hadn’t been a crook.

Kenny is cut from a different cloth. Who, for example, in the mid-1990s would ever have guessed he could be leader of Fine Gael, not to mind the country? By then he had whistled through 30 years in the Dáil, ending up as tourism minister in what appeared to be a reward for long service. All of the other leaders in modern times served first as finance minister, a role nobody could ever suggest would have suited Kenny.

Everybody liked the guy before his ascent. He was inoffensive and reputedly good fun. Few would have said he was driven, fewer still that he was an intellectual heavyweight. He certainly wasn’t burdened with an ideological compass.

In his book The Road To Power, Kevin Rafter writes that prior to the 2011 election, the party big guns viewed Kenny’s lack of ideological baggage as a huge advantage. “His ambitions were aspirational, which left room for pragmatic decision making to change Ireland for the better.”

Is he the most unique taoiseach in the State’s history? No finance experience, no obsession to lead, no quasi-royal lineage, no huge intellect, nothing to offer but blood, sweat, and tears... and that smile.

There is one other difference between him and his predecessors. If it wasn’t for exceptional and rare circumstances, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that he would ever have become Taoiseach. It took the near complete destruction of the two main political parties in the State, and historical economic upheaval, to propel him all the way to the highest office.

Kenny first stood for the leadership of Fine Gael in 2001, when the party got rid of Bruton because he was considered too boring. Michael Noonan won the day, and subsequently didn’t even appoint Kenny to his frontbench.

In 2002, with the country enthralled to Ahern, Fine Gael was massacred in the general election. The party hovered on extinction. Kenny threw his name in the hat again.

The party was in such disarray that the evening before the parliamentary party meeting to vote on a new leader, a group of Fine Gaelers met in the basement of the Gresham Hotel in an attempt to stop the election going ahead. They voiced concerns at the meeting about the election being confined to TDs. Everybody who spoke sounded as if they were trying to stop an execution. It took speeches from Richard Bruton and Simon Coveney to calm the horses, but despair was in the air. One contributor summed up his feelings about the demise of the party he professed to love: “The real issue is that Fine Gael doesn’t stand for anything, and Fianna Fáil has cornered the market in not standing for anything.”

The next day, Enda was elected to the sound of one hand clapping. And then, something happened. Given the reins, he put his best foot forward and actually raised the party up from its knees. He demonstrated that he had boundless energy and a huge capacity for work.

Over the next five local, European, and general elections, Fine Gael’s vote recovered and prospered, increasing in every poll. In 2007, he actually came close to displacing Ahern. The demise of the PDs in the wake of that election boosted Fine Gael again. Kenny’s role in all this, as a figurehead, as somebody to rally troops, was central.

In some of the more cerebral quarters of the party, he was regarded as Moses. Now that he had delivered his people to the boundary of the Promised Land, it was time for him to take a hike and hand the reins over to better minds. This attitude, combined with nervy opinion polls, prompted the heave against him in the summer of 2010.

Kenny showed steel in resisting, ably assisted by Reilly, who was promoted to deputy leader.

So what does Kenny bring to the party as Taoiseach? Is he chairman or chief or chancing his arm? At the outset, he was a breath of fresh air, walking to work and smiling where Cowen had scowled past in a Merc. But beyond that?

He doesn’t appear to dictate policy, and is not renowned for his grasp of sums. During the general election, and again in this year’s referendum campaign, the handlers wrapped him in cotton wool, afraid he might trip up in media interviews. That’s a sad reflection on any leader.

Ahern was expert at PR, offering routine doorstep interviews in which he threw out a few morsels before scampering. Kenny can’t even do that. In a highly publicised affair recently he nearly fell over a flowerpot as he tried to run away from questions about his position on gay marriage.

His ministers take flights of fancy and go off on solo runs, which mean he’s certainly not a strongman leader, whipping everybody into line. But maybe he has a vision.

“By 2016 we will prove to be the best small country in the world,” he has said more than once. It’s a line that was first used by politicians in Scotland, but, in any event, it hardly constitutes a vision.

He has had success in Europe, with a reduction on the interest rate for the troika, and catching French coattails on the banking debt, but does anybody really believe those achievements are down to Kenny’s political nous?

As of now, Enda Kenny continues to resemble an accidental Taoiseach. It’s shaping up to be a winter of discontent, one which is bound to test his mettle, his capacity to actually lead. Some leaders are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. Kenny would hardly qualify under the first two categories, but he still has time to make his mark. He’d want to put his skates on.