Time for Enda Kenny to play trump card and quit

Enda Kenny’s visit to the White House was necessary - his invitation to Donald Trump to visit this country wasn’t, writes Michael Clifford.

THAT’S it, done and dusted. Let’s move on. It was nice knowing you, Mr Kenny, and we hope you enjoy your retirement.

Enda Kenny returns from the USA this weekend and the fervent hope is he does not prolong his departure any further.

On Thursday, he listed for Brian Dobson the issues that face him once he returns.

“We don’t have an executive in Northern Ireland…We don’t have a negotiated agreement for the grounds of Brexit… These are two major priorities way beyond the stature or tenure of the office that I have,” he said.

That sounds like a man intent on sticking around for a while.

Please, in the immortal words of boxer Roberto Duran, when he was being pummelled into submission by Sugar Ray Leonard, “no mas, no mas”.

No more, Enda, please. Go now, for the love of God, please go.

Hopefully, by Monday he will outline his departure date and equally, hopefully, it will be within the next month.

We could do without a prolonged period of arse-boxing in Fine Gael over who is going to be the next Enda.

During the week, Kenny managed to inflict some damage on his successor. He made two commitments, both of which are going to be highly controversial, and neither of which he will be lumbered with.

His invitation to Donald Trump to visit this country was unnecessary and will cause major problems if the president of the USA takes up the offer.

Kenny was under no obligation to issue such an invitation. Despite what some might have posited, he most certainly was under an obligation to go Washington to mark our national holiday.

To have foregone a meeting with Trump would have been a snub to a country that is a long-term cultural and economic ally.

Trump’s schoolyard temperament is such that he may well have singled the so-called undocumented Irish out for special treatment as a result of any such snub. (Not that Kenny didn’t want to go, far from it).

So he was obliged to meet the elected leader of the USA, as per tradition. That did not oblige him to issue the invitation to visit.

If Trump deigns that such a visit is in his electoral interests, Kenny will have long departed from the stage. His successor will then have to deal with a security and political nightmare.

And for what? So that Kenny could make one last attempt at ingratiating himself to another big cheese, basking in the reflected glow of proximity to a world leader.

Something similar was at work earlier in the week when he pulled from his hat the proposal that the Irish abroad be allowed to vote in presidential elections.

This, quite obviously, was not about calling home the exiled generations. No, it was all about Enda.

Before an appreciative audience, he wanted to feel their love one more time, to hear the applause ringing through every fibre of his political being. He wanted a little recognition.

The reality is that the proposal is cack-handed. There is certainly a justified desire, if not a requirement, for elected representation for the so-called diaspora.

The best form such recognition should take would be an allocation of seats in the Seanad. But a vote for president?

Kenny’s watery proposal propelled me back to another lifetime when I spent a year digging holes into the granite rock of Manhattan. This was the 1980s. Recessionary Ireland was on tour and, at home, murder for political ends was a daily occurrence.

Frequenting the bars of Queens and the Bronx was to hear learned opinion on how the media back home was censored, the Brits were secretly killing children, and Maggie Thatcher was a disciple of Adolf Hitler.

There was instant dismissal of any opinion which pointed out that the vast majority of people on the benighted isle back home were vehemently opposed to responding to the injustices in the North by killing human beings.

And whenever one pointed out that the majority of Catholics in the North were equally abhorred at the killing, the response was ridicule.

These exiles knew what was really going on back home. Through their prism of romantic Ireland, they saw the mythical figures of Pearse and Connolly offering self-sacrifice on the streets of Belfast, rather than the reality of broken lives, sundered limbs, and bloody carnage from the latest outrage.

In the 1980s, Gerry Adams’ voice could not be broadcast on Irish airwaves but he would have had a good shot at getting elected president if the franchise was extended to passport holders abroad.

The disparity between the public psyche at home and abroad is not confined to the national question.

For instance, in general, there would be a more left-wing (relatively speaking) outlook in this country compared to the USA or UK at the moment.

How long would it take the exiled Irish to be influenced by prevailing winds in their adopted homes? How would that, in turn, be reflected at the ballot box if they were voting for a president back home? Would those who live in this country be happy with a titular head who is more reflective of opinion or sentiment abroad than at home?

These issues will have to be dealt with by Kenny’s successor, and whoever it is will retain a little resentment for being landed with this particular incendiary device.

The smart money says it won’t actually come to pass, but at least Enda got a thundering round of applause for throwing it out there.

Of course, he has always been more at home when abroad. Through the years of austerity and pain, the heads of state and functionaries in the EU had great time for Enda. Many of them were amazed that he lost the last election.

Even yesterday, as media and politicians back home chided him for not giving Trump a proper earful, the New York Times headlined a piece: ‘Irish Premier uses St Patrick’s Day Ritual To Lecture Trump On Immigration.’

Did he really, or is that a reflection of a relatively supine attitude in the US media towards their own president?

Kenny’s supporters might prefer to cast their hero as the biblical prophet who was not accepted in his own land.

But enough of that. It’s time to move on. Enda Kenny’s lap of honour has now lasted nearly a year. He should have gone once the current government was formed.

His extended tenure is down entirely to what serves his own best interests rather than anything to do with his party, not to mind the country.

There is much to chew over in his legacy, but that is for another day.

For now, we can only hope that the warm glow of another successful foreign trip, another round of applause, will prompt him to be prompt about his departure.