Micheál Martin doesn’t need enemies when he has friends like Brian Crowley

NOT for the first time, I find myself wondering why Micheál Martin doesn’t tell the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party to simply shove it.

Politics is a selfish business, but such a bunch of ingrates you never came across as the senators and TDs that currently make up the party’s grouping in Leinster House. That’s not to mention the recently un-whipped party MEP, Brian Crowley. There is hardly a month goes by that we don’t hear of another potential challenge to the leadership of Martin. It seems as if he is in charge of delinquents, the majority of whom have an extraordinary view of their own individual abilities.

Sadly, they never seem to display much to back up that view, in either their political skills or mental prowess.

Far more people in Fianna Fáil believe they could do a better job replacing Micheal Martin as leader than people in Fine Gael believe they could in replacing Enda Kenny. Let us bear in mind that Fianna Fáil has 20 TDs and Fine Gael 69.

With colleagues like that, Martin certainly doesn’t have to look as far as the opposition benches to find his political enemies.

Where’s the logic? They seem to have forgotten that in the days after the 2011 election, when Fianna Fáil went from being a party with Dáil numbers in the low 70s to one that could squash into a mini bus, the party might not have survived after such an incredible hammering.

If someone had predicted in 2011 that Fianna Fáil would get almost 26% in the recent local election, just three years later, they would not have been believed.

This is not a coincidence. A very significant part of that success has been the leadership of Martin. A certain number of the voters who turned against the party in 2011 — those who ‘bled’ Fianna Fáil and were in extremis in not voting for the party on that occasion — would have returned no matter what. But a significant number of others have done so because they are impressed with Martin as a leader.

The problem is that while Martin realises the party he leads will never be the electoral colossus it was, many in Fianna Fáil still harbour delusions of grandeur about the party and themselves.

There is hardly a week when one of them isn’t acting up or getting into trouble, and, at that point, John McGuinness will usually pop up to give a pot-stirring interview. As one of his colleagues said this week, the Carlow/Kilkenny TD “is a great man to correct other people’s homework”. Or, it’ll be the former minister, Mary Hanafin, stirring the pot about how badly she was treated in the local elections debacle. Without doubt, she has a case, in terms of it being poorly handled, but where is the loyalty to her struggling party?

Fianna Fáil justice spokesman, Niall Collins, was the one in hot water last week, after writing a letter to the courts pleading for leniency for a convicted drug dealer who was the widowed father of four children.

At the weekend, the Fianna Fáil former deputy leader, Eamon O’Cuiv, was embroiled in controversy for making representations on behalf of a man convicted of manslaughter.

As ever, O’Cuiv took combatively to the airwaves and there was no hint of a back-down.

O’Cuiv resigned as deputy party leader in February, 2012, defiant about the party’s position on the EU Fiscal Compact Treaty.

Oh, and there are those helpful tweets he likes to post, such as the one in 2013 that followed an opinion poll result he didn’t like.

“Latest opinion poll leaves us becalmed at 22%. We do not seem to be making consistent gains,” he typed, and, needless to say, he got many retweets. He denied this was an explicit criticism of Martin, but it could hardly have been described as helpful.

O’Cuiv was one of the people building pressure on Martin ahead of the local and European elections.

“A boat that is becalmed in the sea neither goes forward nor backward,” O’Cuiv offered helpfully, setting a high bar by saying it would be a “huge challenge for the party” if it didn’t secure a seat in every Euro constituency.

Another example of the less-than-loyal approach the leader can expect from colleagues is Michael McGrath, his talented finance spokesman and fellow Cork City man, who likes to snip regularly at Martin’s ankles.

There is an understandable constituency rivalry between Martin and McGrath. But there is a regular sense that McGrath, who would need to know more than his sums to make a good party leader, puts some effort into undermining Martin. I won’t even start on the party senators who assiduously nurse their grudge against Martin over his attempts, in 2011, to bring fresh political blood into the Seanad.

But it is the audaciousness of Crowley in deciding to up sticks and join a group in the European Parliament utterly at odds with Fianna Fáil’s values that really took one’s breath away.

Crowley has always operated semi-independently of the party and is a phenomenal vote-getter, and incredible canvasser, as witnessed by his performance in the southern constituency in the European election: he received 180,000 first-preference votes.

But what he did this week, with his defection, and the manner in which he did it, was little short of treachery. It’s difficult to speak ill of someone who is in hospital after surgery, and has ongoing health issues, but it was a very low blow. Martin’s leadership has been characterised by bad luck and even the fact that his errant MEP was in hospital when this news broke made it even more uncomfortable for him to take decisive action. But there was no choice about what had to be done.

YOU would wonder why Martin bothers to continue. He’s never seemed that much interested in the ‘glory’ of politics, so he must have a strong sense of public service. There is a chance he will never be Taoiseach, which makes his continuing efforts now even more laudable. In the event, he could well be a liability, in the party’s attempts to get back into government, given his membership of the discredited Fianna Fáil administration that oversaw the shipwrecking of our economy.

But there is no way of predicting that with any certainty.

I think much of the party’s recovery since 2011 has been down to the public feeling that he is likeable and to his strong performances in the Dáil and in the media, on issues such as GSOC, or the Fiscal Treaty campaign.

Martin has his faults, not least an indecisiveness throughout his career. Each successive controversy serves to weaken his leadership and, in turn, the party. He would do well to buy a boxset of Supernanny and indulge in some marathon TV viewing to help him deal with his colleagues.