Things that strike me

Enda Kenny survived his confidence motion today. There are rumours that there were 6 votes in it. There were 70 people voting.

While you can’t argue with him winning – this is the choice of the Fine Gael Parliamentary party’s choice – there is the more than inconvenient issue that a lot of people who vote in elections do not apprecate the finer points of Enda Kenny, leader of Fine Gael. They do not believe he is competent to be Taoiseach. At all. And so, by and large, he gets low personal approval ratings, and in the 2007 which the media were practically handing to him on a plate, he lost out to Fianna Fail and whoever they could bribe into government with them.

There’s this huge desire for change in Ireland. Massive. We’ve had enough of Fianna Fail. We really think that they need a period in opposition. A lot of people even think they should all be thrown in jail which might even be a bit extreme. But when it comes down to it, people look at Fianna Fail, and then they look at Fine Gael under Enda Kenny, and they have Doubts with a capital D.

And Fine Gael are unwilling to recognise this. Enda Kenny, he may be nice, he may be a good organiser, but you know, so are the nuns individually but you wouldn’t necessarily vote too many of them in to run the country. They might, however, make a better fist of it than Enda Kenny does running Fine Gael.

The objective of a political leader should be to make his/her party as palatable to the greatest number of people as possible. Enda Kenny is failing to do this. When plaudits are being lined up for him, it’s mentioned he undid the damage of the previous leadership. Got back 20 of the 21 seats they had lost. That’s good, but it’s not good enough. Meanwhile, Fianna Fail are winning adequate numbers of seats to remain in some semblance of power. This despite Bertie Ahern. This despite what seems like daily scandals.

After 2007, there should have been one clear indication to the powers that be in Fine Gael. Enda Kenny is not enough of an electoral asset to win elections. And the party is not adequately bright enough to understand this.

You can see this in the response of some of their members on politics.ie. Enda Kenny winning this leadership battle will do his ratings good. People will see that he is tough. Can get the numbers when it counts.

They don’t appear to understand that what people see is not Enda Kenny being good. It is Fine Gael being collectively stupid.

If I were in Fine Gael – and I am not – I would take a few of the senior people aside and explain some quiet truths. Enda Kenny is an electoral liability as leader. He may well be a very good representative for the people of Mayo, but the point remains, it’s not enough. The party lacks vision. They are reactionary. Their young and upcoming stars are boring. Simon Coveney. They lack credibility and ideas. The people are not interested. Fine Gael, it appears, are not attached enough to the reality of people’s lives.

There has been an attempt to dress up the leadership issues in Fine Gael as a rural/urban divide. The problem is it is not. The point which Fine Gael will have to address is the wider electorate do not want Enda Kenny. Not because he is from the west, but because he just doesn’t inspire confidence. Being from Mayo is not a cause of that, no matter how much you’d like to dress it up.

Fine Gael are not selling a vision of Ireland that anyone wants to buy. They’re not even selling themselves as a party beyond “We’re not Fianna Fail”. What sort of an offering is that?

The tragedy for Fine Gael, however, is not so much that Richard Bruton will not be their next leader barring unusual events. It is that even if he was, it probably wouldn’t change too much.

If there are realists in Fine Gael – and there has to be – the painful truth is the party needs major re-invention and the current senior names in it are not capable of delivering.

In the meantime. Fianna Fail, despite spectacular problems, are stumbling along in far better health than they should be given that Brian Cowen is their leader and Taoiseach and presiding over political and budgetary poor management that is historic in its extent.