The challenge for Enda Kenny is survival in government. It is essential for his political survival

The irony for Enda Kenny is that his gravest weakness is the narrow social base of his party, writes Gerard Howlin

FINE GAEL is between the cross-hairs of a more acute dilemma than its loss of seats last Friday indicates. Its hold on government is uncertain, though it does have a real chance of being returned to office in the 32nd Dáil. This would be an historic milestone for the party and an achievement under any circumstances for Enda Kenny. However, under the circumstances likely to pertain it may be tarnished silver rather than glistening gold.

The irony for Kenny is that his gravest weakness is the narrow social base of his party. He should understand the irony better than any. The schoolmaster son of a schoolmaster, who has never been fully accepted by the large farmers and professional grandees who make up the mass of its officer corp. Social and intellectual derision hindered his rise as a young man under Garrett FitzGerald. It tugged at his sleeve even after his election as leader in 2002.

Good to have men like Enda Kenny or Gay Mitchell swell the ranks but it never sat easily that one of them would wear the crown. It was only the brutal dismissal of the pretensions of his deriders that allowed Kenny uncontested power within the party after the putsch of 2010 and in government after 2011. The problem for Fine Gael now is that both the underlying fundamentals of its refined genetic makeup and its insecure, controlling political personality under Kenny have combined as weakness, rather than strength.

The key strength of Fine Gael was always in contrast to Fianna Fáil. It had a better social class of people and the higher standards that are innate to breeding. It was in the natural order of things that they would appoint their friends to state boards and to judicial office. In fairness, who else would you appoint?

The charge of cronyism was mudslinging by guttersnipes, out of sorts because their ill-bred, uneducated snouts had at last been removed from the trough. The fact that historically Fine Gael was invariably in government with Labour gave a wider moral hinterland to its inbred advantage.

Nothing provides better mutual reassurance than moral superiority and snobbery. The appeal was always deeply reassuring to itself, during long years in opposition. That there are more of ‘them’, underlined not their mass appeal but the moral abyss they drew from.

In government, however, majorities are essential. Labour long ceased to mix its rarefied brand of social democracy with working-class people. Their shared project with Fine Gael was communicated as a series of lectures for the betterment of the lower orders. Now the peasants have revolted.

Labour in terms of the realpolitik of government is no more. Fine Gael is left alone, eerily isolated. Before 2011, it had not won office after an election since 1982. It did so on both occasions under two conditions, which no longer pertain.

Firstly antipathy to Fianna Fáil was so strong as to temporarily swell its own support base. Secondly, Labour presented itself with sufficient numbers of seats to make up a majority. Neither of those conditions applied last Friday.

Now its continuance in government is dependent on the assent of Fianna Fáil. Best for Fine Gael, they lure them into government but imperative for Fianna Fáil they do not succumb.

My view is that the country can have good government, based on limited number of principles, for a period of time with Fine Gael in office, Fianna Fáil in opposition with a permanently enhanced legislature, as its legacy.

The challenge for Fine Gael, or at least Enda Kenny, is survival in government. His continuance in office is essential for his political survival. Paradoxically, it is also essential for Fine Gael’s continuance at the cabinet table. Fianna Fáil may, under conditions yet to be arrived at, assent to Kenny’s election as Taoiseach. It will not under any circumstances facilitate now, or subsequently, Fine Gael’s changing its leader, while holding on to office.

The idea that Fine Gael might arrive at circumstances where it continues in office now, under Kenny, and changes leader subsequently is nonsense on a scale of delusion similar to the notion of a grand coalition. The Soldiers of Destiny may by historic standards be depleted but, they are not deluded. Enda Kenny is their preferred leader of Fine Gael, again.

The model for the occasional election of Fine Gael to government is broken. Its challenge in government would be to widen its base; a rare achievement in office. Its other problem is the insecure, controlling character of Fine Gael under Enda Kenny.

The roots lie in Fine Gael’s long exile in opposition, the circumstances of Kenny’s leadership, its only begrudging acceptance by many of his colleagues, and the heave against him in 2010. His riposte in power, first within his party and in government after 2011 was an enclosed rather than open, a top down and if not exactly authoritarian, a certainly authoritative style of leadership. In political terms, power was more authoritatively centralised and enforced in the Taoiseach’s office than at any time since Charles Haughey’s tenure.

Unlike Kenny, Haughey sat atop a still-rooted, mass movement. Kenny never did and that base, always limited, is depleted now. It is also a style, wholly unsuited to these changed circumstances whereby not only government resonate with a wider swath of society, but likely negotiate issue by issue with an empowered legislature to survive. The cultural changes required immediately from Enda Kenny are enormous.

The Taoiseach is the longest-serving Dáil deputy. It is a story of survival and in much of his term as taoiseach, a story of achievement. But his leadership has been largely enacted in a citadel, with the drawbridge up and only a praetorian guard admitted to his counsels.

THE failed election campaign is an outcome of that lack of openness, and insistence on control. Politics, especially when it is successful is big and messy. The base is only ever a start. If you can’t move beyond it, it ends up being the reservation you are confined to. They may be leafy suburbs and large farms but for most of its history, Fine Gael was confined to the reservation.

There are two milestones for Enda Kenny to face now. One is to get re-appointed as taoiseach within weeks. Next year he will equal and surpass the 15-year term of General Richard Mulcahy as leader of Fine Gael to become that party’s longest-serving leader. Unlike Kenny, Mulcahy had long ceded leadership in government to John A Costello.

These details won’t concern us, however. What matters is if Enda Kenny and Fine Gael can realign its style in government to cope with a fast-moving and unprecedentedly open set of circumstances. Alternatively it must by design or by ineptitude face another election immediately.

Its prospects under either circumstance are not good.

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