The Phoenix Vol.38 No.13

10 THE PHOENIX JULY 3, 2020
VARADKAR’S SENATE
CHOICES
WHAT IS it about former taoiseach
Leo Varadkar’s general election
running mates in Dublin West that
sees them a) bombing in
elections and b) entering the
subsequent Seanad? His four
latest Fine Gael choices for
the taoiseach’s 11 Seanad
nominees include three that
are sensible from a strategic
viewpoint in a future general
election, but the selection
of a fourth – failed general
election candidate, Cllr Emer
Currie – looks more like a
gesture of gratitude than a
tactic for the future.
Former minister Regina
Doherty has been nominated in a logical
move as she would be a serious Dáil
candidate in more than one possible
constituency next time out. Councillors
Mary Seery-Kearney and Aisling Dolan
are both well placed to bid for Dáil seats
in Dublin South-Central and Roscommon-
Galway respectively, constituencies where
the party now has no seats. But given the
dismal history of Vlad’s electoral strategy in
Dublin West, use of the Seanad to promote
Currie seems like a forlorn tactic.
In the 2007 general election, Varadkar
was allowed to run unaccompanied and
took a seat. However, in 2011 he ran
with Cllr Kieran Dennison, who polled a
respectable 3,190 first preferences with
Varadkar taking the sole FG seat. In the two
subsequent Dublin West by-elections (2011
and 2014), Vlad managed to unearth two
utterly hopeless candidates, Eithne Loftus
and athlete Eamonn Coughlan. These polled
14% and 12% respectively, and it looked
as though the coming man in FG nationally
was not exactly a successful party strategist
locally (whatever about his individual
record).
Leo Varadkar
When Dennison, by then a stronger
candidate, went for the two-candidate slate
in 2016, Vlad opposed his nomination,
instead proposing Senator Catherine Noone
– a gender-quota candidate, he explained
to party members. Noone went on to poll
a derisory 1,074 first-preference votes
(Vlad took 8, 247), but Catherine later
strolled back into the Seanad with the party
leadership’s imprimatur and gratitude for her
token female candidacy in Dublin West.
Come the selection convention for
the 2020 candidates in the constituency,
Dennison came again, only to be told that
HQ – independently of the party leader and
then taoiseach, of course – had decided to
run a one man, one woman slate. And so Cllr
Emer Currie – daddy Austin Currie was once
a SDLP Assembly member, a former FG
junior minister and presidential candidate for
Alan Dukes – was selected to run
with Vlad.
Emer came seventh in the
four-seat constituency with 1,870
first preferences, but she has now
been nominated for the Seanad
by Vlad and, unlike Noone, will
not have to even contest a seat
in the upper house. There are
few who believe FG will take
a second seat in Dublin West
any time soon given the relative
strengths of Sinn Féin, Fianna
Fáil, the Green Party and the
left generally. But as Goldhawk
remarked (see The Phoenix 13/7/18), there
were indications back then that Emer’s
consolation prize for a no-hope, token
female campaign would be a Seanad seat.
Vlad is now the only taoiseach that
Goldhawk can recall who has failed to
bring in a running mate with him at a
general election. And leaders of the main
opposition party nearly always managed to
carry their running mate over the line with
them. Failure by Vlad to do so would be
bad enough were it down to poor campaign
strategy or other factors. But what if it is
deliberate?
MAYO FINE Gael voted against the
government formation deal and so did
Kerry Blueshirts, but what has provoked
widespread anger in the party is not just the
actual deal (strenuously opposed by Mayo’s
outgoing minister, Michael Ring), but also
the voting process.
That the lowly Blueshirt foot soldiers,
who tread the byways and boreens at
election time and provide funds for the
party, should have just 25% of the vote
on the ‘historic, grand coalition’ proposal
was galling to many. (The parliamentary
party has 50%, councillors 15% and the
executive council 10%.) But even this faint
brush with democracy was exercised not by
the members but by constituency delegates
made u of local arty officers and
chairpersons of constituency districts.
he bafement
of members who
rang party HQ to
inquire how they
could vote quickly
changed to anger
when informed that,
well, they did not
actually have a vote.
The leadership
contest rules
are slightly
different, with
members having
Michael RIng
25%, councillors
10% and the
parliamentary party 65%. Thus, Leo
Varadkar’s parliamentary putsch easily
beat the members’ vote, which went 65%
to 35% in favour of Simon Coveney – a
remarkable statistical outcome.
Now, members in Mayo and in several
constituencies in Munster and elsewhere
are preparing motions to the next party
ard fheis that would revise those rules in
FG’s constitution that govern elections.
They can expect vigorous opposition from
TDs and senators, who currently hold the
real power in vital policy-making areas as
well as leadership contests. Councillors,
too, are unlikely to relinquish easily their
significant share of the ote in such olls.
Tánaiste and losing leadership contestant
in 2017 Simon ‘Covetous’ Coveney is
also expected to take a keen interest
in any proposal to change the party’s
voting procedures; in the interest of party
democracy and to set good example to the
general populace, of course.
WHAT WILL
O’CALLAGHAN DO?
THE EXCLUSION of Jim O’Callaghan
from cabinet was hardly unexpected – at
least not to Phoenix readers (see edition
22/5/20) – and, by the same token,
neither was the appointment of another
barrister, Paul Gallagher SC, as attorney
general. But O’Callaghan’s absence
from the top table is an indication that
Micheál Martin is prepared to risk
O’Callaghan peeing into the tent rather
than out of it.
Martin might have been prepared to be
more emollient, philosophic even, if he
planned to simply leave the stage when his
term as taoiseach ends in December 2022.
However, despite a disastrous election
campaign and result, and despite also a
serious mishandling of negotiations (by
ruling out Sinn Féin he disarmed himself
against Fine Gael), Martin now finds himself
in total control of the party and taoiseach
for the next two-and-a-half years. He will
by then be a fit, young (62) politician when
his term ends and it would be a foolish TD
that bet against him wanting to stay on and
fight another election. But he knows that,
as the clock ticks down, there are various