With Fianna Fail reeling, Fine Gael is tearing itself apart
WHO would have thought it? As the Government reels from the fallout from two banking reports illustrating appalling political recklessness and incompetence, the main Opposition party tears itself asunder.
Richard Bruton's challenge to Enda Kenny's leadership of Fine Gael was no overnight event.
But its timing has granted Fianna Fail and the Greens a temporary reprieve from the negative spotlight. The Bruton heave was in gestation for some time.
Kenny has been an outstanding leader on a number of fronts. He rescued the party from near-death, led it into successful elections and restored its morale.
It was a significant achievement in the face of formidable odds. However, there was a consensus, which gained momentum in recent months, that he could not cut it with the public.
His personal poll ratings were low.
There was voter-resistance to him becoming Taoiseach. And the focus, more and more, was on Bruton, an effective Dail and media performer on the economy.
It was forgotten, all too easily, that every Fine Gael leader, in the aftermath of Garret FitzGerald's term, failed to click with the public. And it was largely forgotten, too, that Kenny, in terms of rebuilding the party, was the most successful leader since FitzGerald.
Fine Gael was a party bitterly divided by leadership battles in the past when he took over.
Ironically, Kenny was a staunch supporter of John Bruton, Richard's brother, when he came under pressure as leader.
Eventually, time ran out for John Bruton. Michael Noonan was seen as a very effective Dail and media performer, not least on the economy, and he formed the proverbial dream team with the late Jim Mitchell.
Noonan failed to click with the public and led Fine Gael into an electoral wipe-out in the 2002 election.
A majority of the parliamentary party had seriously misjudged the situation. Noonan, impressive on the front bench, never made the transition to leader.
Even the most avid supporter of Richard Bruton this week must be privately harbouring some doubts on his suitability as a leader, given such unhappy precedents within Fine Gael.
Able, certainly. Hardworking, idealistic, in tune with people, certainly.
But has he that sometimes indefinable quality which helps a party leader to gain the confidence of the broad mass of voters?
Kenny's sacking of Bruton was inevitable when his deputy leader and finance spokesman failed to express confidence in him. And the showdown on Tuesday morning with other members of the front bench was equally inevitable.
The hope in the Bruton camp of a bloodless coup, whereby Kenny would step down having lost the confidence of a significant number of his front bench, was never really on.
As in the case of John Bruton in the past, leadership of the party was never going to be easily given up by the incumbent.
After all, the prize of Taoiseach in the next Government is tantalisingly close for whoever leads Fine Gael.
Labour's surge in the polls is unlikely to last, when there this increased scrutiny of its policies in the coming months. It may well be no more than the surge enjoyed by the Liberal Democrats in the early stages of the British general election.
British voters, briefly, swung away from the Conservatives and Labour. But they returned to the two main parties in significant numbers as the campaign continued.
In the Republic, Labour's cynical sitting on the fence on the Croke Park pay agreement was redolent of Fianna Fail in opposition in the past.
Make no decisions, antagonise nobody, keep the head down, and be all things to all men and women.
Eamon Gilmore is undoubtedly a very effective leader. But he now has to show that his party has substance when it comes to policy. And, realistically, that policy will have to contain its quota of pain.
Indeed, it could be argued that Fine Gael has suffered in the polls because it has put its head above the parapet in policy terms. Remember Richard Bruton's opposition to benchmarking when it was neither profitable nor popular electorally?
In the end, the Fine Gael leadership is likely to be decided by those members of the parliamentary party who remain undecided on who should be their leader. They would have witnessed bloodletting in the past, how it damaged Fine Gael, and how a new leader, chosen with high hopes, was unable to deliver.
Despite their affection for Kenny, will they want Bruton on the backbenches surrounded by a cabal, awaiting the opportunity for another possible challenge and more grief?
In such circumstances, they could swing to Bruton in the hope that the leadership boil was lanced once and for all.
On the other hand, Kenny has delivered in electoral terms.
Should he be given the opportunity to continue in the relatively certain knowledge that the party will form the next Government with Labour?
Those are the questions the middle-ground, undecided Fine Gael parliamentary party members are now asking themselves. It leaves the leadership issue on knife-edge.
For Fiaanna Fail it is a case of "events, dear boy, events''.
The explanation by the then British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, of what determined his political fate rings very true in Irish politics this week.
Macmillan's remarks were made in the early 1960s. But it is a truism which Fianna Fail was all too aware of when the Coalition Government trooped into the Dail this week to vote confidence in the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen.
The Government was always going to win the vote. But, in its wildest dreams, it could not possibly have anticipated how events would move the spotlight off its difficutlies.
This is a Government under siege in the aftermath of two damning reports on the banking crisis.
Those reports confirmed what was generally accepted by everybody, except those who served in Government in this country between 2002 and 2007.
No, it was not the collapse of what was to everybody, until relatively recently, an obscure American bank, which caused our economic downfall.
Sure, it was a factor. But the bottom line is that it was largely domestic policies which brought us to this level of financial grief.
The Taoiseach alone is not to blame, of course. Everybody who sat around the Cabinet table during those now, in retrospect, wasted years, shares the responsibility.
And that, obviously, includes former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who, memorably, once advised those who were badmouthing the economy to go away and commit suicide.
Brian Cowen was Minister for Finance at a critical time in the economic history of the State.
And he now happens to be Taoiseach as the economic chickens have come home to roost with a vengeance that has left the Irish people reeling. He is in the eye of the storm.
The fallout is appalling: massive unemployment, wage and social welfare cuts, resumed emigration. And all of this has, inevitably, led to a widespread mood of public anger.
So we are not involved an an arcane economic argument.
This is a very human story. People have been deeply hurt and damaged by this mainly home-grown economic recission.
And no number of "deep regrets'' from the Taoiseach and his Ministers will console people.
Even now using the word "sorry'', if it were used, would probably be too late. "Events'' have taken the focus off the Government this week. But it will soon return.
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Wednesday 23 May 2012
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