Politics of the absurd, and why Kenny is utterly deluded

ON March 9, 2011, Enda Kenny became our country’s 12th Taoiseach, and one week later was in the Oval Office presenting the traditional bowl of shamrock to Barack Obama. Now, six years later, political life is on hold because the Taoiseach has decided that nothing can be done in the strange world of Irish politics until he returns from the same event with President Donald Trump. And apparently everyone in the Fine Gael parliamentary party agrees with him.

The St Patrick’s Day presentation to the American president has for some unknown reason taken a strange, vicelike grip on our politicians.

While the access to the White House and the opportunities it presents to the Taoiseach are the envy of many other international governments, there is no sane reason why this event should delay the change of leadership in Fine Gael and the resultant shake-up of government that will inevitably follow – and which unquestionably needs to happen.

We are told that the message to our ministers heading abroad for St Patrick’s Day is to go and sell Ireland. For the no less than eight ministers and junior ministers who are travelling to the United States, there is also the question of the undocumented Irish to be raised. All very laudable indeed. But, we should ask, to what end?

Multinational corporations make decisions on locating in and leaving Ireland based on ruthless business models.

The recent Hewlett-Packard decision to close its Leixlip printing plant is evidence of that. Government grants given through the IDA and Enterprise Ireland help, as does a stable political environment, but at the end of the day decisions taken in boardrooms in the United States are taken without recourse to how this will be seen by Irish politicians.

The humiliating journey to Texas taken by the then Fianna Fáil ministers Mary Coughlan and Willie O’Dea in December 2008 in a futile attempt to try to persuade Dell not to close its manufacturing plant in Limerick shows how little politicians can do when the businessmen and women have their minds made up.

But while the Irish political class can perhaps claim some credit for creating the conditions that have led to significant foreign direct investment in this county, it has had no success over many years in persuading the Americans to do anything about immigration reform and the plight of the undocumented Irish.

And that is certainly not going to change now with an administration determined to send the undocumented, whether Irish, Mexican or any other nationality, home.

President Trump might not be able to do it, but he is certainly going to try — and nothing that any Irish minister or even the Taoiseach himself might say on St Patrick’s Day is going to change that.

So in that context, why is the business of Irish Government being delayed until the Taoiseach returns from his St Patrick’s Day trip when he will then, as he has himself promised, effectively and conclusively deal with his future?

No one really knows what that means, and the Taoiseach has made it clear that he wants to remain in his position for two upcoming EU summits: the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome marking the foundation of the EEC and the signing off of the European Commission’s Brexit negotiation mandate.

The Taoiseach also stated at Wednesday’s Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting that he was committed to meeting Brexit and other challenges and that he was dedicated to avoiding any course of action that might damage the party or the country.

It is difficult to see this as anything but a type of delusion on the part of our Taoiseach.

The British have still to trigger Article 50 and the process of their exit from the EU will take years. The opening gambits by both the British and the remaining 27 EU member states are likely to be mere wish lists that will have to be worked through in a tortuous and exhaustive manner.

There is nothing to be gained by the Irish State in having this particular Taoiseach in situ at the beginning of the Brexit process.

For Enda Kenny there is the glory of being there for the photo opportunities once the British eventually invoke Article 50 – and little else. It is difficult to see how this is in the national interest.

But Kenny – and indeed everyone else in Fine Gael – is even more deluded if he thinks that his course of action last Wednesday night was designed to avoid damage to the party.

A recent opinion poll shows Fine Gael having 21% support. It bears repeating that Fine Gael received 36% of the vote in the 2011 general election.

It lost 10% of that vote in the 2016 general election. It has lost another 5% in the year since. How much worse does it have to get before someone in the party says ‘enough’? Well apparently, another month.

It is also worth repeating that Enda Kenny would not even be considering retiring if it wasn’t for the shambolic way that he handled the Maurice McCabe affair two weeks ago.

His purported comments reported by RTÉ’s Martina Fitzgerald that he hoped the secretary of the parliamentary party, Noel Rock, would take accurate minutes of Wednesday’s meeting continued the long pattern of hubris afflicting the Taoiseach.

Accuracy certainly wasn’t to the fore in Mr Kenny’s RTÉ interview two weeks ago, when he made up a conversation that never happened with his minister Katherine Zappone, nor on the following Tuesday in the Dáil when he gave two differing accounts of the same incident in the space of 14 minutes.

But ‘never mind’ seems to be the preferred approach of the Fine Gael parliamentary party as they rushed to tell the media how proud they were of their leader after he neutered all opposition to him at last Wednesday’s meeting.

The bubble approach to politics seemingly favoured by so many in Fine Gael continued when the chief contender Leo Varadkar bizarrely told RTÉ that there was no leadership campaign as there was no vacancy and that he did not envisage any ‘overt or covert campaigning’ between now and St Patrick’s Day.

For a politician who enjoys the reputation of straight talking, this was the politics of the absurd and the taking of the Irish people for fools.

Fine Gael has declined precipitously in the polls and at the polling booth since this time last year.

The Irish people have clearly had enough of Enda Kenny.

His insistence on staying on as leader and the party’s acquiescence in giving him a farewell tour serves no one but himself.

As the man our Taoiseach will be meeting on St Patrick’s Day is fond of saying: Sad.

‘Never mind’ seems to be FG’s preferred approach