Fine Gael. The Enda.

A few weeks ago a hiking trip in the Highlands of Scotland was peppered with breathless phone calls from Dail Eireann.

I still marvel at the technology that can patch me through to Kildare Street in Dublin as I stood on the Ard Nish peninsula where the hard men of the Army Commando had been selected for Norway back in 1941.
I have loved this part of the West Highlands since I first discovered it as an outdoor instructor 25 years ago.
My mobile phone did not respect my need for some solitude.
It rang and rang.
I was regularly updated.
I was informed that an entirely different kind of operation was about to swing into action.
There was a motion of no confidence. He had sacked his front bench. This was war!
My caller told me that he fella from Castlebar had to go.
I fully agreed.
Kenny as leader made a landslide Fine Gael victory in two years time a probable hung Dail with Fianna Fail, perhaps, scraping together a small majority with the usual “independent” suspects.
At the heel of the hunt the only thing that the plotters proved was that they couldn’t plot.
In attempting to removed him for being inept they only demonstrated their own ineptitude.
This is tragic.
This republic is crying out for a change of government. If Fianna Fail now suspect that they can carry on safe in the knowledge that they will again stumble over the finishing line in two years then this polity is very sick indeed.
Enda Kenny is a really really nice guy.
I’ve met him and, as they say here in the Wets “I’d have him for a neighbour.”
When it was known that he had narrowly won the vote of confidence there were shouts around the corridor of “up Mayo!”
I know well enough how few victories Mayo can boast of.
This one doesn’t feel like a victory.
People around Castlebar were delighted for “Inda”.
I can’t share their delight.
Kenny is Fianna Fail’s best hope in 2012.
That isn’t his fault. It just is.
As I write this he is assembling his new front bench team.
My mobile phone wobbles with news that Coveney is out, Hayes is probably out.
I met Simon Coveney in January 2009 at a conference in Cork where I was speaking on the subject of suicide prevention strategies.
We discussed the state of our republic over dinner and he seemed to have all the qualities one would want in alder.
Other Fine Gael people round the table, including an MEP naturally deferred to him.
Now I know why he wont be a leader. He isn’t ruthless. He doesn’t have the street fighter’s instinct for the moment to strike.
He had his chance and I was above Loch Na Uamh and he wavered.
Instead Richard Bruton was the standard bearer. A nervously giggling finance spokesman, who, it was revealed, couldn’t count to 30.
Basil Fawlty could have organised a better coup de tat.
Enda Kenny showed he has survival instincts, but he is Fine Gael’s Neil Kinnock.
After the 2002 debacle he reorganised the party and made them electable. However the man and woman in the street does not see him as a future Taoiseach.
I fully get that.
He isn’t a leader, but he is the leader of the opposition.
The permanent opposition.

Fine Gael with Kenny really is the Enda this place……………