Enda stamps on Grinch Gilmore’s presents
Labour TDs looked on with a mixture of confusion, bewilderment and anger playing across their silent little faces — like children being told Santa Claus does not exist — as the Taoiseach promised: “I will make an honest leader of the Tánaiste, Deputy Gilmore.”
The Tánaiste was not in the chamber to hear the extraordinary put down, but he was soon getting it from all sides as some of his TDs left him in no doubt they thought he was a bit of a wimp in the prickly parliamentary meeting that followed.
Why the Taoiseach trashed the Tánaiste holds the key to that intriguing question: Is Enda the Forrest Gump of Irish politics who bumbles his way through to glory, or does that deliberate mild manner mask a master political tactician?
The Forrest Gump option would suggest he didn’t really mean to brand Gilmore dishonest, he was just a bit giddy after actually being quick-witted for once in the face of Comrade Joe, who had hit him with a quartet of specific queries on honesty to which he replied: “Deputy Higgins reminds me a little of the return of Senator Joe McCarthy: ‘Did you ever, have you ever, would you ever associate with the Communist Party? Answer yes or no’.”
So pleased with himself at branding the self-styled Trotskyite with the tar of an anti-communist witchhunter, Mr Kenny seemed to lose all control and was now crash landing on the strange, unknown world called Planet Enda and went on to brand Mr Higgins a “terrorist” — albeit of the “benign parliamentary” kind — before effectively questioning the honesty of the Tánaiste.
Asked if he would “make honest little elves of the Labour backbenchers busy mining for votes”, Enda gave a startling reply agreeing Labour gave a clear pledge not to cut child benefit.
“The Tánaiste and I agreed on a Programme for Government subsequently. Therefore, the deputy is right, the Labour Party programme was clear prior to the election. There is no denial in that regard.
“The Tánaiste was completely honest in his pronouncements prior to the election,” he announced seemingly asserting Labour honesty stopped as soon as the polling booths closed, before hurriedly trying to reverse his position.
As the Labour elves, sorry deputies, began to look at each other in disbelief, a Sinn Féin member urged the Taoiseach to “keep digging”. And so he did as, intentional or not, the thrust of Enda’s argument could be summed-up as: “Yes, Labour promised not to touch child benefit to win votes, but, hey, that’s elections for you, baby, and Eamon soon sold out that little pledge because he was so desperate to get into power, but don’t worry, I’ll try to make him honest again — if I can.”
As political happy-slappings go it was pretty brutal stuff, and left Gilmore with a face now much redder than the Tánaiste’s rather tarnished looking socialist principles.
