Fine Gael’s choice: A leader to win elections or one to run the country
SIMON would be better at running the country, but Leo will win us elections.
That was how one senior minister put the dilemma facing Fine Gael to me the other night.
Anyone who has been in Leinster House knows it is a warren of long narrow corridors, with couches dotted around the place.
On those couches, politicians and journalists could be heard all this week predicting, surmising and forecasting just who will be the next leader of Fine Gael.
Will it be Leo Varadkar or will it be Simon Coveney?
“Leo will win the parliamentary party hands down,” you hear from one corner.
“Coveney has the edge with the councillors too,” comes the line from another.
While we are all awaiting Enda Kenny’s formal announcement, the election is on, and on in earnest.
Both campaign teams have election bases established, with white boards, lists of names.
Eoghan Murphy, the junior finance minister who is acting as campaign manager for Mr Varadkar, is using his office on the ministerial corridor as his main base of operations.
Mr Murphy, who has just achieved a major win of his own in terms of stabilising car insurance rates, has stepped up the energy levels in relation to the campaign this week.
Observers on the normally peaceful corridor have seen a noticeable increase in activity in recent days, with a lot of campaign activists or supporters spotted dropping in.
“It makes sense; it is a good location for us and it is in a normally quiet part of the building. While the formal announcement is yet to come, we are in full operation mode,” said a source.
For the Coveney side, it looks like they are going for a mobile approach.
“In true modern work practice, it’s more of a virtual HQ... conference calls with different parties; we use different offices where necessary and where suits,” was how one Coveney strategist described it to me yesterday.
Some weeks ago, we ran the results of a survey of the Fine Gael parliamentary party, which indicated that Mr Coveney had the edge over Mr Varadkar.
According to an analysis of the 73-member Fine Gael parliamentary party, the Irish Examiner concluded at that stage that Mr Coveney commanded the support of 37 members — seven clear of the 30 votes for Mr Varadkar.
Six votes were either undecided or too close to call at that stage.
But this week, we saw a similar survey of the party conducted by Martina Fitzgerald of RTÉ News.
Half of the parliamentary party indicated who they will vote for in a leadership contest. Of the 73 members of the parliamentary party, 62 responded on a confidential basis, which represents 85% of the parliamentary party.
A total of 23 people said they were supporting Mr Varadkar, which represents almost a third of the parliamentary party, while 13 said they were voting for Mr Coveney.
While my own soundings indicate that Mr Varadkar would appear to have an edge on Mr Coveney in terms of support within the party, I would suspect the gap is closer than what the RTÉ poll threw up.
But as I said above, the dilemma facing the party is whether they plump for the man who they feel is likely to win them more seats, or the man who will be better at running the country.
“Leo will win us more seats, hands down. He has the X-Factor that Coveney simply doesn’t. And bottom line, people will vote in their self- interest. Do we want to become what the Labour Party has become in the UK?” said one Leo supporter.
That comment came yesterday after the TD met Tony Blair, who won three successive elections for Labour between 1997 and 2005. Mr Blair was in Wicklow as part of his campaign to cleanse his legacy and was addressing the gathering of the European People’s Party.
“Just look at what Labour has become over there,” the exercised TD told me. “Simon would be a wonderful leader of the opposition but we have to cement ourselves as the party of government.
“Remember, Fianna Fáil had their chance but rejected it. We are not going to the barrister-led era of John A Costello. That day is done.”
Mr Coveney’s side obviously don’t agree. They argue that Simon too would deliver a bounce to Fine Gael at the next election, so the X-Factor thing is not restricted to Leo.
They also argue that, unlike Mr Varadkar, who was completely disinterested in the talks to form this Government, their man is one of the Programme for Government’s main architects.
“He is intimately familiar with it. He did the hard yards, saw the deal over the line. Where was Leo in those talks? Sulking, or had his head shoved in his phone,” said one campaign source. Such behaviour from Mr Varadkar has been confirmed by two Independent ministers, who got the distinct impression during the talks that he did not want to be there.
This is becoming a recurring theme in the conversations I am having.
Mr Varadkar gets bored quickly, he doesn’t have the temperament for Government, which needs dogged persistence.
It feeds back into the analogy of the two men — “show pony versus work horse”. Both men hated that phrase when it first surfaced, but it had the ring of truth about it.
One area where Leo certainly has the edge is his working of the back benches.
For several years, he has worked the rank-and-file troops hard. Ensuring since becoming minister that he kept Wednesday nights free (the main socialising night of the working Dáil week) meant he had plenty of time to lend an ear to the concerns of colleagues.
Pints with the lads, invites to major sporting events, hosting a select gathering of colleagues at race meetings have been the order of the day.
The point is that he was well out ahead of Mr Coveney, who has begun his canvassing late in the day.
His supporters say this is because he has a meaningful ministry which requires actual work and he does not have the same amount of flexibility that Mr Varadkar has. Social Protection may be a big-money department in terms of budget, the biggest in fact, but it essentially runs itself.
One big glorified ATM is how the late Seamus Brennan, who was minister there, referred to it.
So, come next Thursday as the two teams launch their campaigns in earnest, the phoney war will finally come to an end and the hostilities will take centre stage.
While the two men at the heart of the battle have managed to keep things relatively civil so far, this race has the potential to rip the party apart.
The scars of the heave in 2010 loom large and this is the first contest for a leader in 15 years, so it can quickly turn very poisonous. Both teams are wary that one slip could cost them everything. But for those who will be voting, the dilemma mentioned above remains.
Do you vote for the man likely to win you more seats or the man who would be better at running the country?
