Why this children’s book best explains rebel Deasy’s attack on Kenny

MY two-year-old daughter has a book called Shh, We Have A Plan. It’s about a group of hunters with schemes for sneaking up on birds and animals. I don’t want to ruin it for you but most of their efforts fail. Still, there is at least a plan. Enda Kenny has a plan. It is to stay in power.

His opponents don’t have a plan. Waterford FG TD John Deasy gave an interview to Seán O’Rourke on RTÉ radio this week where he outlined why he is opposed to Enda Kenny. Kenny had a difficult general election campaign and his party lost 26 seats.

However, Deasy said Kenny is unlikely to voluntarily leave his job. He said the likelihood is that the Taoiseach will have to be ‘dragged out of the place kicking and screaming’.

He claimed the Taoiseach has ‘bought off’ other members of Fine Gael with committee, minister of state, senator and ministerial roles.

He said Fianna Fáil have a plan too. ‘No one is under any illusion Fianna Fáil are going to try and take us out while Kenny is in position, it is obvious what they are doing,’ he said.

Fianna Fáil TDs have outlined their tactics for Governmental takeover to me. They will find a matter of high principle, and withdraw their ‘confidence and supply’ support of the Government. This has to be done while Kenny is leader, to capitalise on his flagging popularity. It also has to be done before a charismatic leader like Leo Varadkar takes over.

Deasy added that there are probably ‘10 to 15 people in the party’ who share his view about Kenny’s leadership.

This was extraordinarily disrespectful language for a subordinate to use about his boss in a national radio interview. It was rebellious. Yet the daring Waterford TD said that he will not put down a motion of no confidence in the Taoiseach because, he says, ‘I can’t do it on my own’.

In the days that followed the interview Cabinet ministers phoned Deasy, offering him their support. Just not publicly.

This is the problem for those in Fine Gael who want Kenny to step down as leader. Periodically a TD, John Deasy, or Brendan Griffin or John Paul Phelan, complains but nothing comes of it.

THE rebels reveal their hand – that they want him gone – but offer no strategy to have him removed. So they are isolated. The rest, in Deasy’s words, are bought off with jobs.

Deasy, at least, was offered a job and rejected it. And they can’t take that away from him. In 2010 Leo Varadkar, Simon Coveney, Paschal Donohoe and Richard Bruton all participated in the failed attempt to remove Kenny from his job as Fine Gael leader. They are in powerful Cabinet positions while others languish in limbo.

Deasy was a bright young pros2007. pect back in 2004, when he was sacked from frontbench by Kenny. Lucinda Creighton, Paul Bradford and Billy Timmins are now out of politics. Supporters of three of the ministers named above (Bruton is no longer a contender) will give you a lot of reasons why they will not take a public stance against Kenny. They speak about stability and timing and the good of the country and all that bunk. Ultimately they admit it is better to be in Cabinet when zero hour comes than without. And they fear the political cliché that he who plunges the knife never becomes king.

In fact a politician who shows courage and decisiveness at the right moment can succeed.

Charles Haughey only returned to Jack Lynch’s cabinet in July 1977. By 1979 he’d removed Lynch, the man he held responsible for his Arms Trial humiliation, and taken his job. Albert Reynolds in turn knifed Haughey and became taoiseach. Micheál Martin ousted Brian Cowen in 2011. Fine Gael have proven callous when removing leaders – just ask Alan Dukes, John Bruton and Michael Noonan. Everybody in Fine Gael bar Kenny now lacks street fighting instincts.

Those now in Cabinet hesitate, draw their salaries and receive all the advantages that go with Cabinet ministry.

Kenny, in many ways, did a creditable job in the vital years between 2011 and 2013. But Irish Water and other controversies damaged him.

His plummeting popularity contributed to the electoral implosion of the Fine Gael/Labour alliance. But Coveney, Varadkar and Donohoe are key members of his Cabinet. His failings were theirs too.

They were virtually silent in the campaign, almost spectators as it imploded. There is nothing to stop a confident Cabinet minister grasping a campaign by the scruff of the neck. Brian Cowen did it in Whereas the backbenchers have no strategy outside of periodic guerrilla warfare on the airwaves, the ministers believe they have it worked out.

They believe Kenny’s weak Government will stagger on, he will step down soon and there will be a straight fight between Varadkar, Coveney and Donohoe for leadership. This assumes that Kenny will do them that courtesy.

The danger, Deasy fears, is that Fianna Fáil will, sooner rather than later, move to capitalise on Kenny’s perceived weakness as a vote getter and force a general election with him as leader. In the latest poll Enda Kenny’s satisfaction rating is 29% (the Government as a whole is 29% too). Micheál Martin’s satisfaction rating is 39%.

Enda wants to merely survive. The rebels want him gone but lack the bottle to take him out. The Government’s credibility is increasingly damaged, and Fine Gael’s electability with whatever leader is there is diminishing by the day.

More Garda crises will erode it further. On Tuesday we will have an uninspiring Budget, face a winter of potential strikes. And Fianna Fáil grow with each rebel whimper. Time may be the Rebels’ biggest enemy – not Enda Kenny.