The iron rule that may yet cost FF

THE Fianna Fáil mutiny was as scary as being confronted in a dark alley by a flock of slaughtered sheep.

We should be used to Fianna Fáil rebellions by now. A couple of backbenchers huff and puff about their terrible plight. Bertie Ahern feels the gentle breeze from the hot air as it travels downwind. And then — in the nicest possible way — he blows the house down.

The latest drive by backbenchers to hold the party leadership to account finished within two nanoseconds of it breaking in the papers.

The whinge went something like this: ministers were strutting around like little princes and treating fellow TDs like subjects. The only real contribution a backbencher lent to Government policy was voting ‘tá’ when there was a division in the chamber. The guys in the Mercs were treating the rest like a bunch of jerks.

We want more input, they snarled. We need our ministers to be more accountable, they roared. We’re going to start a revolution, they bellowed. We have an email, signed by 16 TDs. All for one, one for all, they chorused.

The demand? A powerful, independent, and robust committee, modelled on the Tory’s backbench 1922 Committee, that would put a halt to the leadership’s follies.

Bertie felt their pain. Sure, he said, don’t I get frustrated at it myself. Amn’t I a bit of a rebel myself and, sure, the committee’s a grand idea.

So he gave them one, their very own committee. Identical to the one they called for except that it wasn’t powerful, independent, robust. Come to think of it, it wasn’t even a committee. The backbenchers were granted four meetings in July, all controlled by the minster princes, plus some vague commitment to a “core committee” open to anybody to join which will have some non-specific and non-important work to do.

A steamroller could not have done a better job of squashing that one into nothingness. When Ahern first got wind of it on Friday, his outward gestures may have been welcoming, but privately he was thunderous — and he let the backbenchers know all about it at the meeting last Tuesday.

You could understand why he was seething. The timing was rotten. The Government had just got over the hump of the Mr A crisis. And for almost the first time ever in Irish politics, a political party that wasn’t Fianna Fáil was tearing itself apart. What a joy it must have been to watch that bloodbath from the sidelines. Bang! The sudden outbreak of foot-in-mouth quickly put FF back into quarantine.

You have to hand Ahern his dues. He gave it a merciful killing. His handling of it showed utter mastery over his party. Thirteen years in, his leadership remains unwavering, unquestioned and unassailable. What PJ Mara hoped for Haughey but never achieved — uno duce, una voce — has been a good description of Fianna Fáil under Ahern.

Talking of sudden storms, the PD squabble came out of nowhere. But then, Michael McDowell is a micro climate all to himself. You never know when the furies will be released but when they are, you are guaranteed they will be dramatic and deafening.

And so in the great tradition of flip-flop, we see the PDs acting like FF in the Haughey era and FF acting like the PDs in the O’Malley era. There was yards of stuff being busily spun in the past 10 days and some gloriously sly briefing against both Mary Harney and Micheal McDowell. Liz O’Donnell’s perfectly innocent but perfectly deadly quote that everyone was interested in leading the party after Harney was a textbook demonstration of a shot across the bows.

Damaging this all may be, but at least there’s a dynamic there. Across the bay, Fianna Fáil have hit the doldrums. But they’re happy in their indolence. Just in case there’s the slightest turbulence, they have also dropped anchor. Where is the reform? Where are the radical ideas? Where is the grander vision? Under Bertie, there’s a crew of hugely disappointing ministers and hugely disappointed backbenchers. But to describe the pathetic attempts to rock the boat as a mutiny robs the word of meaning.

Lazily, we compare Ahern’s leadership to that of Tony Blair. But Ahern’s leadership may be closest to the Thatcher era. Because of his outward geniality, we forget what a steel grip he has on his party. We forget about the lack of movement, or urgency, or ambition among his lieutenants.

Ahern may get his wish of getting three terms in office. But he might also be priming up his party for its longest period in the wilderness.