2020 -YEAR THE GLOVES COME OFF
MoS political editor f ills you in on all you need to watch out for in coming months
A new decade may mean a new start for new politics. With a frenetic 2019 in its dying days, there looks likely to be little let up in the fast pace of events.
And with a form of certainty emerging in our near neighbours the UK, the next few months will be crucial to shaping the first half of the twenties.
A square up between Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and pretender Micheál Martin is just one of the first issues that will need to be resolved - with significant consequences for each of their parties depending on the outcome of that tussle.
But there are other challenges, including the return of the dreaded B-word, the future of the FAI and the continuing scandal of the homeless figures. Here we examine some of the issues that are likely to loom large in the first year of the new decade.
Brexit – definitely (maybe) sorted
For four years, two predictions have been made with unabashed certainty – Brexit will be sorted soon and a General Election is imminent here. Now, finally, the soothsayers may be right. In Ireland the two events are inextricably linked. When a modicum of certainty attaches itself to Brexit, that gives a window for a cathartic election here.
Boris Johnson’s new House of Commons’ majority allows him to finally withdraw Britain from the European Union on January 31. Yet given that I am burned by my experiences, I don’t believe the process is going to be as simple as some believe, not least because the institution required most to implement Brexit, the British civil service, is resolutely opposed to it. Expect complications... and a delay to a clean break between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.
Election likely in April/May
As you walk through the increasingly febrile corridors of Leinster House you will not find a soul who does not believe that there will be a general election in the coming weeks. I agree it is possible that the Dáil will collapse under the weight of poison and personal animosities that reached a crescendo in the last few weeks.
Yet the 32nd Dáil, more so than any I’ve covered over the last quarter century, has been led by a few ill-informed deputies running around the corridors making predictions that have been incredibly consistent in this crucial factor – they’re always wrong.
Yes, the Dáil may not return in January. Yes, it may collapse under a motion of ‘no confidence’ in one of the many under-performing ministers in Cabinet. But only one man has the power to call a general election – Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. And he wants it to be held in April or May, when he can display his beauty and intelligence in the broad, sunlit uplands of an early Irish summer.
The only other man with an influence on the timing of a general election is Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin and he repeatedly said privately during the recent by-election campaigns that he does not want an election in the dark and bitter months of January and February. He has stated publicly he wants it in April.
The Taoiseach’s emailed reply to Mr Martin’s requests for clarity last week indicated that the stitch-up is increasingly likely.
Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, the Greens and all the others want it to be delayed as long as they can to give them more time to organise.
If Mr Varadkar and Mr Martin want to hold the Dáil hostage until early summer they will. Even if the Dáil collapses into civil war it won’t be a big problem for these wily operators to delay things for a few weeks. So expect Leo Varadkar to meet Donald Trump in March.
Cosying up to the Greens
At the Fingal by-election count centre Leo Varadkar had a perfunctory chat with his losing candidate Dr James Reilly and then made for the victorious Green Party team at the far end of the hall. The Taoiseach spent a long time talking with Green Party leader Eamon Ryan.
He was thinking ahead, as politicians always do. I don’t believe the Green Party or the Labour Party
can win more than 10 seats each in the next general election – still, that adds up to 20 and if Mr Varadkar can secure their support he’s well on the way to forming a coalition.
The problem for Mr Varadkar is he’s miles behind Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin in this strategy.
If you watch proceedings in the Dáil, and more importantly who sits with who in the Dáil self-service restaurant, you will have noticed Mr Martin has spent much of the last three years fraternising with Mr Ryan and Labour’s Brendan Howlin.
Mr Varadkar, who is busy hanging out with Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron, is, of course, never seen in the humble self-service canteen.
In the Dáil chamber Mr Ryan can barely disguise his contempt for Mr Varadkar’s high-handed manner. And while there are few certainties in Irish politics, Labour will not enter coalition with a Fine Gael that has been brought even further to the right since it dragged Joan Burton’s party into the abyss.
If Mr Martin can get Fianna Fáil to 60 seats he is in pole position to secure the support of the Green Party and Labour and leave the temporary arrangement of New Politics in the political dustbin.
Leo won’t want to rebuild
When former Minister Brian Hayes told Leo Varadkar a year ago that he was getting out of politics before he was 50, he reminded the Taoiseach that he had made a similar commitment.
Mr Varadkar will only be 41 next month – but he has been in Cabinet for nine years now. He has clearly come to love the high life. If he’s not meeting Kylie Minogue backstage he’s cosying up to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the US or jetting to Berlin on a weekend off to enjoy the party scene there.
If he loses the next general election – which is highly possible – I cannot picture him taking to the boreens with only chicken and chips in draughty country hotels as reward.
For that would be what he would have to do. Mr Varadkar polled very badly among ordinary Fine Gael members in the 2017 leadership contest and was really elected by the acclaim of the parliamentary party. A lot of those TDs and senators would be gone if Fine Gael lost the general election.
If Leo Varadkar loses the next election he will not be an opposition leader – he likes a big room. Mr Varadkar will eschew the rubber chicken circuit for the glamour of the jet set and little old Ireland will be left in a cloud of the ex-Taoiseach’s burning rubber.
Micheál Martin’s last chance
Micheál Martin, like Mr Varadkar, is not lacking in self-confidence and he could have used his 14 years of experience in most of the prestigious Cabinet positions to find a cushy role in the private sector. He didn’t.
In 2011 he set out on the lonely road to leading a dethroned and defenestrated Fianna Fáil back from the brink. This has been made all the more difficult because he was there in Cabinet for all the major decisions that led to the economic collapse. The public won’t have fully forgotten that.
But Mr Martin’s critics often fail to recall just how far Fianna Fáil had fallen in 2011 – and refuse to put recent electoral advances in that context. The Taoiseach’s office, as ever, is in the gift of the electorate.
The prevailing winds are against Leo Varadkar – but there is hope yet for the incumbent party as recent controversies surrounding voting in the Dáil show. One thing is certain: if the electorate does not choose Mr Martin for the Taoiseach’s office next year, it is hard to see the rationale for him staying on as leader.
Housing crisis to hit FG
I asked Leo Varadkar at the end of year press conference whether he was ashamed of his party’s record on housing. He said he wasn’t, but he got angry and started blaming everybody else – Fianna Fáil, the Greens, Labour – except his own party colleagues. Or himself.
He acknowledged Fine Gael has been in power for nine years. His closest political friend, Eoghan Murphy, by the time of the election will have been in the Housing job for nearly three years. Yet Mr Varadkar has privately dismissed any criticism of Mr Murphy as BS (bulls**t).
Fine Gael’s inexplicable refusal to acknowledge that the housing crisis is one of the most distasteful Irish political scandals has been exacerbated by Mr Varadkar’s decision to appoint a callow, breathtakingly underqualified southside rich kid to the portfolio. Mr Murphy’s image – privileged, pampered and imprudent – has been hugely damaging in this portfolio.
It is too late to build enough houses to rescue 10,500 people from homelessness. That figure, in a country which ranks fifth richest in the world, according to the IMF, is a scandal. It is now too late to sack Eoghan Murphy – that ranks as a politically suicidal mistake by Mr Varadkar. The public is almost conditioned to the health service being a shambles. But it has not accepted that homeless children have to queue outside the GPO in their school uniforms. Housing will be the rock on which Fine Gael’s ship founders.
Expense changes needed
Fine Gael was wounded by what it perceived to be opposition attacks on Maria Bailey and her abortive court action for allegedly falling off a swing in a hotel. Hauling Fianna Fáil over the coals for alleged voting irregularities has additionally brought focus on Fine Gael voting habits and the attendance record of former Fine Gael Minister Dara Murphy.
To shed light on TDs’ activities in Leinster House was always going to be a zero-sum game which merely served to further damage the image of politics.
In general, people truly care about what the Government is doing – not what opposition TDs who are supporting the government anyway are up to. But the country’s parliament needs a robust and basic system of recording attendance and voting, and covering appropriate expenses.
It should not be so hard to design such a system. If the powers that be decided to put their minds to it, it could be done with great ease. They would simply have to commit to a basic concept of accountability, and reverse the retrograde changes to the system that allow expenses to be claimed without providing so much as a fig leaf of transparency.
Fans knew FAI’s failings
As young soccer players in north Dublin we often wondered while changing in the open air, lashed by squalls and wind, why our GAA and rugby counterparts had lovely clubhouses and sumptuous facilities.
In Malahide, a more economically fortunate town than many of the areas we travelled to play away games in north Dublin, our main soccer club didn’t have a proper clubhouse until I was in my thirties. Yet far more people played soccer than any other code.
During the many hours spent discussing our fate in our de facto clubhouse, Gibney’s Bar in Malahide, we decided the administrators of soccer in Ireland were substandard. Pint paused short of the mouth in a hand caked in mud (showers were an oddity), I often declared: ‘The FAI are clowns’.
Now everybody knows. They are now bankrupt clowns but thankfully soccer doesn’t need much to endure. Just nets, someone to mark the lines and a lift to the pub will do.