Two men of character, but only one is lucky in his choice of enemies

JIM McDAID has character. Perhaps not every ingredient that goes into that elusive characteristic, but he has a lot.

We’ll deal with the qualities he has and those he is missing in a minute. But in my definition of political character, one of the things that rounds off a politician is luck. And one of the reasons Jim McDaid is in the position he is in this week is because he has been very unlucky, particularly in his choice of political bosses.

Tony Blair has character, too. Unlike McDaid, however, he has been lucky, especially in his choice of political enemies.

The difference is the reason why one of them is likely to go into the history books this week as one of the most successful political leaders in British history, and the other is likely to quickly discover the truth of the aphorism that all political careers end in failure.

Before I try to define character and apply it to the two main newsmakers of the last week, let me tell you a story that sums up, at least for me, what I mean by character.

Some years ago Neil Kinnock, then Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, was in Dublin as the guest of the Irish Labour Party.

We had hired a chauffeur-driven limousine for the occasion. At the end of the visit, the party was driving back to Dublin airport when, just at the roundabout before the airport, the chauffeur, whose name was Tom Conlon, suffered a massive heart attack at the wheel. The car shot forward and mounted the roundabout before coming to a stop.

Everyone was shocked and confused. Only Kinnock realised what had happened. In a flash he had leaped out of the back of the car, ripped the driver’s door open, and pulled Tom out. When I and others arrived, it was to see Kinnock bending over the prostrate driver trying to revive him.

Then he lay down on the grass beside Tom, and started whispering urgently in his ear. And he kept talking to him until an ambulance arrived.

Tom died at the scene, and was probably dead when Kinnock pulled him out of the car. Later, I asked Kinnock what he was whispering in Tom’s ear. “I knew he was a Catholic,” Kinnock said, “and I knew he was dying. So I tried to make up a confession because I know that helps Catholics in that situation.”

Character is what makes a politician do what he has to do, as opposed to what he wants to do.

A politician with character may not always have energy, or brilliance, or sound judgment. But character gives him or her the stamina to keep going, the ability to keep learning, the integrity to try to call it right. It’s a different quality to courage.

A lot of politicians with character don’t necessarily have much political courage, but they always have the courage to do what they have to do, once they have decided what’s the right thing and what’s the wrong thing. What politicians with character have, usually, is a sense of values, and usually, too, respect for other people’s values. Politicians with character are never abstract about their politics.

They know that politics is about people and choices. How did Neil Kinnock know that Tom Conlon was Catholic? He had observed that Tom had gone to Mass that morning, and stored the memory away.

More to the point, a lot of politicians in that exact position might well have tried to save the chauffeur’s life. I’ve often wondered how many would have known his name.

I worked briefly with Jim McDaid, and I have to say I liked him. He was hard-working, committed, and believed passionately in what he was doing.

AS MINISTER for Sport, for instance, he took on the issue of abuse in swimming, and stuck to his guns in his relations with the organisations involved, despite a lot of pressure.

He had integrity, too. His first boss, Charles Haughey, got involved in controversy when he appointed him Minister for Defence, and when it became apparent that Des O’Malley was unhappy with the appointment, Jim McDaid saved Haughey the trouble of shafting him. He probably became the first and only minister in an Irish government to resign from office before he received his seal of office. As Minister for Sport, he defended the Bertie Bowl through thick and thin (mostly thin), and no member of Government was more loyal to Bertie than he was.

That was probably the mistake that made him dispensable, to the point where in the last reshuffle he was the only junior minister not reappointed. His loyalty and trustworthiness, and indeed his ability to carry a brief, counted for nothing.

Of course, Jim McDaid has a problem with judgment. Even sober, he could be impetuous and rash, and we know only too well now that impetuousness could have killed people when he drank. In my admittedly very limited experience of him, he struggled to control his alcoholism, and managed to do so when he was in office. Should he now resign? I have a hunch that he probably should, for his own sake. He badly needs to get his life in order, and the glare of publicity can’t be doing him any good. He doesn’t need the likes of me, whom he would regard as a political opponent anyway, to tell him that he’ll get no peace until he deals with his illness.

But it’s the truth.

There’s a different question. Was his offence a resigning matter? There’s an increasingly fine line between the political and the personal, and if Jim McDaid was still a minister, he would have to go (I suspect he would know that himself).

But I can’t see the case for resigning from the Dáil over a personal, rather than a political, lapse. Yes, his offence was serious, and might well warrant a jail term. But that’s a matter for the courts to decide, and not the rest of us.

While Jim McDaid is contemplating the ruin of his career, Tony Blair is on the brink of becoming the most successful Labour leader ever.

And odd though it is to say, many of the same issues of character apply. I firmly believe Tony Blair was, and is, 100% wrong over the Iraq war, but I believe he was wrong out of conviction rather than calculation.

I believe him to be a principled and immensely skilful politician, beholden to no one other than his own values. And while I don’t share all those values, I reckon the British people have seen through the media onslaught on Blair, and have decided they will trust him with their welfare for another term of government.

I said at the start that Blair had the other essential ingredient for greatness, apart from character. He has been lucky with his enemies. A succession of Tory leaders, each one more dreadful than his predecessor, has reduced that party to a laughing stock. But that is not to devalue the skills that Blair has brought to his job of leading a difficult party and governing a complex country. And, of course, the character.