Would Coveney be a steadier pair of hands than Varadkar right now?

The balance of power between the Taoiseach and his Minister for Foreign Affairs has shifted, and it is the new Tanaiste who now has the edge, writes Eilis O’Hanlon

FINE Gael TDs and senators must be wondering if they made the right choice back in May during the party’s leadership election, or whether party members, who backed Simon Coveney by some margin, had more of a finger on the pulse than they did, for all their overpaid advisers, spin doctors, and other assorted hangers-on.

It’s not called the wisdom of crowds for nothing.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs feels like the dominating figure in Government right now, rather than Leo Varadkar, making ‘Taoiseach appoints Simon Coveney as Tanaiste’ the least surprising headline of the year. The Corkman’s replacement of Frances Fitzgerald as second in command says it all.

As the Advent season begins, Coveney now has Leo’s Christmas baubles grasped tightly in his ambitious fist in the party, just as Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin has them at his mercy in the Dail. It’s just a matter of which of them chooses to start squeezing first.

The Taoiseach’s mishandling of the row over what Frances Fitzgerald knew, and when she knew it, about the legal strategy to discredit Garda whistleblower Maurice McCabe, calls to mind boxer Mike Tyson’s famous take-down of his opponents: “Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the mouth.” Leo was sauntering along, master of his universe, merrily tweeting pictures of himself putting tea spoons in the dishwasher, then, wallop, events punched him in the mouth. He reeled. He rocked on his heels. Finally, he recovered. Up to a point. His defence of the erstwhile Tanaiste in the Dail as a good woman who’d been denied natural justice did have a certain noble grace about it, but the damage was done. The Taoiseach wasn’t in control. That left an opportunity for his rival to show the party who’s the safer, steadier pair of hands.

It was obvious during the leadership election that Coveney was more of a heavyweight than Varadkar, who seemed back then, and still does, more of a Taoiseach for the good times than the not-quitethere-yet times that we’re in.

Having his pick of the great offices of State, Coveney smartly plumped for Foreign Affairs, thereby putting himself right at the heart of the major political dramas of the hour, namely Brexit and Northern Ireland and the entangled relationship between them.

Before he gets too cocky, it’s worth remembering that Coveney’s handling of these issues has not been without blunders. Rowing in behind Sinn Fein’s ever increasing list of conditions for the restoration of Stormont backfired badly when talks ran into the sand. Coveney alienated a swathe of unionist opinion for ultimately little gain. He failed to grasp that nationalist interests in the North are best served by working with unionists, rather than denigrating them. (Unionists still need to learn the same lesson in reverse).

Throw in Brexit, and crisis became inevitable. In recent days, Coveney has taken to insisting that he doesn’t want the UK’s exit from the European Union to become a “green versus orange” issue.

Unfortunately, it’s too late for that, and to some extent that’s Coveney’s fault for failing to realise that, if it looks like an effort to affect the constitutional status of the North, and quacks and waddles like one too, then that’s what it is.

The DUP’s position is equally maddening. One of the last joint acts of former First Minister Arlene Foster and the late Martin McGuinness was to attend a joint ministerial meeting at Downing Street to press for Northern Ireland’s unique status and needs to be recognised during the Brexit process. What did this mean if not that something had to give?

The North relies on EU money to keep going just as much as it does on the UK block grant. That’s even before the impact of a hard border on the island is taken into consideration. The DUP being wrong does not make the Irish Government right, however. Northern Ireland still does more than half its trade with the rest of the UK, so suggesting that they agree to put up a new border in the Irish Sea is not really a serious suggestion.

So… it’s complicated. The question for Varadkar and Coveney alike was whether it was helpful to aggressively threaten to use Ireland’s veto to stop the British from advancing to full trade talks after this month’s summit. That’s a separate question from whether Ireland should be prepared to use its veto. Persuasive arguments have been put forward as to why it should. But what was gained by megaphone diplomacy? The British knew that Dublin had a veto, so there was surely no need to wave it around triumphantly in advance.

Leo Varadkar gave the game away back in June, after Tory Prime Minister Theresa May gambled and went to the country, only to lose her majority in Parliament. The Taoiseach said at the time that the vulnerability of the British government was a good thing, because a weak Britain would be in no position to force through the sort of hard Brexit that was against Ireland’s economic interests. He went so far as to call that election “an opportunity for Ireland”.

It was after this that the rhetoric was ratcheted up against London, and it’s a perfectly valid approach. It’s called “punching down”. For a while, the Irish have been punching down on the British, and it probably feels psychologically rather satisfying. But how long would the plan survive the political equivalent of one of Mike Tyson’s smacks in the mouth?

The EU insists that won’t happen, despatching Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, to Dublin last Friday to reassure the Irish that their continental allies are right behind them. It went down a treat in Government Buildings. They felt the love.

But wasn’t there something ever so slightly ominous about Tusk’s assertion at last Friday’s press conference that “the key to the UK’s future lies — in some ways — in Dublin”, and that “I realise that for some British politicians this may be hard to understand”?

This was interpreted by Europhiles as warm, fraternal encouragement, but could just as easily be read as the EU pushing Ireland into the front line to take the flak for whatever eruption may be about to hit Anglo-European relations. The EU has found its fall guy if everything goes belly up in the next couple of weeks. It’s us.

The EU’s position is dishonest, because it isn’t Ireland’s decision alone as to whether those talks proceed. Ireland is merely the channel through which the collective will is currently operating.

That was nowhere plainer than when Simon Coveney himself subtly started to shift the language around the veto last week, from insisting that the British provide absolute guarantees on the border to asking instead for “an agreed wording whereby we can agree the parameters within which we can find a solution that prevents the re-emergence of a border”.

There are so many provisos in that, it’s hard to read it as anything other than a fudge in the making.

And there’s nothing wrong with a fudge. All in all, it might be the best solution in the short term.

But if it all goes wrong, it’s still Leo Varadkar who’ll take the fall, and Simon Coveney who’s ideally placed to exploit his rival’s misfortune. That might be no bad thing either. Coveney has made mistakes this year, some serious, but he’s a man of substance. What Leo is underneath all that surface charm and boyish bonhomie still remains to be discovered, and he doesn’t have unlimited time to unveil it.

‘The EU has found its fall guy if everything goes belly up ... it’s us’