FG tries to win swing vote via FF/SF ‘love-in’

ENDA KENNY was still running yesterday, but it was the voters he wanted scared.

After all the talk of letting the politics of hope defeat the politics of fear, Fine Gael’s message could be distilled down into four words: “Vote Bertie, get Adams”.

Playing the Shinners card may smack of desperation, but in a tightening race it also just could frighten enough middle class voters away from Fianna Fáil to make a difference.

Luck seemed to be favouring the Rainbow once again as Mr Kenny speed through the south following the lightning strike blow of Sunday’s opinion poll surge for FF.

At times it was like the early part of the campaign, with Enda energised on optimism while Fianna Fáil flailed under the weight of bad news from the health service and serious question marks over who they

would share power with. The big difference: in that phase of the election the Taoiseach was either silent or sulking over the way he was being treated by an ungrateful nation feeding on what he considers to be a “half armature media”. Now he is off the back foot and back in the hunt.

The Fine Gael leader had also bounced back from his poll woes and again exuded confidence he was in the waiting room to greatness and would be Taoiseach within days.

Initially dazed by their sudden ratings reversal, the seriousness of the situation seems to have shocked a complacent Rainbow campaign back to life. However, it may have been strategically better for FG to trumpet “the Shinners are coming!” theme as soon as the poll stall became apparent rather than wait until the last day of broadcast reporting.

Either way, Enda had got his groove back and was high-fiving and thumbs-alofting anything that moved between Waterford and Cork.

He seems to have a particular bent for shoe shops as he dashes through shopping mall after shopping mall. “They run around like lunatics when they want to get elected,” one boot browser mused before adding: “He’s got a nice handshake though, I think I’ll vote for him.”

It is lucky for the people of Ireland the campaign, unlike Enda, is on its last legs. He has clearly exhausted his vast reserves of small talk as one drive-by hit on an old lady in a supermarket proved. Enda had spotted she was carrying two loaves of bread, and quick as a flash asked her: “So, you’re going to make some toast then?”

He got the kind of pitying look usually reserved for an eager but dim child.

With that he left for the final gasp of the campaign in his native Connacht, hoping he has done enough to secure the path to Government Buildings. He knows if he fails, despite the almost inevitable 15-plus seat spike for Fine Gael, this will have been his one shot at the top job. Nobody observing his efforts at close quarters can deny he gave it his all. Now he either makes history by becoming the first popularly elected Fine Gael Taoiseach in a quarter of a century, or he makes the long, lonely journey out of the spotlight and back to Mayo.