What Bertie, Brexit and Delaney have in common
AS THE Brexit endgame looms, questions over political leadership are increasingly being asked not only in political quarters but in homes and public houses all across Britain and Ireland. What makes a great political leader is a global game.
Decisions which affect people’s everyday lives are routinely made by politicians who, in some cases, have little or no idea of what they are doing. We might take David Cameron’s decision to call the Brexit referendum in the first place as a prime example of this.
On little more than a hunch the great boy wonder of British politics exposed his country’s citizens and people all across the EU to years of uncertainty by placing before the British people an illthought-out referendum. It cost Cameron his glittering career but we could well be living with the consequences for decades.
Why are some political leaders stronger than others? Why are some presidents and prime ministers able to exercise political leadership more successfully than others? These are questions that have engaged watchers of politics for centuries.
Political leadership results from the interaction of the personality of top-level political leaders and the context they face. Yet students of political leadership seem to make sense of this interaction in very different ways. The result is that verdicts on political leadership can vary widely.
Thus for some commentators Leo Varadkar is playing the proverbial stormer when it comes to protecting Irish interests in terms of Brexit. For others he has shown a dangerous naivety with his hardline approach to maintaining the backstop which has made a hard border more, rather than less likely. The art of political leadership really is in the eye of the beholder.
The problem with evaluating political leadership can be seen in Theresa May’s tenure as British prime minister. Pretty much everyone thinks that she has shown appalling leadership since she came to power after the Brexit referendum result in 2016.
While accusations of putting her party before her country are surely correct, it is doubtful if anyone else in the Conservative Party who could have become leader would have acted any differently over the past two-and-a-half years.
It’s not just in politics that leadership is crucial. The Irish public have been convulsed about the shenanigans of the FAI’s former chief executive John Delaney over the past two weeks ever since his loan to the association was revealed. While Delaney and the FAI have been excoriated for a supposed lack of leadership, Delaney remains a hugely popular figure among the grassroots.
Some have compared Delaney’s cult-like status within Irish football’s grassroots to the devotion Charles Haughey received from
Fianna Fáil’s own grassroots throughout his long and tempestuous political career.
It was the grassroots that reenergised Haughey in the 1970s after his ignominious fall from office during the Arms Crisis saga, and those same grassroots to whom he turned to fend off a variety of heaves against him in the 1980s.
HAUGHEY’S leadership skills can perhaps best be seen by his decision to persuade Fianna Fáil to enter government with the Progressive Democrats after the 1989 general election. Shortly before that momentous decision Haughey expressed concerns to PD leader Des O’Malley that it would be difficult for him to convince his party to abandon its long-held core value opposing coalition. Fianna Fáil had frequently used it as a way to campaign, contrasting the stability of single-party government with what it saw as multi-party chaos under coalition government.
O’Malley responded that Haughey should never underestimate his ability to achieve his will within the Fianna Fáil party. And so it transpired. Haughey was able to bring his party around, even though many senior party members expressed grave doubts. ‘Nobody but myself could have done it,’ he told the PD delegation on finally agreeing to a deal in June 1989.
Leadership in many areas of life can often be built on sand but appear granite-like. For years, the chief executive and later chairman of Anglo Irish Bank Seán FitzPatrick was lauded by the Irish business community as a man who could get things done.
If he could shake up the notoriously staid Irish banking sector, just imagine what he could do for the Irish economy was a mantra often heard, particularly from certain business quarters who clamoured for him to enter politics and do, as a putative Minister for Finance, what he had done in Anglo. Yet FitzPatrick’s leadership was nothing but a chimera and those who were most enamoured by his dazzling feats of banking wizardry fell quiet when the crash came.
We expect that political leaders will have an impact on their party’s policy direction and political performance. We also then expect that when they are in government political leaders will be able to perform feats of leadership. The problem is that no one is really able to define what political leadership actually is.
Take the case of Brian Cowen. Appointed unopposed, and with the plaudits of many resounding in his ears, to replace Bertie Ahern in May 2008 his extensive ministerial experience gave him a credibility few other politicians could match.
A staunch partisan Cowen was very popular within the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party. He was an aggressive debater and widely regarded as having been crucial to Fianna Fáil’s 2007 general election victory. Yet his period as Taoiseach was an unmitigated disaster.
While many in the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party were shocked that Cowen could not provide better quality leadership during his disastrous tenure at the helm, most of them supported him lemminglike to the end – even after the ignominy of the bailout of November 2010 saw decision-making in the Irish state essentially pass to the Troika.
Perhaps uniquely among modern Irish leaders, Cowen has literally no creditable achievements to his name as Taoiseach. The origins of the Northern Ireland peace process and the emergence of social partnership were driven by Haughey. That peace process was cemented by Albert Reynolds and finally crowned by Bertie Ahern. Enda Kenny saw off the Troika and helped rebuild a shattered Ireland. Leo Varadkar’s leadership will be defined by how Brexit plays out.
Leaders are more than the simple personification of the party. They are the creators of their party’s message, to the extent that the very thrust and direction of the party can be altered by the simple process of changing the leader. This is what Micheál Martin realised when he challenged Cowen for Fianna Fáil leadership in January 2011.
If Cowen had remained in office, Fianna Fáil was in very real danger of a cataclysmic collapse at the next general election. As it was the soldiers of destiny were grievously wounded in the 2011 election but not killed off. Now they sniff power again.
SIMPLY because they are the most prominent face, political leaders are often blamed or praised for achieving certain policy outcomes. This is something the leaders themselves play to. Leadership challengers frequently claim they would make different decisions if they had been in office. Once they are gone from office, leaders often claim they would have performed so much better than their successors.
Haughey claimed that he was disappointed with the performance of his successor and protégé, Ahern. He said he would not have wasted the opportunities of the Celtic Tiger as he claimed Ahern had done. Haughey clearly believed he would have behaved differently and achieved more had he been leader of Fianna Fáil and Taoiseach at that time. Ahern in turn said he would have relished the opportunity to take on the challenges he bequeathed Cowen.
The reality is we do not know how politicians or public figures will fare until they are tested in the white heat of crisis. And that brings us back to Delaney.
His achievements and failures are now in sharp focus. His cultlike status among his followers seems unshaken and yet vast swathes of their populations remain unmoved.
Delaney, charismatic, mercurial and once seemingly untouchable, is facing a battle for survival in a crisis that will ultimately, like all politicians, define his legacy.
Gary Murphy is Professor of Politics at Dublin City University