JOHN LEE: LEO, THE CUPCAKES AND ROASTING
FOR a party led by a man who favours those who rise early in the morning, the breakfast room of Hotel Minella was disappointingly empty at 7.30am. Fine Gael’s head of communications Barry Duggan was alone, gripped in a frenzy of phone calls and emails. There were no TDs, Senators or MEPs there early on Friday morning at the Fine Gael parliamentary party think-in in Clonmel.
Some of the politicians were up alright, as Barry was talking to them, but they were in their rooms. Fine Gael MEP for Dublin Brian Hayes was first in, before 8am and smiling. He was happy he had a radio assignment in Dublin that would spare him the ‘team building’ exercises later.
Then as the tables started to fill up they seemed to be mostly occupied with advisers. They’re strange things these parliamentary away days. The parliamentary party, a group of people who spend most of the year in Leinster House together, go to a rural hotel to bond. They do that in the corporate world and the advisers told politicians 15 years ago they had to do it too.
But why were there so many of the Taoiseach’s advisers in Clonmel? Barry Duggan and Cliona Doyle from the Fine Gael press office were performing a function – liaising between the party and the press and running the show. And Fine Gael pays their salaries.
But the new Government press officer was there too. So was the new assistant government press secretary. Leo Varadkar was also accompanied by his chief of staff and John Carroll, a PR man with the grand title ‘special adviser and head of policy and programme implementation at Department of the Taoiseach’.
AHEAVY-BROWED, hulk of a man he was a noted enforcer on the rugby field. I kept my distance as he protected his breakfast. Angela Flannery, retained from the Enda Kenny regime, was there too. There were at least three Garda protection men that I could see assigned to the Taoiseach. And his personal assistant was always near.
The most exotic appointment of all, Dr Patrick Geoghegan of Trinity College, danced on the fringes of the entourage, correcting anybody who said he was a speech writer. He said he is a historian.
I recall a simpler time when no State-salaried Government adviser attended a ruling party’s think-in. At the infamous Ardilaun think-in in Galway in 2010, when taoiseach Brian Cowen suffered his humiliation, only one Government adviser, Joe Lennon, was there.
In 2011, Enda Kenny started bringing his advisers, but just two or three. Now Leo Varadkar’s group resembles a touring Renaissance court, complete with travelling personal historian. Perhaps next year there will be a poet and mandolin player.
This think-in was the new Taoiseach’s first as boss. It was full of meaningless innovations. The press, for the first time, were allowed into the Taoiseach’s opening speech to the politicians.
During Bertie Ahern’s time the Taoiseach made but a few remarks at the dinner and a hired keynote speaker did the big turn.
Mr Varadkar decided to turn his dinner speech into a ‘roast’, with Minister Simon Coveney and the press his principal targets. A new innovation it may be here, but the political roast is a standard in Washington. Franklin D Roosevelt gave speeches to White House correspondents in the 1930s where he’d rib them and political opponents with off-colour jokes and mild insults. Barack Obama perfected the roast during his term.
OVER coffee on Friday morning I’d a long conversation with the Taoiseach. He told me he had studied Obama’s performances while preparing his post-dinner speech. He seemed pleased with it. Leo’s a good communicator, but he’s no Richard Pryor. To me he has changed little from the awkward, gawky 28-year-old TD I met in Leinster House in 2007.
And the challenges for the Taoiseach seem enormous. One feels almost concerned for him. He’s decided to confront them with a huge retinue of advisers and by introducing PR tricks from the United States, Europe and Britain.
He brings a millennial knowledge of social media to his interactions on Facebook and Twitter. He’s exceedingly conscious of his personal image. He put no milk or sugar in his coffee, and slavishly avoided the sumptuous cupcakes and fruit cake. He is svelte but he must have a tortuous time avoiding scones and ham sandwiches at constituency events.
Fine Gael has only achieved 30% or more of the vote in a general election once in the past 30 years. That was the never-to-be-repeated outlier of 2011, when Fianna Fáil was almost obliterated. With Labour finished for now, Fine Gael has no natural coalition partner. Varadkar needs to get the party’s vote into the high thirties to have a chance of leading a Government.
He must rebuild his party while leading a divided, dysfunctional minority Government. That minority, do-nothing Government spends so much time bickering with the Dáil’s many factions it can take little meaningful legislative action to boost Varadkar’s popularity. The EU has shackled our high-spending tendencies after recent catastrophic splurges.
His party, too, is divided. Varadkar kept Simon Coveney in Cabinet but his magnanimity did not stretch to two of the vanquished foe’s female supporters – Kate O’Connell and Maria Bailey. Yet the parliamentary party has few able, articulate women that they can send out to bat in the media.
Varadkar is desperate for young, able candidates to help him form a Government after the next general election. In his pursuit of the traditional tasks of a Taoiseach – Government management, increasing the vote, building party structure, identifying candidates – Varadkar has decided to take a new path.
He’ll use funny speeches for the Leinster House bubble dwellers, social media, socks and gay pride marches. He will eschew the hand clasping, everyman style of Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny. It may not work, but it’ll be some party trick.