Carroll cements Varadkar’s grip
LEO Varadkar has further tightened his grip on Fine Gael in the wake of the departure of the man who knows more of the party’s secrets than anyone else.
Tom Curran, the all-powerful Fine Gael General Secretary, has served John Bruton, Michael Noonan, Enda Kenny, and Leo Varadkar.
On Friday, after 21 years, Mr Curran handed over the reins of power to Leo acolyte John Carroll.
One senior Fine Gael apparatchik warned: ‘This is the point from where Leo takes total control of the party. It is the final stage of the takeover.’
Meanwhile, one of Mr Curran’s biggest ‘difficulties’, John Perry, provided him with a dusty sendoff. An attempt to drop the colourful former Fine Gael minister from the party ticket in 2016 ended in a humiliating court U-turn by the party.
Mr Perry said that he ‘held no animosity for Mr Curran but his successor had a major job to do’.
Mr Perry noted that under Mr
Curran Fine Gael had lost 41 Dáil seats since 2011 ‘and over a hundred councillors’.
It does, he added, ‘say a great deal that we now have 35 seats’.
Mr Perry also warned that Mr Curran’s successor ‘will have to really engage in rural constituencies, with real concerns on the ground, and deal with the plethora of paper branches we have.’
One source noted: ‘The tide was on the ebb under Leo from the start. The clock began to tick after the John Perry debacle. That cost the party half a million and Tom took the hit for that.’
They added: ‘Leo’s own tail feathers were singed by that debacle, so Tom was on borrowed time from then. Tom might have outlasted all of them from Enda to Big Phil, but he won’t outrun Leo.’
Mr Curran was not universally loved within the party with one senior source noting: ‘Tom suffered a little from the unrivalled capacity of politicians to blame others for their flaws.’
He was, they added, ‘the leaders’ designated hatchet-man. He was the fellow sent to move candidates aside or warn sitting TDs to pick a better running mate.’
A second senior figure noted: ‘He was the perfect apparatchik; you could imagine him being the perfect Chief Whip, but he had gone very grey. Something of the last century was attached to him. We need to let in the light, we need perestroika.’
Like any functionary he was closer to some leaders than others, and least close to Mr Varadkar.
By contrast, though they were not personally close, Curran’s power reached its summit under Enda Kenny
One senior figure noted: ‘The style of apparatchiks varies.
Some, like PJ Mara, were stars in their own right.’
That, they said, ‘wasn’t the sort of thing Enda Kenny liked. Tom was more of a behind the curtains sort of fellow. Priestly. Discreet. You didn’t know of his existence until you saw blood on the carpet and asked, “is that mine”?’
The replacement of Tom by John Carroll is expected to lead to serious changes.
One party source warned: ‘Tom is from the age of Formica.
Carroll is Leo’s child. He has been with him since he was a TD as a humble PA, through bossing the Public Relations Institute and then a policy wonk, whatever that is.’
Another source dubiously noted: ‘He is full of all the right phrases, the FG family, all that policy wonk sort of stuff. It is the beginning of the age of Leo. He has his finger in every pie now, selection, discipline, all of that.’
‘Carroll is full of all the right phrases’