Kenny’s revolutionary drama descends into farce

It was telling that the Taoiseach’s only memorable moment in his worst week in office so far saw him dressed like an extra from Downton Abbey at a black-tie dinner — not the best look for a man now the lead actor in a melodrama fast descending into a Downturn Shabby government.

The suddenness of Róisín Shortall’s resignation had clearly caught the Coalition by surprise — but then someone having principles and actually sticking to them would come as a shock to them — and Enda Kenny had the appearance of a startled fawn caught in the flash of the camera bulbs as he mouthed the usual banalities about her departure without ever thinking of addressing the substance behind her move.

That takes us to the heart of The Enda Problem — maybe the Taoiseach has a secret hearing disorder, or maybe he has a form of word blindness, but while everyone else thinks a Q&A session stands for Questions and Answers, he believes it means Questions and Avoidance.

A clever leader with the gift of communication would have been able to get on top of the trickiest seven days yet suffered by this Government and be able to regain control of the political narrative. Instead Kenny has appeared to be in a delusional bubble allowing whatever confidence there is left in his Government to unravel further.

An air of panic induced by a hammer blow from without — Germany ripping-up the tentative bank debt writedown deal that this country’s future financial viability rests on for survival — was made worse by self-harming from within the Coalition.

Kenny — the timid Taoiseach — has been his usual subterranean self all week, finally appearing before the press on Thursday afternoon and giving us precisely seven minutes of meaningless waffle.

When the Irish Examiner asked if he agreed with Leo Varadkar that Health Minister James Reilly’s decision to pluck two sites in his own constituency from nowhere and plonk them onto Shortall’s primary care shortlist looked like “stroke politics”, Kenny insisted he had already answered that in the Dáil.

Frankly, that was a lie, as he typically avoided directly addressing the subject in parliament. When the Irish Examiner asked again, he pretended not to hear — which was frankly rude, as I was standing two feet away from him at the time. When the Irish Examiner sought a straight answer to the straight question a third time, Kenny’s press flunky moved in to shut things down, saying the Irish Examiner had asked too many questions — which was frankly ridiculous as I had asked just one question, but needed to ask it three times as the Taoiseach had no answer to it.

Kenny’s default mode is to bleat endlessly about the Programme for Government and how much he intends to implement it, presumably in the hope that journalists exposed to this repeated, mind-numbing torture, will eventually just drop dead with tedium, and not expect him to have actual views on actual events anymore.

Though he loves to use the Programme for Government as some form of barrier method of protection, it is becoming increasingly clear he has never read it.

For what is the first line on the first page of that fabled document again? Ah yes, it announces that a “political revolution” has taken place in Ireland with the creation of the Fine Gael/Labour administration.

Has it? Sorry, I must have been distracted watching ludicrous, and ludicrously addictive posh-tosh Downton when that happened, because I seem to have missed the revolution — clearly it wasn’t televised after all.

We seem to have the same old type of Taoiseach, unable to talk to the nation, the same old patronising Cabinet arrogance — Brendan Howlin, the Minister for Smugness, sorry, Public Sector Reform, dismissing as “simple” critics of his triumphal delivery of allowance savings amounting to €3.5m when he had promised €150m and, as little Leo would put it, a Government looking like delivering the same old strokes.

It is not just stroke specialist Dr Reilly that is in on the act, because who was it that ended up with two new bypasses in his constituency despite the roads budget being slashed back into the stone age? Oh, that’s right — it was Growlin’ Howlin. Seems it is simple to get these little voter-happy perks when you know how.

It is interesting that tightly-controlled Leo let slip that stroke line about Reilly which has come to dominate the week. Of course, the fact that both were on opposite sides of the (very nearly successful) heave against Enda two years ago would have nothing to do with it at all.

Or the fact that as things go increasingly badly, Kenny needs his deputy leader Reilly as a human shield against further attempts at regime change.

Change is also afoot in Downton Abbey, which is facing its own financial meltdown, but Enda’s equivalent there, Matthew Crawley, has the knack of extraordinary good luck after being diagnosed as a lifelong war cripple in one episode and then getting “a twitch” in the next episode and running around the estate, and has now chanced upon not only one, but two vast inheritances — and just when he needed them.

Enda’s Downturn Shabby luck appears to be running out — though he is not letting it get to him. Indeed Kenny’s strange new “wave” style prominent in his blond locks at the black-tie do brought to mind Sir Anthony’s awkward remark to Lady Sybil in Downton: “Oh, have you done something jolly with your hair?”

To be fair to Enda, Reilly, Howlin, et al, maybe they have actually delivered us a “political revolution” — just not the one the country voted for, because revolution can be defined as: “A procedure or course, as if in a circuit, back to a starting point.”

And we certainly appear to heading back to where we left off with Fianna Fiasco

That is why the Taoiseach is so eager to turn a blind eye to Reilly’s primary care stroke — because it is now evident that the primary care of both men is to stay in power at whatever cost.