Oh please, ladies, put away your handbags!
WHATEVER traits Enda Kenny looks for in his Chief Whip they can’t bear much relation to those the current incumbent, Regina Doherty, credits him with prizing. The misguided TD from Meath East believes she got the nod for the influential position because of her tremendous people skills, or more precisely because as she put it, ‘I have a way of getting what I want without falling out with people and he probably thought that was a skill needed in this particular job’.
But pride comes before a fall and no sooner had Regina glowed in self-congratulation about her superior negotiating skills than she showed herself in a far less admirable light.
By revealing the bad feeling that exists between her and Helen McEntee, and presenting herself as the innocent party, Regina came across as thinskinned, petty-minded and self-serving, the polar opposite of the diplomatic and emotionally intelligent nature that she so proudly claimed for herself earlier.
Politics is a dirty business, so insecure and riven with turf wars that no-one expects constituency colleagues to be bosom buddies.
In fact the closer two politicians are based geographically and the more interests they share, the more likely it is that their relationship is marked by distrust and distance rather than the flames of intimacy.
INDEED the list of famous political rivalries shows that more often than not, they originate in the same party, over matters of frustrated ambition rather than across party lines and over ideological or policy differences. Bertie Ahern and the Drumcondra mafia did their utmost to sideline Mary Fitzpatrick and right to this day manoeuvre the local cumann to keep her ambitions in check.
The fierce battle between Avril Doyle and Mairéad McGuinness in the 2004 European elections was known as the Leinster catfight, leading to headlines such as ‘designer handbags at dawn’.
The intense rivalry between Mary O’Rourke and the late Albert Reynolds gave rise to many colourful episodes in their Longford Westmeath constituency.
In the darkest days of the crash, Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan fell out, only making peace before Lenihan’s death.
The landscape of British politics is similarly littered with the festering corpses of unforgotten feuds.
The treachery of Michael Gove towards his fellow Brexiteer Boris Johnson for the sake of the Tory party leadership. The saga of Geoffrey Howe’s relationship with Margaret Thatcher and the electrifying resignation speech he gave after years of taunting and condescension which sealed her demise.
The point is that in most cases the protagonists behaved professionally. They either waited until their careers were over to air their dirty linen or else never betrayed a word of it, allowing others to do the talking.
On the night that Regina and Helen McEntee were elected in the three-seater of Meath East – a rare triumph for Fine Gael amid the decimation of the last election – they appeared together, flushed with excitement about their narrow victory.
THEY did not appear best mates but there was every reason to expect they could work together amicably on local issues while separately tending to their own political backyards. But thanks to Regina, their mutual antagonism is now in the open. The public has been fed the image of Helen giving Regina the cold shoulder in the corridors of power.
‘I have no idea why,’ observes Regina. Helen has done herself no favours rising to the bait and promising to have the breach investigated by the party internally.
But, to be fair, she did not deliver the outburst that dents so badly their credibility.
In all likelihood, rather than give Regina a slap on the wrist, the party will ignore the silly spat and hope it goes away.
But the ultimate sanction might come on polling day when instead of increasing the Fine Gael vote, the Meath East electorate refuses to endorse two candidates who appear to put their personal grievances above the public interest.