Anorak may be replaced by Goretex for a change

MODERN politics is like a high street garment — designed for obsolescence.

Like a Kate Moss cutaway dress or a practical blue anorak, you’ll get a couple of good years out of them if you’re lucky and then they’re chucked.

But 10 years? Or 15 years? That’s an eternity.

In Europe over the past few years, we have seen a rake of two-term and three-term leaders getting the flick from the electorate or their colleagues.

José María Aznar retired after nine years in Spain. Silvio Berlusconi got the guts of a decade in Italy before getting the heave-ho. Gerhard Schroeder had eight years in Germany and the messianic Jacques Chirac also got the push in France (even though he managed to last 12). And even Bertie Ahern’s closest foreign ally, Tony Blair — the man whose career has mirrored his own in lots of ways — was given no more than a decade before he got the order of the boot.

A year or more ago, when Ahern began to creep into the record books for running second only to de Valera in terms of longevity, there was an assumption that, like Mr Tony, he would get his third term and his shot at 15 years. Like Mr Tony, election number three wasn’t going to come as easily as number two, but he was still going to limp home.

It was a very neat assumption and had a nice symmetry to it. Problem was that it was wrong.

I went out earlier this week to see the various parties canvass and what struck me was that it was like 2002 all over again, except that the hype and goodwill was now following Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte, not Ahern.

We all know that Kenny can shake more hands in an instant than a packed church offering the sign of peace. But the reaction to Rabbitte was more interesting. He is diffident and a bit wooden on the stump with none of the “howya horse” gregariousness of Kenny. But people were actually seeking him out, shaking his hand, wanting to talk to him. And during the day I heard a phrase that will fall on Fianna Fáil ears like poison: “Maybe it’s time for a change”.

And that’s what may fell this Government in the end. Not the health services. Not BertieGate. Not the record on crime. Or education. Or health. Or decentralisation. Or e-voting. But a more visceral reason — FF have simply been there too long and there’s a need for change.

The Anorak has been there for so long that it was inevitable that some rain would be let in. And the rips have become much more noticeable since April. Would it not be much better to plump for brightly-coloured Mr Goretex — newer, more modern, and much more lightweight.

Kenny is decent, hard-working and with clever people around him could make a strong Taoiseach. One of his problems is that, with the exception of Richard Bruton and one or two others, the Fine Gael front bench isn’t exactly rippling with top talent.

And Kenny’s contract with the people is just another political promise dressed up to look like something else.

Sure, he won’t seek the office of Taoiseach again if he doesn’t fulfil it. But who’ll be the judge of that? Himself, ultimately.

I’m sure there will be many mitigating factors to be found if those 2,300 beds are not built or the 2,000 cops (or is it only 1,000) aren’t pounding the beat. That’s what politicians do — they make promises. They break them. They explain them away by talking about new priorities and putting it all up for review.

I have huge problems with FG’s policies on crime which are Pavlovian, knee-jerk, cynical, hysterical, scaremongering and populist (Sadly FF, the PDs and Labour don’t do much better). Boot camps, drunk tanks, electronic tagging, tougher remission laws. Sounds real tough. Thank goodness for our constitution and thank goodness some of the more lunatic ones will never see the light of day.

Having said that, Fine Gael’s revival has been stunning. A hair’s breadth away from extinction in 2002, they are now but a hair’s breadth away from government. So well have they positioned themselves that the choice offered to the electorate is a simple one between the Bertie Ahern of Fianna Fáil and the Bertie Ahern of Fine Gael. The policy choices, the implementation, won’t change much despite all the promises, because many of the difficulties in health, crime, education, infrastructure and all the other things in the mix are long-term, complicated, multi-faceted and subject to drawn-out procedures. But they promise they can do it differently —that’s the rub.

Consider this stale but relevant cliché. Governments lose elections, oppositions don’t win them.

It’s going to be knife-edge close. The key electorate, the floating voters, are wavering on whether 10 years is long enough for Bertie or whether there’s another couple of years’ wear left in that anorak.