McDowell the leader is now at the bottom of a steep learning curve

PLEASE don’t think I’ve gone soft. I want to start this week by wishing Michael McDowell well in his new job. Dick Spring used to say that being a party leader in Irish politics was a bit like having a daily shower in public while keeping your dignity intact.

And as someone who has had the chance over the years to watch a number of party leaders come (and go), I know exactly what he meant.

There is no more difficult job in Irish public life than being a party leader. The smaller and more challenged the party, the more difficult it is. There’ll be a honeymoon, of course, but then the challenges begin to mount.

So in the honeymoon spirit, I want to offer the newest party leader in Ireland some advice. If he reads this piece, he’ll probably remember the time Daniel O’Connell said: “When I am offered friendly advice in the House of Commons, I lock all my doors and shutter my windows” (or something like that).

But I hope he takes my friendly advice in the spirit in which it’s meant.

Before I get stuck into Agony Aunt mode, was anyone else as surprised as I was by the speculation around whether he would get the top job?

The election was over the moment Mary Harney said at her press conference that she wanted to remain in the Department of Health until the election. It would have immediately occurred to thousands of PD members around the country that only the election of Michael McDowell could guarantee that.

Anyone else would have had to ask Mary politely to step aside because there was no chance that Fianna Fáil would have kindly sacked one of their ministers to make room for a third PD.

Besides that, neither of the other two possible candidates would have wanted the job in Health because it would have required far too much work and the constituency pressure going with it would have been intolerable.

In short, by publicly expressing her wish to remain in Health, Mary Harney was, in effect, endorsing the man she seems to regard as something less than a friend.

Have you ever noticed that when she is asked about him in interviews, she inevitably refers to him by his full name — never by his Christian name alone? That’s a sure sign of a relationship that is, at best, professional. In any event, as they say, the king is dead, long live the king. By the way, and forgive another digression — it’s been that kind of political week — we were all struck by the fact that Mary had chosen to resign on the same day that Tony Blair had chosen not to.

But the Blair resignation is a lot closer than many people — including possibly himself — thinks. He has made himself a lame duck, and piece by piece the system around him will start to crumble.

Almost immediately he is going to find himself alone and unable to deliver anything meaningful. His upcoming party conference will feel like a wake. The senior civil servants around him will start measuring all their responses in terms of what his likely successor might think. Power will ebb away quickly.

My guess is that the system will allow him one last go at the Irish issue because none of the would-be prime ministers is especially interested in that. But he’ll be gone by Christmas.

The real danger is that he won’t go quietly, content to be remembered as the most successful Labour leader since Attlee, but will fight, Thatcher-like, to keep his influence alive in the party he transformed, but which now desperately needs to change direction.

Anyway, none of that is helping Michael McDowell, as I promised I would. So let me begin by telling him there are three types of political leader who survive and grow: those with adequate preparation for the job; those with the capacity to learn from mistakes; and those prepared to listen and learn from the people around them, especially the people who wish them well.

I’m choosing my words carefully here. It is possible to believe you are born to greatness — but it’s nearly always a mistake. It is possible to have too much training for the job, to have been waiting too long before it comes your way (I suspect Gordon Brown may be about to spend a couple of years discovering that).

AND I know that when a politician is cleverer than everyone else, it’s hard to believe mistakes can be made — never mind learnt from. And it can be even harder to listen to advice when you know more than the advisers.

But two things are certain, whether Michael McDowell knows them or not. First: yesterday, when he was formally anointed, he stepped on to the bottom of a steep learning curve.

Every democratic party leader, no matter how long they have served as deputy or been in the shoes of the leader before them, realises with a shock how little they really know about leadership until they have to exercise it. They become the vision-maker, the attention-getter, the star performer. They have to know something about everything — a party leader can’t be ignorant about economics but brilliant on the arts.

But they also have to be the disciplinarian, the soother (of other people’s egos), the motivator, the listener, the manager, the fund-raiser, the ideas man, the parliamentary tactician, the prioritiser, the fall guy when things go wrong. It ain’t easy, and no-one is ever prepared.

And the second thing is, he might have thought he was busy before, but he had better get used to coping well on a lot less sleep.

Especially in an election year, he is going to have to learn how to do bilocation or even trilocation, And you can’t lose your temper on the road, can’t bite the head of some inoffensive (or even offensive) journalist who doesn’t appreciate greatness when he sees it. From now on, you live life at twice the pace and the lights that shine on you are twice as hot.

And here’s one last piece of advice for a party leader with the intellect of three. Take down that dusty old Bunreacht na hEireann from your shelf, the one you know by heart, and read a little bit now and again to refresh yourself.

You could start with this passage — it’s called Article 40.1. It says, really simply: “All citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law. This shall not be held to mean that the State shall not in its enactments have due regard to differences of capacity, physical and moral, and of social function”.

Read it this time as party leader, and not as Minister for Justice. Such ministers can take a narrow perspective on words like ‘citizen’ — party leaders can’t. They need broader and more inclusive horizons. They need to be able to reach beyond their own, always narrow, base.

Start from that premise, the need to broaden the horizons a bit, and you mightn’t go too far wrong.