The men who came in from the cold

AS the two men approached each other by the bandstand in a near deserted park at twilight, the scene was reminiscent of an old spy movie.

And in a way, Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore were The Men Who Came In From The Cold (of opposition) — but, unfortunately for them, they knew they were exchanging it for the Arctic winter of austerity government.

Indeed, the park photo-op was redolent with unfortunate political metaphors, because after Enda had been left, literally, holding the baby (well, a cute four-year-old child the snappers insisted he lifted up, anyway), the two leaders found they’d been locked-in against their will.

Both had to execute embarrassing U-turns as they found their room for manoeuvre had been decided by outside forces and the park gates had been shut in their faces, forcing the two men to turn on their heels and hunt for a dignified escape route.

Unkind observers may have been left wondering, if these two couldn’t negotiate their way out of Dublin’s Herbert Park, how the hell were they going to negotiate a new bailout deal with the IMF?

But both men could probably have levitated over the iron railings as they appeared to be walking on air after getting near unanimous party backing for their programme for gridlock, sorry, government.

And the Labour ratification had been a complete, well, sell-out.

There was standing room only in the O’Reilly Hall of UCD, as Eamon opened and closed the show, while a muted chorus of disapproval took to the stage in between — but the opposition only ever seemed half-hearted at best.

Though the show of hands at the end was about 95% pro-leadership, Mr Gilmore had taken few chances and made a point of glad-handing most of the delegates as they paraded into the building.

He was perched just yards from the stand selling Gilmore mugs (strangely, the Gilmore for Taoiseach ones had been packed away), and when asked how trade was going the activist behind the counter exclaimed: “We’ve sold out!”

And that is exactly how left-wing speakers in the hall felt about those they saw as the Gilmore mugs backing the deal as well.

Dublin councillor Cian O’Callaghan had the best analogy of the day when he despaired that Fine Gael had now just replaced Fianna Fáil in the boxing ring to punch the poor and the vulnerable and all Labour could hope to achieve in government was to act as a padded glove to soften the blows.

Not to be out-done in the pithy one liners, pro-agreement speaker Ciarán Lynch warned Labour’s honeymoon with the voters would be “shorter than a black widow spider’s”, but the housing spokesperson knew he’d got most of his own agenda into the document, and Labour had won major gains in health and welfare, and the economic issues had been sufficiently fudged to be revisited later.

But the problem for the pro-government lobby was how to make it look like they weren’t sucking-up to the enemy they’d attacked as Enda’s Toxic Tories just two weeks ago.

Fine Gael leaving the door open to a referendum on recognising full gay marriage was cited as a victory again and again, but in reality Enda probably agreed to it just to annoy his own party’s hardline (in)equality spokesperson Lucinda Creighton, with whom he does not have the warmest of relations.

North Dublin TD Tommy Broughan, his centre-parted mane of hair swinging in outrage, emerged as the left-wing lion of the gathering, denouncing everything to do with the deal and warning of the dire consequences that would befall Labour if they adopted it.

Mr Broughan held out the hope of a Labour-led government next time — if only delegates kept their faith and rejected “Enda’s straitjacket”.

The lefties hinged most of their argument on this concept, indeed, at times they were like game show hosts, smugly insisting: “Well, you’ve won the Enda Kenny memorial teas-made, but if you hadn’t folded so early, this is what you could have won...” before showing them the luxury caravan — except, of course, top prize would not be a caravan, but rather a one-way ticket down the fabled Democratic Road To Socialism.

But this party had met in the shadow of defeat for too long, it was tired of the impotence of opposition and was determined to take its chances swimming around the cabinet table with Fine Gael’s Thatcherite sharks.

After Eamon warned of the unpopularity they would inevitably endure and the demonstrating public sector workers they would need to wade through to get to conference next time, the delegates backed him overwhelming. There was no going back.

The sun had been shining all afternoon as the delegates streamed into the UCD campus, but when they flocked back into the real world after the vote, the skies had turned a thunderous grey, and as Mr Gilmore hurried to his rendezvous with destiny in the Herbert Park, the air had turned decidedly frosty — the wind of change would be a bitterly cold one.