Big Jim missed his chance to shake FF’s foundations
BIG Jim O’Callaghan has a bit of thinking to do, and not just about his rather vainglorious promise to protect Fianna Fáil’s identity during the term of this historic coalition Government. He’d be well advised to consider, also, who are those party colleagues having a pop at newly-elected Taoiseach Micheál Martin and ask himself – are they the future for this once-great national movement?
In Limerick, that old warhorse Willie O’Dea says Limerick people have been grossly insulted by Martin’s ministerial choices.
Over in Cork North West, Michael Moynihan was equally insulted at not being favoured with promotion to government and is now seen as a thorn in the side of the administration.
Éamon Ó Cuív in Galway West rubbished the idea of Fianna Fáil going into government with Fine Gael and the Greens and also called for talks with Sinn Féin.
This was a head-on, direct challenge to Michaél Martin’s insistence that he’d do no such thing and also seemed to ignore the decline that occurred in SDLP support in the North after John Hume drew Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin into the peace process.
DESPITE the extraordinary damage done to the SDLP by Sinn Féin cannibalising their vote, Ó Cuív still wanted Fianna Fáil to talk to them after the General Election in February as an alternative to setting aside Civil War politics and burying the hatchet with Fine Gael.
These are the kind of disgruntled Fianna Fáil insiders that Jim
O’Callaghan will have to rely on for support as he goes about executing his pledge to strengthen ‘our great party by making it a more attractive option to young voters’.
And you have to ask: is Big Jim having a laugh?
His decision to tell the Taoiseach where exactly he could stick his generous offer of a junior ministry was entirely unsurprising.
For a busy senior counsel, the €135,000 junior minister salary amounted to no incentive at all and it would have meant him spending the best part of five years sucking up to a party leader who clearly shafted him for actual or perceived political disloyalty.
Not least when he also suggested holding hands with Mary Lou.
Irish politics, as a direct consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, is now changing at warp speed. The world we inhabited in February is no more and goodness knows how things will look in a few months’ time, never mind in December 2022 when Micheál Martin hands over the keys of the Taoiseach’s office to the Blueshirts.
JIM O’Callaghan has painted himself into an embarrassing corner. His ridiculously blatant signposting of a tilt for leadership can already be regarded for what it is – empty of substance. It hasn’t a prayer. The time for O’Callaghan to move against Martin was in the weeks between the indecisive General Election and the commencement of talks with Fine Gael and the Greens. Having won his key ambition of becoming Taoiseach, Mr Martin is bulletproof for as long into the future as is reasonable to consider.
Nobody will be able to lay a glove on him now, as Martin, uniquely in Irish politics, has nothing to lose as he struggles to cope with Covid-19, tries to rebuild a banjaxed economy sinking into ever-deepening debt and grapples with the housing and health crises.
The political power is now with him, almost entirely.
Further, Jim O’Callaghan is unlikely the commit to the ‘hard yards’ required to become the next leader – as, unlike Charlie Haughey, he won’t have the stomach for all those chicken dinners and bad coffee meetings with cumainn chairs, county councillors and puffed-up Comhairle Dáil Cheantair apparatchiks who guard their support like vestal virgins did their chastity.
Big Jim’s bolt for greatness is a political misadventure that’ll wither away without notice.