Time for Fine Gael front-benchers to ensure Kenny never walks alone

GOING to a political party conference like Fine Gael’s may be safer than attending an office Christmas party.

Every year, alcohol disinhibits attendees at the office party into doing things which make it difficult for them to respect themselves in the morning.

Although the same should happen at Ard Fheiseanna, it rarely does. Very few of the participants end up resigning from the cumann or not speaking to each other as a result. Of course, it may be that they have so many other opportunities for getting riled with each other that a) they don’t need to waste a good knees-up on it, b) they’d be better to do it at home and get it into the local rag than do it somewhere like Millstreet, and c) the one sure way to get the leadership cross with you is to take attention away from them by having a nasty spat at the annual Party party.

Aficionados know the rules. They know to the minute the point at which the serious business is over and the drinking, dancing and designer-wear display starts.

They know an event like Millstreet is essentially an animated photo-opportunity to reassure the television audience that front benchers can actually walk and talk.

Particularly walk. Television needs shots - especially of the party leader - walking. Standing doesn’t cut it. They have to be captured onscreen walking towards enthusiastic supporters, walking away from the crowd in thoughtful conversation with front-bench colleagues, walking nowhere in particular, on their own, looking reflective. These shots can be used to illustrate how charismatic and popular the main guy is, how much a team player he is or (bring on the mood music) how lonely is the job of leader.

For all we know, Enda Kenny spent the day before Millstreet with a physiotherapist, getting his hamstrings prepped for onscreen perambulation. Because, on the day, he perambulated like a good ‘un. He did group, paired and solo perambulation.

Of course solo walking has its drawbacks. Some Fine Gaelers believe their current leader is so attractive to cameras, his theme song should be that old Gerry and the Pacemakers number, You’ll never walk alone.

Instead of marching around by himself, they feel, he should always have a candidate attached to him the way Gerry Adams had Mary Lou McDonald joined to his hip like they were running a three-legged race. She had damn all relevance to the issue of the day, and media knew it, but couldn’t separate them.

Even if a photographer focused only on him, a bit of her - it could be hair, boob or arm - would sneak into the shot so it was easier to include her than crop the picture.

If Fine Gael started to superglue candidates to Kenny’s hip, SF-style, it would create free face-recognition for those candidates. It would also limit complaints that FG haven’t made their front bench into household names.

Mention this to Fine Gael and they go nuts, yelling that the people barking on about the front bench not being household names are precisely the same media figures who, when looking for responses to Government initiatives like Transport 21 and the abolition of the Groceries Order, go to Michael O’Leary and Eddie Hobbs. It’s a great double whammy: don’t let the poor sods in and then blame them for being absent.

Bad enough to have policy initiatives nicked by Fianna Fáil, but having their Rip-off Ireland clothes nicked by Eddie Hobbs makes them grind their teeth down to little nubs because not only do many people think he started the whole thing (whereas Fine Gael had devoted a website to it long before his programme) but they can’t attack him for it because they and he are theoretically on the one side. They do resent, however, the millions of column inches devoted to him that could have been occupied by members of their front bench.

ON the other hand, vote-management geniuses within FG like Frank Flannery know that - while media fame is the butter on the spud - the key place for party candidates to be household names is in the only households that matter: the households in their constituencies.

Nor should it be forgotten that fame is not always an electoral advantage. The electorate has been known to turf famous figures out in favour of unknowns.

On the fifth of July, 1945, directly after the Second World War, the British Conservatives lost 203 seats in Parliament and Labour gained 227. This was at a time when Churchill was the ultimate brand, the personification of how Britain had won the war, one of those rare animals whose first AND second names, conjoint and separate, are instantly recognisable (Bertie Ahern is the best current Irish example).

The people selected by the electorate on that occasion were not just less well known than Churchill, they weren’t known at all. The night before they were due to turn up in Parliament to take their ministerial seats, the Labour cabinet went out for dinner. Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Shinwell, one of their number, recalled in his old age that when the bill came, the new rulers couldn’t drum up the total sum between them.

Shinwell went to negotiate with the head waiter, promising the bill would be paid the following morning and explaining that, despite the unfamiliarity of their faces, the men around the table included the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Lord Privy Seal and the Minister of Fuel and Power.

“Yeah,” the head waiter said. “And I’m the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

The point was that Britain hadn’t elected candidates who were familiar. It had rejected candidates who were over-familiar and jaded.

It’s not policy documents that will give Fine Gael a chance at power at the next General Election, it’s how tired the electorate are of FF/PD and the degree to which they see the alternative as credible.

In the credibility stakes, Enda Kenny has a lot more going for him this Autumn than he had when he first took on the leadership. In this context it’s worth looking not at him, but at the changing nature of the criticisms made of him.

The changing flavour of the attacks on a political figure can, paradoxically, demonstrate the progress made by that politician. Two years ago one of the regular criticisms of Fine Gael was that nobody knew their leader from a hole in the ground. Today, the criticism is that while everybody knows HIM, the same can’t be said of all of his front bench.

Similarly, one of the regular past criticisms of him was that he was lazy. If he was, he seems to have kicked the habit.

Since he became leader, Kenny’s been constantly on the go, touring the country energetically, tearing into the Taoiseach in the House every chance he gets, doing the occasional comedy gig on Ryan Tubridy’s show, overseeing - but not trying to micro-manage - structural change within a devastated party.

He may not put them into power, but Enda Kenny is turning out to be a better leader for Fine Gael than they could have expected when they chose him.