FG is no family business. It is a cold, hard firm for personal advancement

THE Fianna Fáil heave is off. The Labour heave, the irrelevant one, is completed. A move against Mary Lou McDonald is about as likely as one would have been against Josef Stalin, who once said: ‘The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.’ You can’t have a parliamentary party revolt if they don’t have a say in the first place.

That leaves Fine Gael, the most skittish of parties historically. Leo Varadkar, once himself a serial plotter against his leader, will have felt the ever-so-slight adjustment in the wind at his parliamentary party meeting during the week.

He is already desperately tacking his sails, but in Fine Gael a hurricane can rise from a seemingly bright blue sky, casting the leader to the deep, to join Enda Kenny, John Bruton, Alan Dukes et al. And the skies are far from bright blue.

The Fianna Fáil parliamentary party are bereft, since this newspaper revealed last week that Barry Cowen has called off the heave against Taoiseach Micheál Martin. Mr Martin said he was ‘happy’ to hear this during the week. Jim O’Callaghan, who has not spoken publicly about the matter since last week’s Irish Mail on Sunday was published, we may presume was less happy. For Mr Cowen also said that the putative leadership challenger had ‘lost ground’ in his bid to succeed.

BUT now that it’s all over, we must ask ourselves whether the revolt ever really existed. I’ve covered many Fianna Fáil heaves in my career and following this latest one I was reminded of the Mark Twain line, ‘I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened’. Dissent, public unhappiness, compilation of lists, meetings in smoky rooms and ‘febrile parliamentary party meetings’ are part of life in Fianna Fáil. But like many a ‘fight’ outside a chipper on a Saturday night there are threatening gestures, roaring and shouting – dropped snack boxes even – but rarely a punch landed.

Yes, under the robber-baron Charles Haughey, there were four Fianna Fáil heaves, but he was a corrupt aberration that we are unlikely to see again in our modern democracy.

Despite a year and a half of unremitting controversy there was never an actual heave against Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Indeed, only four months before he eventually stood down virtually the entire Fianna Fáil cabinet came out in the media to defend their leader.

In the middle of the controversy over his finances, Mr Ahern delivered a stunning general election victory in 2007, which will go down as one of the great political feats. Victory buys time and his party stayed loyal until the end, when Mr Ahern did that rare thing in politics and left quietly.

Even Bertie, prior to the autumn 2006 revelations about donations, faced dissent in Fianna Fáil. Kilkenny TD John McGuinness was a noted public critic of the leadership (and still is). Yet with huge seats hauls (77 seats in 2007; 81 in 2002 and 77 in 1997) Mr Ahern had the most important political capital of all.

As a political correspondent during times of turmoil, one can assume a role something like a messenger behind lines in a great war. You don’t shoot anybody, or even carry a gun, but spend your time scuttling around delivering messages, some private some in print, that may hurry soldiers to their doom or pull them back fatefully before they go over the top.

Brian Cowen may have been ousted by what now could appear to be a ruthless, decisive removal of a struggling leader.

In reality, the palace was in flames, the roof was crashing down and the peasants were at the gates with their pitchforks before there was any action. Those of us who witnessed it will never forget it. In early 2011 almost the entire Fianna Fáil parliamentary party (it was big then) stood on the balcony outside the Dáil Chamber arguing, gesticulating and variously asking the same question: ‘what the f*** is going on?’

Brian Cowen had conducted a late-night reshuffle, yet great ministerial offices remained vacant due to general chaos. It was the only occasion in my time as a journalist that I felt that the structures of the State might be coming apart. Let us not forget, at the time, the IMF controlled our Exchequer, our banks and, pretty much, our Government.

YET, behind the lines, I saw that Fianna Fáil had been talking, plotting and threatening Cowen’s leadership since September 29, 2008, when he had bailed out the banks. As a respected political force in Fianna Fáil he was finished from the moment the elderly revolted that autumn over cuts to their medical cards. Reverence for the mystical position of the Fianna Fáil leader, indecisiveness, an ill potential successor and misguided personal empathy conspired to leave him in a position he was drowning in.

Fianna Fáil TDs and senators have often been friends since their teens – the whole thing is a family business. The parliamentary party and the membership fight – often viciously – but like any family, at the end there is an innate loyalty. They socialise with each other and appear to enjoy it.

Fine Gael are accused of being a clone of Fianna Fáil, but culturally the parties are fundamentally different. I have always been struck by the deep, genuine rancour that so often runs through conversations I have with Fine Gael people about one and another. Fine Gael is not a family business, it’s a cold, hard enterprise for personal advancement. In the summer of 2010 Fine Gael was in a position they had not been in for decades, the cusp of power. Then, after a bad series of polls, they moved on Enda Kenny.

Twelve years ago Leo Varadkar, just 31 years old, was in the vanguard of the audacious move on Kenny. It was all done with a cheery insouciance on the rebels’ side. And they lost. But if anyone thinks that Enda Kenny went quietly, seven years later, they are misguided. A political bruiser hardly worthy of deep sympathy, nevertheless for the entirety of his term as Taoiseach he faced plotting and disloyalty from the supporters of Simon Coveney and Leo Varadkar. And he was brutally pushed out.

As assassin-turned-target Mr Varadkar will read the signs. A senior Fine Gael figure told me back in November that if the party hit 19% in the polls Mr Varadkar was in danger. Fine Gael has hit 19%. This column always said that it would be a dash to the position of Taoiseach for Mr Varadkar.

In his first general election as leader, 2020, Fine Gael suffered its worst result since 1948. His two closest colleagues, the men who organised his campaign to undermine and oust Mr Kenny, Eoin Murphy and Michael D’Arcy, are gone from politics.

Though he has been badly treated by the system, no matter what happens with the Garda investigation into an alleged leak it is now a big problem due to matters of time. The Garda has not delivered a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions yet who, in turn, will require time to consider the file.

Mr Varadkar has been weakened by events. His attendance at a gathering in the Merrion Hotel and a music festival in Britain at times of Covid restrictions went down badly with the public and his parliamentary party.

Phil Hogan still has a lot of friends in the parliamentary party and he created a dangerous enemy over Golfgate. Simon Coveney, albeit damaged himself by Champagnegate, will still have leadership ambitions. But, unlike Fianna Fáil, there are two young, popular readymade leadership candidates in Helen McEntee and Simon Harris waiting to take over.

All along precedent has shown that a heave in Fianna Fáil was a miasma. Precedent will show Mr Varadkar that it only takes one bad poll and he is out the door.