New regime might look the same but is heading in a different direction
A MONTH into office and that modern version of the ancient Greek omens, the polls, are typically contradictory when it comes to the verdict on Leo Varadkar’s new Government.
After an initial bounce, when Fine Gael got a small jump to the heights of 25%, the most recent poll saw Fine Gael at 19% – a substantial 6% behind its civil war rivals.
In fairness to Mr Varadkar, he cannot be blamed for acts of God such as errant ministers who have difficulty filling out forms.
And while the verdict of the polls on the new administration has been mixed, one thing that is becoming clear is that this will be a very different Government from its predecessor.
While all of the old guard survived, with the exception of a couple of junior ministerial minions, the mood of a government is set by the chief.
In this case, the rather significant swap in roles between Mr Varadkar, who had treated being Tánaiste with the sort of joy Napoleon reserved for Elba, and Micheál Martin, appears to have brought a new vigour to the Government.
On one level we should not be surprised that Mr Varadkar brings a special energy to the office.
It is easy to forget, because he has been around for such an awfully long time, that he is still one of the youngest leaders the country has ever had.
He is still younger by a year than Bertie Ahern was when the Fianna Fáil leader came to power as a fresh 45-year-old in 1997.
By contrast Mr Martin, whose career in politics began in 1989 when he was elected to the Dáil with historical figures like Albert Reynolds, the great Haughey patriarch Ray Burke, and Padraig Flynn, was more sedate.
His style was modelled on his genial, pipe-smoking, GAA-loving Cork predecessor, ‘Honest’ Jack Lynch, who was famously satirised as being a leader whose definition of heaven involved Cork winning the Munster Final and the consumption of two or three manly pints (nothing excessive mind) afterwards.
Mr Martin’s laid-back style in a cabinet where, among all of those egos, he was definitely a chairman rather than a chief executive, suited the turbulent age of Covid. But Mr Varadkar, who definitely sees himself as a CEO, has taken a more energised approach.
Though his reshuffle was not without troubles – which will come back to haunt him should hard times arrive – the promotion of Jennifer Carroll MacNeill and the rise of Peter Burke have introduced a sense of vitality to the Fine Gael wing of the Government. The old guard (except for Leo Varadkar obviously) will be watching their pin-cushioned backs.
An accidental bonus comes via the moving of Simon Harris to the Department of Justice, which will undoubtedly refresh a ministry that has resembled a bit of a backwater recently.
Significantly Mr Varadkar had scarcely got his feet under the Taoiseach’s table before he moved to seize a visible leadership role in the key Fianna Fáil ministries of Housing and Health.
Both have been the Achilles heels of successive governments for decades now. But even in Ireland, it is surely not an ironclad rule that our health system should stagger through each year as the sick man of Europe.
It also should surely be possible for a country that could build 90,000 homes a year when we didn’t need them to build 45,000 a year when we do.
In an indication of changed times, there was an initial rocket for Stephen Donnelly when Mr
Varadkar, a former health minister himself, said it is ‘not acceptable’ that so many people are on trolleys as patients are not getting the ‘dignity they deserve’.
Whatever about Mr Donnelly, Fianna Fáil definitely bristled when the Taoiseach made an appearance at the first meeting of the Housing Commission, which was prominently tweeted.
THE Taoiseach warned that ‘we must do whatever it takes to solve this social crisis and reverse the trend of rising homelessness and falling home ownership. Government will leave no stone unturned. No option will be taken off the table without due consideration’. This was greeted by much growling in Fianna Fáil over the absence of Mr Martin and Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien from the meeting.
But in the ‘if you snooze you lose’ world of Leo Varadkar, there is apparently going to be little tolerance for inter-party niceties if the Government is not seen to be dealing with national crises.
It will be interesting, in that regard, to see what happens when Mr Varadkar has a chat with Finance Minister Michael
McGrath about his plans for tax reform. Mr McGrath has not slipped into the succession lead position like a well-groomed pedigree horse without knowing how to hide a knife up his sleeve.
Perhaps the most intriguing feature of the new Leo Varadkar is the Taoiseach’s voluntary embrace of the Northern Ireland thing.
Strangely, given his lineage, Micheál Martin adopted a semidetached relationship to the Six Counties, the effectiveness of which was epitomised by the SDLP’s decision to end its alliance with Fianna Fáil.
By contrast, in his second incarnation as Taoiseach, Mr Varadkar has engaged in a whirlwind love-in with unionists and nationalists.
A newly humble Taoiseach even expressed regret that the Northern Ireland Protocol, agreed with Boris Johnson to end a Brexit impasse, was signed without the agreement of unionists and nationalists.
As yet another deadline passes to restore powersharing, the Taoiseach obviously believes that, like housing and health, the shambolic state of the Good Friday Agreement cannot continue without consequence.
His vigour also clearly indicated to Sinn Féin that any Northern solution will be a contested space. He may also have been reminding Mr Martin that the North is the Taoiseach’s prerogative, not a shared space with Foreign Affairs.
Certainly, it was all a bit more sparkly than Micheál Martin’s Shared Island initiative, which seems to be mostly about reopening disused canals.
The Taoiseach, much to the entertainment of all who like a bit of a spat, has decided to give free rein to his too often suppressed liking for political combat.
Mr Martin tended to treat Sinn Féin incursions as would a somewhat irritated father who was above that sort of behaviour.
Mr Varadkar, by contrast, likes nothing better than to get into the trenches with the foot soldiers.
Already the exchanges between him and Mary Lou McDonald and Pearse Doherty, both of whom also are political meat-eating bruisers, have become as sulphurous as those of the Haughey, FitzGerald, Spring era.
NO ONE has accused the other of being an evil spirit or of having a ‘flawed pedigree’ just yet, but we are getting close. It has been a sparky start.
The problem with Mr Varadkar is that we have had bright starts before. One would have thought that his initial leadership pledge to look after those who get up early to go to work with tax reform was quite the socialist notion.
All it took, though, was a couple of smacks on the nose from those embedded bastions of the Irish left, who believe socialism is far too fine a thing to be wasted on the actual working classes, for Mr Varadkar to beat a retreat.
If he is too secure a third term in government, Mr Varadkar must on this occasion show that Fine Gael makes a difference.
After what feels like a decade of stasis, those who get up early in the morning want to see tangible change in taxation, childcare, hospitals, and housing.
They are feeling neglected, and if the Taoiseach does not tend to their needs, our suspicion is that Sinn Féin’s current slump may be far more temporary than the conventional wisdom suggests.
Mr Varadkar’s own leadership track record – of zero wins in six contests – should alert him to the reality that his style has not convinced the voter.
If he is to learn from this, the first lesson for him should be that a good start, even in top gear, really is only half the job.