Dumping Kenny would betray us all and throw Fianna Fáil a lifeline

OH DEAR, oh dear, oh dear.

One opinion poll and panic breaks out.

When will they ever learn?

It’s Fine Gael I’m talking about. One bad poll and they’re starting the process of dumping their leader.

For poll after poll in recent times Fine Gael have trounced Fianna Fáil in terms of public opinion – and they’re still way ahead of them. But because suddenly, Labour has leaped ahead, poor old Enda Kenny is, apparently, goosed.

Every one of yesterday’s newspapers led with the story that Richard Bruton is being lined up to take over as Fine Gael’s leader.

You know the difference between Fianna Fáil and the rest of us – the thing that has always made them a great political machine? They never panic. They know exactly what the opinion polls mean. They know they’re in the deepest possible trouble. They know that the next election is not about being returned to office – there isn’t the remotest chance of that, no matter what they say in public. It’s about shipping punishment, and staying afloat.

They are a big, old tanker that has been holed beneath the water line in high seas. Even though everyone is running around declaring their commitment to bringing the ship safely home to harbour, in reality everyone has their eye on a lifeboat.

Loyalty to Brian Cowen will remain fully intact until the election is over, and then he will resign gracefully. In the meantime, each individual member of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party will be secretly plotting his or her own survival. They know the party brand is a liability, and their entire campaigns are being prepared on an individualised basis.

But coolly, calculatedly. No panic. They are going to lose, and the entire process between now and the election, whenever it happens, is about minimising the losses.

Fine Gael, on the other hand (based on all the opinion poll data of recent times) are going to win. But perhaps they’re not going to win enough. They know they are in a real fight with Labour now, and that Labour has an ace in the hole – a leader who is trusted throughout the land.

But Fine Gael are still in a strong position to wage that fight, and to do better than they have ever done before. Their organisation is strong and well-managed, their finances are in reasonable order, they have a really strong slate of candidates.

And they’re now going to try to dump the guy who gave them all that, who built the party to a level of professionalism it’s never had, who has been as good as his word throughout his leadership. He promised to electrify them, and he has. Now they want to electrocute him.

I think this reveals two things about Fine Gael.

The first is a kind of political snobbishness. The papers wouldn’t be full of “dump Enda” stories today if all that had happened in the MRBI poll was a bit of Fianna Fáil recovery. The really unbearable thing that happened was that Labour looked good. And Labour’s role, in Fine Gael’s eyes, has always been to prop them up. They’ve always had an “upstairs-downstairs” attitude to Labour – as if Labour people didn’t hold their tea-cups quite correctly, or didn’t know their place in polite society. The thought that maybe, just maybe, FG might have to play second fiddle to Labour is driving them demented.

But the second thing it reveals is a willingness (and this is something that has always been shared by all the non-FF political parties) to snatch defeat from the jaws of success.

Is there any conceivable way to hand Fianna Fáil a lifeline in their present troubles? Yes, there’s one. All you have to do is demonstrate that Fine Gael hasn’t lost its taste for internal political cannibalism, and FF will take their first tentative steps on the road back.

FG disunity set against FF disarray – the strategists in FF won’t be able to believe their luck.

The one great gift Enda Kenny gave his party was unity of purpose. It followed years of infighting that looked like it had the potential to drive the party into oblivion. The dispatching of Alan Dukes, followed by the knifing in the back of John Bruton, followed by the failure to unite around Michael Noonan, were all trends towards destruction. Kenny halted that, and started to build – with so far, spectacular success. If they refuse to let him finish the job, they’ll simply start to unravel all over again.

The real problem has never been Enda Kenny anyway. The real problem has always been Fine Gael’s determination to try to present him as something he’s not. Every time you listen to him on the radio, using rehearsed and memorised lines to try to suggest that he has a deep understanding of economics, you think, this is a guy I wouldn’t trust to lead me. But when you hear him talking as a father, or as someone who really believes in the value of education, you hear a different side of him.

That’s what I think he meant when he told us all recently that we’d be hearing more of the real Enda Kenny from now on. But we really haven’t. He actually needs to give an interview where he says, “I’m no economist, but I’m lucky to be surrounded by the best in the business, and I see it as my job that they never forget the national interest”.

YOU don’t need to know everything to be seen as a good leader. But Enda Kenny needs the space to show people that he has what we really need right now – someone we can trust, someone with a fantastic work-rate, a high level of personal integrity. Someone who’s on the side of people, and totally in touch.

Eamon Gilmore is doing brilliantly precisely because he is seen that way. He’s trusted, liked and respected. Enda is trusted and liked – the reason people fall short of respect is because they think he is under pressure from his handlers to pretend to be something he isn’t.

But you know the funny thing? If there is a heave, and Enda fights and wins, it will do him no end of good in the opinion polls. We all love to see a leader with his back to the wall, fighting for survival. Especially if he starts that fight as an underdog, and comes out on top. I’m certain he will fight, and I’m reasonably certain he’ll win. If that happens, he will for sure emerge as the enhanced leader of a damaged party.

Who does that serve? It certainly doesn’t serve the interests of democratic change. Nothing would be more absurd than a demonstration of disunity in the face of what’s happening, and what’s needed, in Ireland and in Irish politics.

Enda Kenny has spent his leadership so far helping Fine Gael to grow, and to grow up. If they allow that to unravel now, it will look like a return to the childish and failed politics of the past. That would be a betrayal of the best interests of the people of Ireland.