Enda the Enforcer manages to hit party’s FG spot

THE Fine Gael leader is full of alliterative possibilities. Enda the Earnest. Easy Enda. Engaging Enda. Enda the eco-warrior (we are joking for the last one).

But a new beast was unleashed at City West this weekend. Harder than granite. Tougher than toilet bleach. More durable than Tom Crean.

Yes, it was Enda the Enforcer, Fine Gael’s answer to Robert de Niro’s Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. This is the man who will clean up our streets, clamp down on drunks, ride singlehandedly into the ghettos to take on the bad guys.

His message was a reworking of the old political cliché: “Tough on crime; even tougher on the causers of crime.”

Thirty years ago, Fine Gael came up with its just society manifesto. But if there are any remnants left of the wishy-washy liberal and social justice wing, they were not in evidence at City West.

The tougher the Enforcer got, the louder the 3,500 delegates cheered.

It was possibly Fine Gael’s last national convention before the general election and they turned out in force in City West to tell us how wrong we all are and how right they are about their chances.

After the last election, the party was like a ship that had been marauded by pirates. It had lost its captain and half of its crew, was badly listing to its side and many wondered would it ever limp it back to home port to be restored to former glory.

The situation was so bad that the new captain had been plucked from somewhere so obscure in the bowels of the ship that many had been completely aware of his existence until then.

But that was then.

Four years later, Captain Kenny set out to show us he was as mean as any pirate when it came to disciplining the ranks.

Drunk tanks for weekend warriors. The rights of property owners over intruders. Electronic tagging for those on bail for serious crime. Whipping the judges into line on mandatory sentences.

The prose was as harsh as a January storm in Belmullet. But for most of his speech, Enda Kenny’s delivery was as soft and flat as the Bog of Allen, reserving the bits where the voice got hoarse from shouting until right at the end.

It didn’t matter. He could have delivered it in Braille and he still would have been cheered home by the 3,500 delegates.

The party may major on law and order but can do little to control the Mad Max tendencies of its own TDs and Senators.

In the micro-second that Kenny finished his speech, there was an unseemly sprint to the stage by TDs and Senators to position themselves as close to the leader and embrace him in full view of the TV cameras. For one awful second as the crush developed, we thought that the riot squad would have to be called in.