Wanted: A brave leader with vision - Qualities political leaders need

IT may not be an analogy Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s handlers might comfortably offer, but if the saga of his leadership, and particularly when it might end, was imagined as a dance of the seven veils then Mr Kenny can have only one, or at the very most two, veils left ahead of tomorrow’s Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting where it is expected but not certain, that he will clarify when he will shed the last veil. 

Mr Kenny has repelled, with a cherubic smile, suggestion after suggestion that the sun has set on his era, he has declined to vacate the position he has held since 2002. In our split-second world, a reign of that longevity may seem a tad Elizabethan for a republic but it did not begin until almost 20 years after Gerry Adams was named as leader of Sinn Féin in 1983.

Mr Kenny’s retirement — and Mr Adams’ — cannot be too far away, long-live-the-king realities confirmed by the suggestion that Mary Lou McDonald has been selected to succeed Mr Adams. The perception that either only Leo Varadkar or Simon Coveney has any real prospect of succeeding Mr Kenny confirms it too. The perception that the race to lead Fine Gael — and in today’s circumstances become Taoiseach — involves only two contenders may prove inaccurate but, as these events always do, it sidelines reasonable questions: What do we expect from political leaders? What qualities, what principles should they embody? Are they elected to please or to lead? Have politics just become a dull, earnest arm of the entertainment industry or can they really lead the kind of reform that lifts all boats?