Artful Ahern may face rumblings of future heave

ALL that was absent from Bertie Ahern’s attire of yellow trousers and light jacket at the G8 summit on Sea Island in Georgia was a Panama hat.

But if our home-grown version of the Man from Del Monte spent most of the last week in exotic climes saying yes, he's likely to find that the great unwashed back home said no yesterday, where it mattered at the polls.

To quote an immortal bard, two out of three ain't bad. But for Mr Ahern, it's likely that the only poll of the three conducted yesterday that will give succour is the referendum which, on the basis of the clever scare tactics used by the Government, will be comfortably passed.

But as for the other two, Mr Ahern will be able to share a bit of déjà vu with another of his casually dressed colleagues at the G8 summit, Tony Blair.

Britain voted on Thursday and Labour took one hell of a drubbing. The party was reduced to third in the pecking order, scoring a lowly 26% of the compared with the Tories (38%) and the Liberal Democrats (30%).

Mr Ahern's Fianna Fáil used to openly invite comparisons between itself and New Labour.

And just as it all seems to be unfurling a bit for Mr Blair of late, this weekend may see the first serious questions being asked about Mr Ahern's future as party leader and the cranking up of speculation about who may succeed him.

Before we begin to lose the run of ourselves, though, it's important to note that you need to approach local and Euro elections with caution bucket-loads of it.

People vote for different reasons in the locals and Euros than they do in the general elections. The Tories, under William Hague, also won 38% of the vote in the 2000 local elections but were roundly slaughtered in the general election the following year.

This time round, Fianna Fáil is going to take a hit in both elections.

Mr Ahern has spent some time in the past couple of days using the context strategy. Knowing that the electorate may give his party a bloody nose, he's pointed to the last locals in 1999 as a historic high for the party. Impossible to emulate, said Mr Ahern on Thursday. Translation: "We're going to get whipped."

Ultimately, it will not be the losses (which are inevitable) but the extent of the losses that will determine the upping of the ante over Mr Ahern's long-term leadership. If the party takes the kind of whack that Labour took in Britain and ends up with its vote hovering around the 30% of the vote, we may see the first rumblings of a future heave.

Whereas Mr Blair can look to local and Euro elections as a distraction, in Ireland they assume a much greater importance.

Having said all that, Mr Ahern has presided over a party that has been the most settled since Sean Lemass. After the thrills and spills of Mr Haughey and Mr Reynolds, it was the other side of the house that went into self-destruct mode.

Fine Gael, under Enda Kenny, now seems solid and there is no doubts about his leadership, irrespective of this weekend's results.

And as for Mr Ahern? As of now, divining his future intentions is like staring into decidedly murky waters. He's spent a lot of time in the past two months ruling out the presidency of the EU Commission but, typically, Mr Ahern never fully ruled it out.

At the end of next week, Mr Ahern will travel to Brussels, to try and get agreement on the Constitution. If he were to achieve that, it would easily be the outstanding triumph of this term in office. And yet, for all that, if FF conspires to nosedive dramatically, you would have the strange scenario of a Taoiseach arriving home to a hero's welcome and the beginnings of a scrap for the leadership of his party.

That is unlikely. He's cold on the Europe job and no potential rival is looming up within FF. But the problem with Mr Ahern is that he is so artfully ambivalent that you never really know. For sometimes when this man from Del Monte says Yes, you wonder does that really mean No.