Leo could have vetted Verona - he didn’t and FG will pay
VERONA Murphy has become Leo Varadkar’s and Fine Gael’s latest, and perhaps, greatest nightmare. What was a simple-enough plan, with no apparent downside at all, has turned into a steaming pile of caca – to borrow the word famously used by Pope Francis in Ireland to describe the Catholic Church’s cover-up of child sex abuse.
So, it’s the aul’ codger with a gripe on the barstool, or the latent semiracist with no time for all this tangled-up, ‘integration’ and ‘new-Ireland’ language he’s been hearing of late, that could inflict the most damaging political injury on Leo and the Gang.
All Leo wanted in Wexford was a strong candidate who would put up a good showing in next Friday’s byelection and, then, in the upcoming general election that candidate would act as a sweeper to ensure Michael D’Arcy and Paul Kehoe kept their seats.
Given that D’Arcy and Kehoe had way less than one-and-a-half quotas in 2016, it was the right thing to do. Expecting to capture three seats for Fine Gael next year was, frankly, madness.
Then Verona Murphy wagged her chops – and messed the whole thing up. Whether by intention or otherwise she stepped right into a racist storm and dragged helpless Leo with her.
She said that Islamic State – perhaps the greatest bunch of unrepentant, medieval bandits and cutthroats of the modern era – formed a big part of the immigrant population into Ireland and that children as young as three years of age may have been manipulated by those same terrorists.
In a further comment, that conjured up images of Chinese hardman Xi Jinping’s cruel detention of about one million Muslims in socalled ‘education centres’, she said some asylum seekers may need to be re-programmed.
Now, unsurprisingly, she’s done a reverse ferret, garnished with repeated apologies and contrition. And she’s also visited a direct provision centre, and now realises she had a poor understanding of the asylum issue.
Well, no caca Sherlock.
Trouble is, the racist genie is out of the bottle.
And as Peter
Casey demonstrated in the Presidential election there is a huge vote out there for otherwise inconsequential candidates with seemingly hardline views on immigration and similar social issues. He pulled in over 23% of the vote.
There’s a betting chance, notwithstanding all the fuss, that Verona Murphy will attract a broad church of disgruntled voters on Friday and do much better than expected.
The better she does, the bigger the headache for Leo – because Fine Gael insiders concede Verona Murphy will have to be cut loose before the general election.
In that event they risk her throwing the rattle out of the cot entirely and going independent, most likely risking Paul Kehoe’s seat.
The Fine Gael debacle in Wexford is another illustration of Leo Varadkar’s leadership deficits.
The Taoiseach had plenty of time to prepare for Wexford.
And when the wheels came off, he fumbled to explain how his party chose a candidate where there was a bullying case in the background, one that had been settled privately and which Ms Murphy refuses to discuss despite a very curious electorate on the eve of polling.
Nor is it clear if the party was aware that the candidate’s business partner has a conviction for making false VAT returns using bogus invoices.
There is no adequate explanation why these issues didn’t raise flags in the context of a candidate seeking support for being not only local but vocal as well.
Varadkar had plenty of opportunities to ensure his chosen candidate was reliable on all the major issues, including immigration. He didn’t – and she wasn’t.
And his failure to dump Verona Murphy with the same ruthlessness he applied in dispatching Maria Bailey over swing-gate speaks to an extraordinary lack of consistency.
This inequality in treatment leaves Taoiseach Varadkar open to having Oscar Wilde’s famous definition of the cynic applied to him. He knows the price of everything and value of nothing.
Maria Bailey was seeking hard currency to compensate her for injuries she claimed she suffered. The Taoiseach knows what money means to him and to business, and so she had to go.
Verona Murphy was talking about social values and brought tumult and scorn down onto herself and the Blueshirts.
Values? Where can we cash them? So Verona Murphy stays.