Enda to retire? Don’t hold your breath while waiting

I CONFIDENTLY predict that the New Year’s newspapers in 2017 will have ‘willhe-stay-or-will-he-go?’ stories about Enda Kenny. It will seem at odds with him making history as the first Fine Gael taoiseach re-elected just a few months before. There will be intense speculation about who will replace him and reminders that Enda hinted that he would not do a full second term as taoiseach.

The usual suspects in Cabinet will be jostling for preference but you can be sure that Enda will repeat loudly and clearly that he has no intention of standing down.

Sources close to the Taoiseach will give grave warnings that any suggestion he is a lame duck will make his Cabinet, the Fine Gael party and the country ungovernable.

And if they undermine the most successful Fine Gael taoiseach in history, a potential candidate for the leadership will be threatened with severe punishment for disloyalty.

And of course, candidates who can gain by making an early departure will do all they can to ensure Enda’s departure will be tasteful and elegant, with minuets if possible.

But then there will be stark, even crude, assessments of Enda’s past failures and current shortcomings. Yet Enda will not go quietly into the night but rage with all of the energy that a serving taoiseach can summon to his cause.

The safest pair of hands on the Cabinet table are Michael Noonan’s and if he were forced to step down for health reasons it would add further intrigue to who will be the next taoiseach.

YES, Leo Varadkar, Simon Coveney and Frances Fitzgerald are all lining up to be leader but would Kenny endorse any of them as his successor by appointing them minister for finance? I don’t think so. Others are tipping the economically numerate Paschal Donohoe for Finance, who has shown no personal ambition and unswerving loyalty to the Taoiseach.

Getting elected to the Dáil will be tough for Donohoe, but not an impossible dream.

Even if Fine Gaelers do lead the next government as expected, who shares the Cabinet table with them will add another dimension to the ‘who replaces Enda?’ question.

The abortion issue still has the potential to inflict serious internal damage to Fine Gael, with its elected representatives in government more liberal than the party’s rural grassroots. However, no matter what issues are rising to make government difficult and complex, they all remember Mary Harney’s famous maxim: that the worst day in government is still much better than the best day in opposition.

And Enda could add another sentence to that: the worst day as taoiseach is still much better than the best day as a minister.