Enda isn’t even capable of faking a vision

LAST week, the country was introduced to the Republic of Sums and Soundbites. The location was the annual gabfest up in Donegal, the MacGill Summer School.

Each year, as the Dáil closes, the thinking person’s body politic decamps to Glenties and tries to imagine a state that functions rationally.

Politicians cut loose and say what they really think about the system, where it has gone wrong, and what should be done to fix it. Usually, a member or two of the cabinet give their tuppence worth. It can be difficult hearing the thoughts of a minister about how the country should be governed, when they are in the driving seat themselves, but at least they try. And for the week, anybody with an interest in the country can kick back and imagine a better place.

The theme this year was How Stands the Republic — as if you need to ask. Appropriately, the school was opened by the Taoiseach, the elected leader of the Republic, the man who has declared that his job of work is to lead us out of perdition. Here was a chance for Enda to take a cut at the vision thing. Here was his opportunity to forget about the Troika breathing down his neck, the deficit, uppity backbenchers and Mary Lou McDonald. In this forum, he could exercise another prerogative of high office and provide hope to his people at a time when their spirit and psyche is so bruised. Here was a chance to lead.

And what did he do? Enda stepped up to his destiny and gave a party political speech of the most onerous hue. He told his audience about all that he had done for the country since assuming power in the “democratic revolution” of 2011.

“On my election as Taoiseach I set out my vision of this Republic,” he said.

“That by the centenary of the 1916 Rising we can prove to world that we can be the best small country in the world in which to do business, to raise a family and to grow old with dignity and respect.”

The best small country blah blah blah line was borrowed from Scotland, where some ad man came up with it nearly a decade ago. In any event, for some reason, the term always reminds me of the title of the movie, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

But what a vision! Give me your poor, huddled business and I’ll get you sorted out.

Try to imagine the GPO in the dying embers of the Rising, Connolly lying wounded, Pearse bending down to reassure him that the blood sacrifice has lit a fuse under the natives.

“Don’t worry,” Pearse says. “Within 100 years, this will be the best small country in the world in which to do business.”

Kenny went on to list the many ways in which he and his government have saved the benighted state in the last two years.

“In the period before this Government took office, 7,000 jobs were being lost every month but now the private sector is creating 2,000 new jobs a month. The numbers unemployed have dropped below 300,000 for the first time since the start of 2010.”

Nothing in that vision about the tens of thousands being coughed out of the country each year — which massages unemployment figures. Nothing about the quality of jobs that are now being filled, and whether this will lead to a society resembling that of the USA, where deep fissures are opening up between the increasingly few who are prosperous, and the vast swathes who struggle. Nothing gilded with even a faint hope that a proper country might emerge from the ashes of the Celtic Bubble.

The future, instead, is freighted with sums.

“This budget will be driven by two key objectives:

1. To continue the necessary correction in our public finances and

2. To continue to invest and incentivise work and employment.”

As for any reform of a moribund political system, that too can be solved by sums.

“We have cut the number of TDs and increased the number of Dáil sitting days. We have reduced the pay and allowances of all politicians. We have halved the cost of ministerial transport.

“We are already radically streamlining local government which will reduce the number of local authorities from 114 to 31, and the number of councillors from 1600 to 950. But we still have too many politicians in Ireland.”

And there you have the gist of this government’s reforms. Ministerial drivers were given the bum’s rush, but we still have too many politicians. Now we just need to get rid of the Seanad, and that will get rid of a few more politicians. Do the sums. We’re on the right track, though, here in the best little whorehouse in Texas, sorry, the best small country in which to do business.

Throw a few soundbites out there, grasp for the populist impulse, but all the time, pump the smoke and keep them focused on a room of mirrors.

It could be that Enda Kenny doesn’t really have an iota of a vision in his head beyond sums and soundbites. In reality, he is a manager, rather than a leader. If he was charged with organising a football team, or even a government agency, he would do a damn fine job. But leading people, appealing to their better nature, instilling them with a sense of purpose and hope, that’s not really his bailiwick. But surely, at the very least, he could pretend, even within the echo chamber of the summer school. Surely, he could act.

Apparently not. It’s as if the cadre of advisers that surround him have deigned that Enda isn’t even capable of faking it, that the great unwashed simply wouldn’t buy anything approaching a vision emerging from the manager’s mouth.

Later in the week, the leader of the Opposition, Micheál Martin, gave a speech that had everything lacking in Kenny’s. In a well-crafted, thoughtful contribution, Martin laid out all that is wrong with the body politic, and, in particular, the complete domination of parliament by the executive. He offered solutions to re-balancing power between the two institutions in a manner envisaged in the constitution. It was really sterling stuff.

There was also something surreal about such a speech coming from a man who had served in government through the 14 years during which the executive brought its domination of parliament to new levels of contempt.

It would be akin to Michael O’Leary addressing a Mayday conference of trade unions berating workers to rise up and assert their rights against the bosses of capitalism.

But then, both men know that vision and all that stuff is grand for summer schools. Both know that leading in a meaningful way, that might speak to the disaffected masses, is beyond their capabilities. Both are focused on the job at hand, getting the economy righted with as least fuss as possible, and then we can all get back to the way we were. And sure, won’t everybody be happy with that?