Brexit breather gives Martin time to rally

THE new Halloween deadline for Brexit means the Taoiseach will have to shelve plans for a general election this year. I presume that’s why he looked disappointed while the other EU leaders appeared relieved in Brussels on Thursday morning. Close colleagues and advisers urging an election this year had won the argument and Mr Varadkar was hoping Brexit would be delayed until next March next year, according to sources.

But an EU Summit in late June and the new October 31 deadline rules out an election that could have been called after the budget in early October.

A post-budget election would also have kept faith with the Taoiseach’s confidence and supply deal with Fianna Fáil.

The logic was simple: It is a long established truism that governments lose elections rather than oppositions win them. And each month and every new opinion poll sees the Taoiseach’s and his government’s popularity slump further while the gap with Fianna Fáil narrows.

In the late autumn, tedium and frustration will replace anxiety and urgency after three years of Brexit debate. And an electhe tion in Ireland months before a March deadline would allow Mr Varadkar to convincingly deny charges of political opportunism.

‘Fortune favours the brave’ Fine Gaelers, urging him to call an election before Brexit’s new Halloween deadline, would invite accusations of putting his party’s electoral welfare before country’s best interests.

Now, to paraphrase a U2 song, the Taoiseach and his party are stuck in a moment they can’t get out of – where events and outside circumstances they can’t control are dictating the electoral cycle to them.

This slow bicycle race suits Micheál Martin: the longer Leo Varadkar spends in Government Buildings while crises in health, housing and broadband continue to haunt his government, the more voters get fed up with them.

The longer Mr Varadkar and his government are in office, the more

Taoiseach’s exotic novelty fades and his administration looks more tired and accident-prone.

But the Fianna Fáil leader is also facing down internal party critics who want him to tear up the confidence and supply agreement with Fine Gael.

Serial gaffes by Health Minister Simon Harris, particularly the cost of the National Children’s Hospital along with lengthening waiting lists for public housing and spiralling rents in the private sector provide opportunities for Fianna Fáil, say Martin’s critics.

And the rural FF backbenchers want their leader to champion their voters’ demands to end the broadband fiasco.

Mr Martin believes that time is on his side and the longer an election is delayed, the more votes Fianna Fáil can repatriate from Fine Gael.

Mr Varadkar thought he had convinced the German Chancellor Angela Merkel to push out the Brexit deadline until next March. But French President Emmanuel Macron dug in his heels and insisted on the UK’s departure by Halloween.

The waning of Ms Merkel’s influence and the strident ambitions of President Macron is a worry to Mr Varadkar – or any future Taoiseach.

President Macron’s plan for close EU integration means a harmonisation of taxes – and a hike in our 12.5% corporation tax that attracts so much foreign investment (and well-paid jobs) to Ireland.

And without Britain to counteract French influence, we will come under huge pressure to conform in return for EU support on Brexit.

JOHN Delaney has not just alienated sponsors but has also drawn the wrath of the Church’s man in the upper house. Senator Ronán Mullen is calling for an inquiry into the unexplained loan from Mr Delaney to the FAI. He wants a probe similar to the Moran inquiry into Rio ticket sales – it cost €300,000 and took nine months. If its findings warrant recouping costs, Mr Mullen says they could be repaid from public monies allocated to the FAI.

FRIENDS admire TD Peadar Tóibín for leaving Sinn Féin on a principle and founding Aontú. While supporting a woman’s right to choose, I also respect his swimming against the tide in the abortion referendum. But how, I wonder, could Mr Tóibín have held vehement antiabortion views while failing to condemn the Provisional IRA?