Like so many in Fine Gael, ‘too nice’ Coveney’s legacy is failure
SIMON Coveney has always been on the right side of decent, a calm, thoughtful and inoffensive man. But after more than 25 years in frontline politics it’s difficult to say if anybody outside of his own family and friends actually ever glimpsed the real Simon. The sword at this soul has been kept well sheathed down all those years.
This week almost everything that is public about Simon Coveney became ‘former’, (Tánaiste, Minister for Enterprise, Foreign Affairs, Defence and MEP), as the man born into a wealthy and privileged Cork family accepted his ultimate defeat, raised the white flag and surrendered. His resignation from government, after an uninterrupted 13 years as a minister and before Simon Harris had the pleasure of showing him the door, has forever branded him the Fine Gael leader that never was.
Coveney has been around so long that you’d be inclined to forget he’s just 51-years-old, having been elected in 1998 to his father Hugh Coveney’s seat in Cork following his premature death at only 62. Simon had everything going for him – age, smarts, political and social pedigree, charm and physical stature.
BUT one thing Simon Coveney lacked was the Charlie Haughey factor – that magic mix which includes an ability to drop the blade and play dirty when required, a clear focus on dominance and political pheromones that encourages populism amongst those unfamiliar with the benefits of the silver spoon. Simon Coveney played rugby in his youth, a game that is noted for manners and obedience to rules. As such it appears clear that he has no head for rough and tumble, for creating his own rules.
So politically Simon Coveney was a blend of fair-mindedness and a steady-as-she-goes unwillingness to risk alienating anybody.
This had its advantages as Minister
for Foreign Affairs during the height of the Brexit crisis but his political image has always suffered from a lack of clear definition, apart from being nice.
So what does Simon Coveney stand for? ****ed if I know.
Coveney’s great political failure has been his inability to demonstrate that centre politics can work to sort out the most pressing social issues of our time, healthcare and particularly housing. We’re all concerned about our inadequate health service with which we occasionally interact, but that concern becomes visceral and classically personal when it comes to housing, because housing is a lifelong, intergenerational matter. The fundamental fact of life that we, our kids and grandkids all need a roof over our heads was either lost on Simon Coveney or politically neglected by him out of some kind of defeatism that it was all too much of an impossibility. He took on the housing responsibility in 2016 and distinguished himself only by a demonstrable lack of achievement.
At that time Coveney predicted 25,000 houses per year by 2019, including 5,000 for social housing and since then the crisis has exploded, with only about 31,000 completions last year into a market that now needs about 60,000 just to keep pace. The Government’s housing policy has been such a disaster that this week young, disillusioned teachers were telling us how they’re being forced out of the profession because of daily commutes, sometimes for up to three hours, due of their inability to fund exorbitant rents where they work, never mind buying a home.
Only last week Simon Coveney’s own Government informed us that about 14,000 people, including almost 4,200 children, were in emergency homeless accommodation – an illustration of the failure of centre politics, after all those promises by all those ministers including Simon Coveney.
And then the manner of his going. The sheepish, politically self-sacrificing obsequiousness of a man obviously unwilling to engage in a pull ‘em down and kick the sh** out of them brawl, even when his own political legacy is at stake. Why should we ever have harboured any hope that Simon Coveney would burst his political guts on solving our most pressing problems when he hasn’t the political courage to stand up and fight for himself, and if it comes to it, go down in flames but with dignity?
LIKE Leo Varadkar, Coveney avoided what he obviously considered would be humiliation by simply walking away, failing to recognise that throwing in the towel was an even greater political shame. And, in some kind of weird guessing game, he then refused to say if he’d be contesting the next election. Gimme a break.
Don’t cry for him, Simon Coveney. Politically he did us all some service but ultimately his contribution amounted to one massive failure at the centre of politics where he joins so many of his peers. Simon Coveney and his Fine Gael colleagues emerged collectively as our last great hope when the country was pushed to its knees by Fianna Fáil mismanagement and hubris in the noughties. But they failed to turn that crisis into a glorious opportunity to build, renew and reform. It’ll take time to process and understand the ‘why’, but perhaps the answer hides in plain sight.
As part of the Fine Gaelled governments in office since 2011 Coveney continued, uninterrupted his life of privilege. We’re entitled to wonder if, like others in power with him, he ever really ‘felt’ the pain of those whose problems he was supposed to solve?