SMOKES & DAGGERS
A mischievous mix of (mostly) news
SMOKES spotted a gem in the Irish Times’s treasure trove of Seán Lemass Tapes yesterday. Recorded in 1967 by one of his political admirers, businessman Dermot Ryan, the late taoiseach, pictured, delivers a story on the perils of campaigning. ‘There used to be a story told about a politician in the early days trying to run a communist scare at the elections, going down to a part of Co. Roscommon and saying what would happen if the communists came over, taking your land from you but leaving you managing it and paying you a weekly salary each week to manage it. The idea of being paid a salary to manage the land was so popular among the small farmers in the area that they were out looking for these communists who were going to offer them a weekly salary for the managing of their lands.’
FINE Gael’s liberal wing isn’t as powerful as you might think. Kate O’Connell, Marcella Corcoran-Kennedy and Frances Fitzgerald unveiled plans at an FG parliamentary party meeting to unleash the Citizens’ Assembly’s ideas on tackling climate change. Rural TD Pat Deering responded by tearing into the assembly’s climate-change findings with such venom that he silenced the meeting. Abortion is all well and good, but Leo and Fine Gael aren’t going to risk the ire of farmers…
ONE of the more interesting features of the Fine Gael Repeal campaign was the carefully timed declarations of support by cunning rural TDs who sensed the mood just in time. We thought Agriculture Minister Michael Creed, who left it until the final week to declare, would be the clear winner. He was surpassed by junior minister Seán Kyne, who declared on the day. Even he was surpassed by Pat Breen, another junior minister, who wins the Repeal slow bicycle race with a declaration after the vote.
THOSE very late converts to the cause of repeal remind Smokes of a wonderful line attributed to French revolutionary politician Alexandre Ledru-Rollin in 1848: ‘There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.’
THE news that Lucinda Creighton, pictured, has bought a stately pile somewhere in Kildare has led to speculation in her former party that she is being positioned for a tilt at one of the extra MEP seats that will become available after Brexit. One Fine Gael source said of Leo Varadkar’s old friend: ‘Moving to the country from Sandyford is a price worth paying for returning to the fold as an MEP and maybe a replacement for Big Phil [Hogan].’