Tag: Leo Varadkar

Because leadership matters… SocDems poll bounce is about more than just a new leader

by dsmooney, posted in Fianna Fáil, Holly Cairns, Micheal Martin, Soc Dems, Taoiseach

This is my first column in several weeks (apologies for that) and what an eventful few weeks they have been. Rather than trying to unpack all those events, I start with the latest opinion poll and work my way backwards from that… returning to a not unfamiliar theme… Fianna Fáil’s relevance problem.  

It is six or seven weeks since I last sat down to wrote one of these analysis pieces. The delay is odd, as there has been no shortage of domestic political events to write about.

From the breakthrough on the Northern Ireland protocol, to the change of leadership in the Social Democrats, and from Bertie Ahern’s return to full Fianna Fáil membership to at least six major opinion polls including one in the North looking at the political attitudes of those who do not identify as either nationalist or unionist.

Where to start? Perhaps it is easiest to start with the latest Ireland Thinks poll from the Sunday Independent and attempt to work back… though knowing that I won’t address much of that backlog in just one article.

So, what do we learn from this latest poll? Continue reading “Because leadership matters… SocDems poll bounce is about more than just a new leader” →

The perils of the mid-term #reshuffle

by dsmooney, posted in Defence, Eamon Ryan, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Green party, Leo Varadkar, Micheal Martin, Paschal Donohoe, Politics, Simon Coveney, Tanaiste, Taoiseach

In this blog I discuss the principal factors a party leader should consider when contemplating a mid-term reshuffle. Though I draw many of these from British political research, I also consider recent Irish expamples and refrain – largely – from engaging in too much speculation about who may be in or out next Saturday… or next week when the junior ministries are announced. 

Will it be “as you were” with some folks just moving steps rather than entering/exiting?

Aware of Paddy Ashdown’s background as both a Royal Marine and a Special Boat Service officer, Charles Kennedy observed wryly to the House of Commons in Oct 1998 that Ashdown was: “the only party leader who’s a trained killer. Although, to be fair, Mrs Thatcher was self-taught.”

Not that the Iron Lady saw it that way. Speaking about her post-election reshuffle options in a BBC interview on the day after her 1983 election win, she resisted Sir Robin Day’s invitation to call herself a good (political) butcher. Instead, she disagreed with Herbert Asquith’s claim that a good Prime Minister must be a good butcher, before adding that they did need to know how to carve the joint. A distinction without a difference?

Continue reading “The perils of the mid-term #reshuffle” →

The Irish Sunday newspaper #frontpages for July 21, 2022

by dsmooney, posted in Politics

There should a mid-point review of the PfG… in fact the review should be annual

by dsmooney, posted in Confidence and Supply, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, GE2020, Green party, Micheal Martin, Politics, Tanaiste, Taoiseach

You do really have to wonder if the Taoiseach and Tánaiste understand politics at all?

Their immediate and absolute refusal to accede to calls for a mid-point review of the Programme for Government, coming from senior representatives in their two parties, is an example of this.

What is so wrong with agreeing to a mid-point review, a political stock-take, of the programme so painstaking negotiated back in June 2020?

Why shouldn’t the moment at which the two leaders switch roles also involve an appraisal of how effective this government has been at implementing the lengthy programme announced just over two years ago?

Continue reading “There should a mid-point review of the PfG… in fact the review should be annual” →

Here’s an appalling vista – a politics dominated by Sinn Féin and Fine Gael

by dsmooney, posted in Fine Gael, Leo Varadkar, Sinn Féin, Taoiseach

In this week’s opinion piece I look at what I term the appalling vista: the prospect of a decade of Irish politics dominated by Fine gael versus Sinn Féin. We had a worrying glimpse of what it may look and sound like when Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, T.D., and Sinn Féin finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty, T.D. clashed during Leaders’ Questions, last week. It was unedifying for all except the most passionate shinner and blueshirt partisans.

An appalling vista. The phrase most infamously comes from Lord Tom Denning’s odious dismissal of the Birmingham Six’s 1980 appeal against their wrongful conviction.

Denning was so firm a fixture of the British establishment that he refused to entertain the possibility that the West Midlands police had lied and framed six innocent Irishmen, declaring that:

…it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous… That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, “It cannot be right that these actions [the appeal] should go any further.

And so, Lord Justice Denning compounded the injustice being suffered by the Birmingham Six and dismissed their appeal.

Continue reading “Here’s an appalling vista – a politics dominated by Sinn Féin and Fine Gael” →

For Both Taoiseach and Tánaiste The Question is: To reshuffle, or not…?

by dsmooney, posted in Government, Helen McEntee, Justice, Leo Varadkar, Micheal Martin, Oireachtas, Tanaiste, Taoiseach

This column first appeared on Broadsheet on January 4th and looks at the contrasting approaches that both Taoiseach and Tánaiste appear (from their public comments, at least) to the possibility of a reshuffle of their ministesr when the government mid-point/turnabout comes next December.

Justice Minister Helen McEntee – Picture: Sam Boal Via Irish Examiner –

Political commentators hailing a minister who was on maternity leave for half of 2022 as their politician of the year tells you a lot about the state of Irish politics.

Not that I particularly object to their choice of Minister Helen McEntee. Her absence from the cabinet table at a challenging time did nothing to diminish her public profile, while the positive media treatment of her return, did much to enhance it.

Minister McEntee is one of the few recognisable names and faces around the Cabinet table. She has become a political figure in her own right, albeit one who is still untested – a point I made here last February.

This is not something you can say about all her colleagues. While some do stand out as individuals with thoughts and ideas of their own, most come across as either politically shapeless or just innocuous. Mercifully the Taoiseach and Tánaiste have not required certain ministers wear nametags at meetings, if What’s My Line ever returns to our TV screens, the panel would have some trouble discerning precisely what the Minister for Children or the Minister for Agriculture do for a living. Continue reading “For Both Taoiseach and Tánaiste The Question is: To reshuffle, or not…?” →

A brief history of the no confidence motion

by dsmooney, posted in data protection, Dáil, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, GE2020, Government, Leo Varadkar, Micheal Martin, Sinn Féin

This week’s Broadsheet column, which first appeared online on Sept 13th 2021, looked at the history of the no-confidence motion and concluded that while Minister Coveney and his Fine Gael colleagues had probably done enough to earn the dubious honour of having a no confidence motion tabled against him, it did not deserve to pass… just yet 

Johnny Carson famously called Oscar night the time when Hollywood stars put aside their petty rivalries and brought out their major rivalries.

So it is with Motions of No Confidence. Oppositions set aside the boring business of holding ministers and governments to account to solely focus on scoring big political points.

Just like the Oscars, motions of confidence are about ritual and theatricality. This applies to both sides – opposition and government.

Opposition politicians who hope one day to become government ministers act outraged and appalled. Governments ministers, who were once opposition hopefuls, accuse their rivals of base cynicism and partisanship.

The script writes itself. Scroll back through no confidence debates of the past fifty years and you see the same formulaic lines pop up each time, just mouthed by different actors, few of Oscar winning standard.

Continue reading “A brief history of the no confidence motion” →

The pubs are re-opening, so normal politics is resuming… and endgame is near

by dsmooney, posted in Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, GE2020, Housing, Leo Varadkar, Micheal Martin, Politics, Simon Coveney, Tanaiste, Taoiseach

This is my first Broadsheet column in about five weeks… and what an eventful five weeks it has been. What makes it even more interesting and potentially significant is that it leads into the final steps in the re-opening of society via the relaxation of the remaining Covid-19 restrictions. This means a return to normal politics via a return to face to face meetings of the various parliamentary parties. This I believe means that the endgame is near for both the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael leaders. 

“I didn’t show up here with a speech, I came here well-resourced with material…”

At the end of July I said that come September I would be back and ready to offer my thoughts on what’s happening on the Irish political scene. 

Well, I am back, but little did I imagine we would see so much political activity in August. Like many I assumed that politicians from all sides who have – to be fair – endured a difficult 16 months, would leap at the chance of a having a calm and uneventful August.

I was wrong. I failed to the factor-in the capacity of Fine Gael’s officer class to completely overestimate their own guile and ability and to fatally underestimate the public’s impatience with the appearance of ministerial entitlement.

Though the Taoiseach and his allies, more of whom are in Fine Gael these days than in Fianna Fáil, may want to portray #Merriongate / #Zapponegate as a silly season story that is not resonating with the public, his TDs, Senators and Councillors know that’s not the case.

Voters may not be familiar the minutiae of who said what, to whom, in what text and over what platform… but who is? The stories and sequences coming from the Tánaiste and the Foreign Affairs minister seem to change every couple of days, including at today’s second attempt by the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs to establish the facts.

Continue reading “The pubs are re-opening, so normal politics is resuming… and endgame is near” →

There’s no big secret to good government communications

by dsmooney, posted in Covid-19, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Government, Leo Varadkar, Micheal Martin, Social Media, Stephen Donnelly, Tanaiste, Taoiseach

This column appears here out of sequence, as it first appeared on Broadsheet.ie on April 19th. In it, I look at this government’s problems with communications, particularly the Fianna Fáil side of it.

According to the veteran American comedian George Burns there is no big secret to comic timing. It’s very simple, he said. You tell the joke, you wait for the laughter and when the laughter stops, you tell the next joke. That’s comic timing.

It’s something similar with government communications: you deliver you message and give the public the time to let it sink in.

What you certainly do not do is to talk across your message or try to chop and change the narrative while folks are still trying to take it in.

There is nothing wrong with a minister having a new idea, indeed it is something to be encouraged. What is important is that it is an informed idea. What you don’t do is to contact a journalist to communicate an idea to the public until it has been fully formed and explored with colleagues and – hopefully – some real live experts.

Continue reading “There’s no big secret to good government communications” →

Varadkar’s future as leader is now no more assured than is Martin’s

by dsmooney, posted in Fine Gael, Leo Varadkar, Micheal Martin, Politics, Tanaiste, Taoiseach

This column first appeared on Broadsheet on March 15th, the day after the Sunday Times [Ireland] broke the story that the preliminary Garda inquiry into the leaking of a confidential contract by Leo Varadkar while Taoiseach had been upgraded to a criminal investigation by Garda Headquarters. Here I set out why Varadkar’s grip on the Fine Gael leadership was already starting to loosen before this story broke and why his political future may be every bit as uncertain as Micheál Martin’s. 

Over last few months I have written a lot… an awful lot… about Fianna Fáil’s existential crisis. These articles have mainly focused on the shortcomings of the leader, and Taoiseach, Micheál Martin.

This is to be expected. Even though I now find myself on the outside looking in, it is still the party I understand best, and care about most, having been a member for over 40 years.

But my instinctive focus on my former party should not detract from the problems facing Fine Gael – or, more specifically, those facing its leader, An Tánaiste, Leo Varadkar.

Before yesterday’s Sunday Times front page story about the Tánaiste being the subject of criminal investigation, Varadkar’s position looked unassailable. But looks can be deceiving.

Continue reading “Varadkar’s future as leader is now no more assured than is Martin’s” →