Rock‘n’roll Leo went country and left Simon with an achy breaky heart
JUST before Enda Kenny stepped down, his old pal Michael Lowry told me that Leo Varadkar would win the succession contest. Lowry said the ‘higher calibre’ of Leo’s backroom team would decide it.
When there’s a big political story, I often seek Lowry’s counsel. Few others bother the old warhorse nowadays, but he is often right.
Varadkar assembled the tougher and more able backroom team. A charismatic frontman, he put together a smashing rock‘n’roll band to back him. He had nervous ministers like Paschal Donohoe and Heather Humphreys lined up with promises of Cabinet retention. But it was his willingness to go country that made the win a rout. He had done the rubber-chicken circuit, offered rural backbenchers medical facilities, roads and positions on election tickets.
The multi-talented support team was the foundation. Varadkar is seen as a flamboyant and metropolitan candidate, yet rural backbench TDs were central to his campaign. Wexford TD Michael D’Arcy and Carlow-Kilkenny TD John Paul Phelan have been quietly convincing colleagues for years.
Both suffered under Taoiseach Enda Kenny – they were seen as arch opponents of the leader. They toiled in constituencies under Kenny loyalists. While Phil Hogan rose to European Commissioner by guarding Kenny’s flank, he ensured that Phelan was isolated. And as the career of Paul Kehoe rose and he became Government Chief Whip, D’Arcy, who lost his seat in 2011, laboured in the Seanad.
PHELAN qualified as a barrister during the last Dáil and contemplated leaving politics. He is a close friend of Varadkar since their Young Fine Gael days. D’Arcy also works a dairy farm near Gorey.
Their bitter opposition to Kenny gave them energy as they cajoled TDs. And Varadkar had long been a rallying point for anti-Kenny sentiment. Junior Minister Eoghan Murphy was said by many of Leo’s people yesterday to have been the ‘architect of strategy’, even as his location in Dublin Bay South as a young, handsome – if slightly Ross O’Carroll Kellyesque – character made him a focus for the media.
One backbench agitator told me they avoided large meetings, as these lead to leaks. They worked in cells, with no one having all the numbers or detail. In the end, even the persecutors of D’Arcy and Phelan became Varadkar supporters. Coveney’s dreams of the Kenny old guard flocking to him ended.
Kehoe, who went from chief whip to junior minister, was one of the Kenny Praetorian Guard. When he sided with Varadkar it was significant. When many thought Varadkar was on holiday over Easter, he was in Brussels, meeting the movers and shakers. It was another former Kenny man, Hogan, the ultimate political pragmatist, who opened doors. Phil, the eternal sergeant major, will always gravitate towards a potential boss. And Kehoe was vital in bringing Phil along. Maybe Leo did not get on with Kenny but he learned from him. Kenny won the heave in 2010 by winning the Seanad. A senator’s vote is as valuable as any high-flying minister’s. In the Seanad, ex- Cathaoirleach and Kenny Mayo loyalist Paddy Burke worked hard for Leo for a year. There has been talk of Enda Kenny’s daughter Aoibhinn inheriting daddy’s seat. But the hopes of retaining the Kenny seat, in the family since 1954, are now slim. Two Mayo senators, Burke and Michelle Mulherin, were surprise early Varadkarites.
Varadkar’s special adviser Brian Murphy is seen as a wise counsellor. Murphy, who lives in upmarket Malahide, Co. Dublin, is a former commercial director at the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association. His press officer Nick Miller has a background in the British press and is perhaps the most effective and well-liked media manipulator on Kildare Street.
COVENEY’S team, meanwhile, was led by two younger TDs. Health Minister Simon Harris, an avowed enemy of Varadkar, knew he’d have no reception in Leo’s tent, so backed Coveney. He is only 30 and has more influence in the media than in the parliamentary party.
Junior Minister Damien English is the nominal campaign manager. He has a cheerful-chappie demeanour but is too honest for a key role. TDs Maria Bailey and Kate O’Connell lack Dáil experience and lack cunning.
The involvement of Simon Coveney’s brother Patrick and former Kenny adviser Ciarán Conlon made little sense in a purely internecine party affair. Neither has any influence with politicians or members.
Yet by going country, Varadkar exploded preconceptions. He started going to Croker and brought Westmeath TD Peter Burke out for pizza after the Dubs had hammered his team. He spoke at constituency meetings all over Ireland.
Some say Varadkar seemed to do little at the departments of Transport, Health and Social Protection.
But it was Sligo-Leitrim TD Tony McLoughlin who, on Friday, revealed what Varadkar had really been up to at those departments.
Leo gave him a road. He listened to Tony’s urgings on the Wild Atlantic Way tourist route. And Leo gave him doctors. He kept a large, decentralised department suboffice in Sligo.
Varadkar will almost certainly win his party popularity contest. But that means little in the Taoiseach’s office. He will be tested on the world stage on Brexit.
He has performed well at Leaders’ Questions. But one thing we have seen during those clashes is his flashes of temper and tendency to get involved in slanging. It is a weak spot. He will be baited at that Dáil setpiece twice a week now.
And in the glare of the top job, everything becomes amplified.
With Brexit and dark economic clouds, we probably need a Coveney-like bureaucrat. Or perhaps even a consensus builder of the Enda Kenny of 2011 vintage.
But where’s the fun in that?