Bertie boxing clever with opponents as round one ends in big hug

IF Bertie Ahern had been drawn to the boxing ring, as opposed to the soccer pitch, he’d have hugged the other boxer to death. There’s nothing like a committed clinch for pinning an opponent’s arms to his side and preventing him from thumping you.

The minute the bell rang on the first round with the Committee of 16, it was inevitable he’d want to give them a squeeze. As soon as they began dancing and feinting, he embraced their principles and approved of their intentions. Clasping them to his chest, he promised to address their desire for a backbench committee at this week’s Parliamentary Party meeting.

On the face of it, hugging 16 ratty backbenchers would seem harder than hugging one minister, but in fact, the Taoiseach had it easy this past week.

The Tánaiste was in a much tougher position: hugging Michael McDowell into submission is never easy.

A quick cuddle from Mary Harney was never going to solve the problem, whereas the Taoiseach could — and did — contain some of the issues emerging in his party by putting his arms firmly around them and their owners.

What the Taoiseach found himself hugging was an extraordinarily well-planned non-revolt. The dramatis personae, for example, was not made up of the usual opportunistic whinges. (Well, OK, one of them was a classic opportunistic whinge, but he was just included to prove they weren’t discriminating on the basis of race, creed, attitude or ability. The rest of the cast was more intriguing.)

Look at the geographical make-up of the 16. They’re as evenly spread as M&Ms on the top of a carefully crafted muffin: three from every EU constituency. Look at the gender balance: it matches the balance within the parliamentary party. Look at the differing experience levels: TDs in their first term are represented, as are second and third-termers. Not to mention chairmen and vice-chairmen of Dáil committees — and people with no such positions.

None of that is an accident. That cast of characters was picked to forestall the reflex dismissals of disaffection as coming from the usual whinge-holders. At the outset, the planned letter and meeting were portrayed as the panicky actions of a bunch of low-level malcontents, terrified of losing their seats. It was only when commentators took a second cut at it that the ‘nervous breakdown’ scenario began to look iffy.

The reality is that several of the leading lights among the 16 have alternative sources of income and self-fulfilment. They could walk away from politics tomorrow without being brought to their knees financially.

One is a publican. Another is a farmer. A third — Jim Glennon — could, if de-selected by the voters, do a Bill O’Herlihy, earning half his living from sports commentary and the other half from some PR company that wants to strengthen its public affairs team. A fourth — Barry Andrews — has the Bar to fall back on.

In addition, while changing demographics make the very concept of a ‘safe seat’ questionable, many of the 16 are not faced with electoral immolation.

The script was carefully crafted, too. In extensive background briefings, members of the 16 stressed that this was no leadership challenge and that they had no hidden agenda. They were just fed up to the back teeth of being — as they see it — taken for granted.

“We spend our days trying to explain the kinks in the political communications chain to constituents,” one of them said.

“Our constituents expect us to act for them by influencing what the Government does, but they know bloody well we actually have no real influence.”

The word that comes up again and again from the 16 is “control”.

That’s the key thing they believe they don’t have, and it’s a hugely significant deficit in any career. Control is critical to career satisfaction. Being well-paid certainly matters. But, having reviewed a huge number of studies on what makes people happy, an analyst named David Myers identified that feeling in control is one of the key characteristics of happy people.

It’s a variation on that character in Dickens who defined happiness as what happens when income matches expenditure: when a person’s capacity to achieve objectives corresponds to the challenges facing them, happiness results.

Contrariwise, when an individual believes their skills and talents outweigh the possibilities facing them, the end result is anxiety and frustration.

BRINGING that collective anxiety and frustration to a parliamentary party meeting is akin to tossing petrol on a smouldering fire.

“I’d have to sympathise with backbenchers,” one minister observed at the weekend. “The parliamentary party meeting tends, of necessity, to deal with whatever topic is most current and controversial. It’s not a great forum for considered input into policy development.”

That’s putting it mildly. Members of the Committee of 16 would go further.

They maintain that the very structure of the agenda for these weekly meetings essentially confines backbench initiative-taking to that bit towards the end called Any Other Business.

“Plus, the minister you want to raise something with is never at the meeting, because something more important than backbenchers has come up,” one says.

A further complication is provided by the style of the man who chairs these sessions. Seamus Kirk is genuinely liked by the overwhelming majority within Fianna Fáil. Older members of the Committee of 16, who remember his sporting days, wish he would bring to Parliamentary Party meetings some of the killer instinct he had on the football field as a mid-fielder for Co Louth.

“He would go through you for a short-cut” is how they remember his playing technique.

By comparison, they say, at the regular meetings of ministers, TDs and senators, he tolerates fruitless filibustering by “members of the lunatic fringe”, so that backbenchers who genuinely want to contribute to party direction end up sliding out of the meetings long before they conclude.

A number of significant differences separate the Committee of 16 from earlier backbench caucuses.

For starters, they’re not out to challenge the leadership. Nor are they acting as stalking horses for any of the possible challengers to Bertie Ahern’s position. While they believe the Taoiseach’s graveside oration for Charles Haughey did Fianna Fáil no favours coming up to an election, they don’t hold it against him personally.

“CJ screwed Bertie in life with that ‘most cunning’ remark, and he screwed him in death by asking him to give the speech at the funeral. Bertie couldn’t criticise him. He HAD to praise him.”

They are clear, however, on what they now want. They want a committee, and control over that committee.

They want a return, if not to Green Papers and White Papers, at least to a clear pattern of consultation before legislation is drafted. They want a hand in shaping the party’s manifesto for the General Election.

The way they see it, Bertie’s initial hug could be the beginning of a more meaningful, stable relationship, allowing everybody to have a great summer holiday, before the tough autumn the Government will inevitably face.