Varadkar the real winner despite Kenny dressing down

FITTINGLY, Enda Kenny was interrupted as he gave a rambling answer at the closing press conference of Fine Gael’s parliamentary gathering by the novelty ring-tone of one of his handler’s phones blaring out: "Quack! Quack! Quack!"

It was the second most unexpected sound of the day after a somewhat startled-looking Leo Varadkar asked if the photographer was joking when he said “Enda wants to give you a hug.”

Given that Enda had spent most of the week giving Leo a kick, the surprise was understandable as Fine Gael’s “think in” at Fota Island wound down yesterday.

But the bluff Health Minister dutifully trotted out to take tea with the Taoiseach as they served up a very stiff looking photo-op to try to cover all the unpleasantness.

Right-winger Mr Varadkar did not reprise his usual party-piece of singing a sardonic version of The Red Flag at the gathering as the thinking time slipped into drinking time in the early hours of Friday, but he was heard doing a fairly credible version of The Pogues’ Rainy Night In Soho, and perhaps he was musing on the song’s line “I’ve smiled at all your funny little ways” as he and Mr Kenny tried to gloss over their storm with a tea cup later in the day.

“I can’t contemplate the future,” Mr Kenny, rather worryingly, said as he side-stepped a question about a possible post-election deal with Fianna Fáil, but was it the future of Fine Gael he was sipping tea with?

Because the Taoiseach’s extraordinary public put-down of his health minister has only boosted Mr Varadkar’s standing and effectively made him the man to beat for the leadership.

Indeed, some back-of-the-envelope calculations by Fine Gael TDs showed Mr Varadkar besting the Taoiseach in a heave.

Mr Kenny is secure enough as long as the poll ratings keep Fine Gael just ahead in a very fractured political field, but his handling of Mr Varadkar, or “young” Leo as the Taoiseach rather dismissively kept referring to him, has played into the health minister’s hands.

Indeed, Mr Kenny is a Taurus, but if he checked his horoscope predictions for the next two years it would probably show Leo in ascendance.

Win or lose the next election Mr Kenny will not be around for long afterwards, and his actions this week only bolster Mr Varadkar as he squares up against Simon Coveney and emerging dark horse Frances Fitzgerald in the succession stakes.

After picking a spat across the airwaves with his health minister, Mr Kenny then tried to blame the media for seemingly making the whole thing up, stating: “I know my friends in the fourth estate would like to have a concept of public rows between ministers.”

Erm, it’s a bit more than a “concept” when you start such public rows with your ministers, Mr Kenny.

The Taoiseach may not be a lame duck, but he should really do what his embarrassed handler was forced to and turn off the quacking for a bit.

Not content with laying into his own minister, Mr Kenny then expressed how “annoyed” he was with the officials at the health department who had the temerity to state the bleeding obvious and dismiss James Reilly’s chaotic universal health insurance plans as “unworkable”.

Belittling them as “Sir Humphreys” in a reference to Yes, Prime Minister, Mr Kenny made it clear he is still engaged in the fantasy politics of Dr Reilly, or Dr Disaster as he should really be known after the three and a half years of calamity he presided over.

But Mr Kenny is probably so testy because he as Taoiseach, along with Joan Burton and the Labour Party, stood over Reilly’s roller-coaster horror ride at health as they ignored the outrage over the mass withdrawal of medical cards and backed Dr Reilly to the hilt as he careered from crisis to crisis.

But don’t blame them because it is all the fault of the Sir Humphreys.

Mr Kenny attempted to kick-off the general election campaign by making it a battle about “trust”.

But what level of trust can you really have in a Taoiseach who said on taking office that “Paddy likes to know what the story is”, yet still refuses to come clean about his central role in the ousting of former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan in March.

Maybe, Mr Kenny has been taking tips from the original Sir Humphrey Appleby, who, horrified, when someone said: “But surely the citizens of a democracy have a right to know?”, replied, witheringly: “No. They have a right to be ignorant. Knowledge only means complicity in guilt; ignorance has a certain dignity.”

After receiving the cack-handed put-down from the Taoiseach, Mr Varadkar indicated he would go on as before as he knows there is no way Mr Kenny could sack him, and even if he did it would probably only increase his chances of taking the leadership.

“I don’t mind being slapped down or scolded, I’m a big boy and I’m willing to take a degree of criticism from time to time but, at the same time, this isn’t about me, it’s not about my dignity, it’s not about my ego, it’s about frontline staff, and it’s about patients, and it’s about our health services which affect all of us,” the health minister mused.

The Fota Island think-in ended abruptly as the Taoiseach’s press conference had to be cut short as the room needed to be dressed for a wedding.

“The clock is against us, can we take this outside? We’re holding up a wedding,” Mr Kenny’s handler implored.

But Mr Kenny had already “taken it outside” with Mr Varadkar in his dressing down, and now they were hugging it out for the cameras.

Let’s hope that the nuptials celebrated at Fota last longer than Enda and Leo’s brittle marriage of political convenience will.