Embracing change with the zeal of an evangelist

Enda Kenny was sending love letters with one hand while issuing dark threats about what life would be like if we ever left him with the other.

Proving that he is indeed both a lover and a fighter, Mr Kenny was practically falling over himself to proclaim support for marriage equality.

This is even more remarkable, as it is just two years since the Taoiseach actually did fall over a plant pot at the National Library in his haste to escape reporters and avoid saying whether or not he backed same-sex weddings.

Though a late convert to the cause, the new-look Love Bomb Enda has certainly embraced change with the zeal of an evangelist.

“I say to all same-sex couples in our country — this is about you, it’s about your right to say two small words, made up of three simple letters — ‘I do’, vowed Mr Kenny.

“For you, in your lives together, may they become your letters of freedom.”

Mr Kenny’s address to the Fine Gael conference had some of the more conservative delegates wondering exactly what had happened to Enda since his now legendary visit to Panti Bar.

The Taoiseach seemed genuine, almost passionate, in support for marriage equality, but the level of his enthusiasm was not matched by the reaction in the hall.

The audience gave solid applause, but it was far from overwhelming.

Clearly, a large chunk of Middle Ireland still has misgivings and the 70% landslide being predicted by pollsters is far from the grasp of a coasting and complacent Yes side at present.

The “I do” to-do could have been a moment of cringe, but Mr Kenny pulled it off with aplomb. Indeed, his whole delivery and performance of the speech was much better than usual — despite a bit of unnecessary jazz-hand action — prompting some to voice suspicions that he been taking lessons.

One person who needed no lessons, well, at least not in sucking up to boss, anyway, was Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald, who dropped one of the most startling lines of the night, when she gushed about Enda: “He does have a spine of pure steel.” Who knew?

While the rhetorical elegance of the ‘letters of freedom’ line will go down as a landmark oratorical moment of his tenure as Taoiseach, it is a tad ironic that more than a few straight couples view themselves as prisoners of marriage.

And Enda clearly has a nagging doubt that his love for the world may not be requited as he sternly warned the electorate about flirting with Gerry Adams and his easy, breezy promises, or taking back bailout boy Micheál Martin.

Emphasising the campaign feel by, rather vaingloriously, entering and exiting the stage to the strains of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born To Run’, Enda insisted he offered stability — as well as better broadband — while the other two would just bring “chaos”.

As for the rest of the speech, the current chaos in the health service was glossed over in 20 seconds, while Irish Water was not mentioned at all. Schools got a brief look-in, though traditionalists would have been in despair at signs in the venue pointing the way to the “media center”. Is that why Fine Gael surrendered the Education Department to the Godless Labour Party — because they can’t spell? And Enda a teacher too.

But, finishing with a flourish, Mr Kenny somewhat over reached himself with allusions to Michael Collins when he moved to reclaim the Fine Gael icon’s anti-British treaty negotiation line: “Give us the future... We have had enough of your past, give us back our country to live in, to grow in... To love.”

All very rousing, but as the troika are long gone and Mr Kenny’s actually been running the country for the past four years, who does he want it back from? Himself?

But at least Enda’s last word was love. Though it is ironic that on the night he proposed marriage to gay Ireland, he was clearly nervous the electorate is preparing to divorce him.