Drinking a toast to public apathy

WHENEVER the former Liberal Democrats leader Charles Kennedy was challenged on his drinking habits, he’d deflect by saying that just because he was Scottish and enjoyed the odd dram.

Everybody assumed he was a dipso.

Well the assumption, as it turns out, wasn’t too wide of the mark. Bonny prinnssh Charlie got the order of the boot last week from colleagues who finally made public - in the cruellest way - their constant whingeing about his constant bingeing.

The evidence of Kennedy’s over-indulgence was deeply shocking to Irish eyes. Deeply shocking in the sense that few collective eyelids would have been batted over here at the extent of his drinking.

Publicly, it didn’t seem to add up to much. He fell off the wagon for a couple of days in November. Twice in the past two years, his problem crept from party rooms into a wider realm. He failed to turn up for a budget speech. Yep, that was bad. And in a particularly woeful day for him on the campaign trail during the British election last summer, a clearly bleary Kennedy got into a terrible pickle over figures.

The excuse - that few colleagues believed - was blamed on a late night because of his young infant’s teething problems.

In fairness to the Lib Dems, who finally decided to draw the long knives from their sheaths (and use them mercilessly), the manifestation of Kennedy’s problem must have been far more apparent in private.

In public, Kennedy was gloriously unspun and his appeal ran wider than all other leaders, including the ridiculously transparent Tony Blair. It must have taken a huge system failure - in focus and strategic direction - for a party to ditch so ruthlessly its best electoral asset.

Of course, the arrival onto the scene of another populist, David Cameron, would have focused minds and sharpened knives.

There was a lesson - and some fallout - from all of this for Irish politics. Alcohol has coursed through the body politic of Irish politics since the foundation of the State. The tolerance level for the drinker politicians has been as high as their own tolerance for drink.

If somebody drank too much, that was never considered a matter of public importance. Not for politicians. Not for the media.

The over-indulgers were always over-indulged. You only have to look at the sympathy for some of the current crop, like Jim McDaid andGV Wright, when they were caught drink driving.

Like any other walk of life, Irish parliamentary politics has had its fair share of alcoholics over the years, though none (publicly at least) in such a senior position as Kennedy.

Though some Irish leaders were famously moderate, there were others who drank and who drank heavily on occasion.

Unreliable witness as he is, Frank Dunlop in his memoirs told of nights drinking Paddy whiskey with Jack Lynch. The label on the Paddy bottle had a map of Ireland. And Lynch would always say they would not stop tippling until they arrived at Thurles on the bottle.

It’s probably the only journey in the world where you’d have a full tank by the time you finished.

Two other party leaders in a coalition used to settle their differences over a bottle of whiskey. And there has been plenty of anecdotal stuff over the years about senior politicians being the worst for wear, or making an inappropriate comment or being no-shows.

But never has it become an issue. Perhaps, none were as debilitated as Kennedy. Or, more likely, the political sweepers came out to brush it all safely out of view, whistling all the while.

And the fallout from Kennedy over here? Strangely, quirkily, it was poor Trevor Sargent who seemed to take the only hit.

Sargent is as moderate and clean-living an Irish politician as you will find. But somehow the media over here latched onto the notion that if the nice guys of British politics could putsch their leader like that, why couldn’t Ireland’s most inoffensive and collective party do the same.

Sargent made a speech at his party’s drinks reception before Christmas that some took as him taking a swipe at the media. There seemed to be an element of climb-down from the party the following day. But a minor story was somehow elevated to a week-long examination of Sargent’s credentials as a leader, driven by a barren news week and by the running Kennedy story in Britain.

As for the real issue - that of our tolerance of alcohol in Ireland - we were all just slurping greedily in the vat of our indifference.