Changing leaders - Taoiseach’s leadership in question too

If you accept the rationale behind Eamon Gilmore’s honourable resignation then it is irrational and blindly partisan to suggest that Taoiseach Enda Kenny should not face a robust review of his leadership of the Government and of Fine Gael.

To argue that Mr Kenny should not face a demanding reappraisal reeks of the presumption, the barely concealed sense of entitlement and hubris apparent in some quarters of Fine Gael — at least before the weekend’s humiliation. These unattractive, anti-democratic traits contributed significantly to the near evisceration of the government parties and, on a wider front, the political establishment at local, national, and European levels.

That nothing-to-see-here argument ignores the fact that Mr Kenny’s Government, with considerable help from their predecessors, have brought the country to the point where our political establishment and its prescriptions have been roundly rejected by a seething electorate and ignored by an unacceptably high number of people — one in two of the electorate — who choose not to vote. Even more still spoil their ballot papers in a mute, pointless protest. This does not represent any kind of success or celebration of democracy and is a very real threat to recovery and stability.

This fraught situation is exacerbated at European level by the victories secured by dangerous, hateful, and racist parties like Britain’s Ukip and Marine Le Pen’s Front National party in France. The EU has been criticised for imposing conditions on any support offered to us in our hour of great need but it would be very foolish not to imagine that these far-right parties, if they ever get the chance, would be far more demanding, far less collegiate in similar circumstances.

The early acknowledgement by Mr Gilmore, the 10th leader of the Irish Labour Party, of how untenable his position had become was commendable and dignified. Though he may wonder for the rest of his days if things might have been different had he been given a domestic portfolio rather than foreign affairs, he can comfort himself with the cold, hard reality that our economic situation was so bleak that any leader of Labour would have struggled to protect the party’s core constituency and, at the same time, take the very difficult measures needed to recover some kind of financial stability. His assertion that he and his party put the country first and have paid a very high price for doing so is accurate. It also raises challenging questions about the fickleness of the electorate.

By its very immediacy and clarity his resignation increases the pressure on Fine Gael to be equally unsentimental and pragmatic. The tectonic shifts articulated so firmly at the weekend leave little room for the kind of indecision usually tolerated in our snail’s-pace political culture. There is simply too much at stake. There is the added complication that Mr Kenny is not just leader of Fine Gael but leader of the Government and the country so, arguably, higher standards must be applied in any assessment of his leadership. There is, after all, far more at risk than the Labour Party or indeed Fine Gael’s electoral prospects.

There is also the reality that too many members of Mr Kenny’s careworn cabinet are in the autumn of their political careers and may not stand for election again. Neither are they as animated as some of their younger, hungrier colleagues. Mr Kenny will next year mark 40 years in the Dáil and though this has allowed him amass incomparable experience, it also leaves him open to suggestions he may be institutionalised and so emotionally committed to the parliament and its habits that he is unable to lead the kind of real reforms — unlike the phoney Seanad foolishness — promised before the last general election. And at the end of the day, this is a deeply important, decisive issue, one that will just not or cannot go away.

Apart from the political issues involved, it would be foolish to pretend that age, as it does eventually for us all, has not become a factor. If Mr Kenny leads Fine Gael into the next election in, say, 2016, he will be 65. US President Barack Obama is 52 and British Prime Minister David Cameron is 47. And even if Gerry Adams is already 65, Sinn Féin’s successful candidates, most of them a generation if not two younger than Mr Kenny, will use this as another stick to beat the establishment parties.

These have been momentous days in local, national, and European politics, so much so that the default wait-and-see dodge is a luxury we cannot afford. If the kind of chaos made possible by the huge, almost incompatible diversity endorsed by the electorate is to be avoided, the Coalition must show leadership skills and focus far beyond anything they have shown to date.