So much for the luck o’ the Irish. More like the curse o’ the leprechauns, the taoiseach might have glumly rued, as he contemplated his bowl of three-leafed clover in splendid Covid confinement across the road from the White House on St Patrick’s Day. Even Micheál Martin’s bitterest rivals must feel sorry for him, having got so close to and yet so far from the Oval Office in what is likely to have been his one and only chance to present the shamrock to an American president. Will the fates never smile on this man?
The son of a Cork bus driver and a housewife waited most of his adult life to become taoiseach, only to realise his dream in the throes of the pandemic. Like the grim reaper, it has been his role to deliver the chilling news in a world frozen in suspended animation. Every time he appeared on the steps of Government Buildings, he brought doom and gloom with announcements of more Covid restrictions, rapid contagion, and critical pressure on hospitals. There was scarcely a vested interest in the country that did not have it in for his government — publicans, restaurateurs, wedding planners, bishops, nightclub owners, musicians, shopkeepers, teachers, the Liveline whingers, the antimaskers and the antivaxers. Yet his most consistent critics throughout it all have been his own party backbenchers.
“He’ll be gone next spring,” one of them confidently assured me just last week, “and that’s off the record.”
The prediction exuded the blind denial that has become the hallmark of Fianna Fail’s malcontents. Not only have they fastened on to the fallacious theory that changing their leader will be a cure-all for Fianna Fail’s ills, they fail to recognise that Martin is, in fact, their trump card. While he may be an unlucky taoiseach, his party is damn lucky to have him in the right place, at the right time.
Martin is the most popular party leader in the country, which is quite an achievement for the head of a government blighted by a pandemic, homelessness, growing inflation and war in Europe. Newspaper front pages on a single day this month encapsulated the existentialist horrors afflicting the present generations, with reports of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, resurgent Covid infections internationally, and how our planet is heating towards the frontier of extinction.
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Danger makes the safe option look attractive. The present circumstances, comprising the real-life version of an amalgamation of Hollywood disaster movies, call for steady-as-she-goes leadership. The clichéd safe pair of hands. Boring, even. In better times, Martin’s meandering oratory and penitential mannerisms could be irksome and alienating but, in the current atmosphere of fear and loathing, they have a stabilising ring of sincerity. He has none of the hooded-eyed charisma of Charlie Haughey or the rapscallion cunning of Bertie Ahern, which lured voters to Fianna Fail in the past but which the party subsequently disavowed with the alacrity of the newly converted.
This month’s Behaviour & Attitudes poll for The Sunday Times shows 49 per cent approval for the taoiseach, two points ahead of Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of the opposition, and seven points ahead of Leo Varadkar, Fine Gael’s taoiseach-in-waiting. Having lost two ministers for agriculture in the first eight weeks of his government, followed out of the door by Ireland’s EU commissioner, and with Varadkar pre-empting government announcements to gain advantage for Fine Gael in the early months of the history-making coalition, Martin could have done with the support of his own party. Instead, what he got were weekly leaks about criticism being levelled at him during parliamentary party meetings by a predictable coterie of naysayers. When Marc MacSharry, one of the most prominent renegades, resigned the party whip in September, his departure made about as much an impression on the public mind as a footprint in the sand.
Martin’s internal detractors do have cause to complain. They feel excluded from decision-making by what MacSharry called a “totalitarian” leadership. Many of them are also discomfited by Martin’s appeasing approach to Irish reunification. His low-key, shared-island disposition makes Fine Gael look militantly green by comparison. After Varadkar reassumes the taoiseach’s job on December 15, he is expected to raise the unity tempo in response to Sinn Fein’s apparent solo run on the issue.
Those Fianna Fail TDs and senators nibbling at the taoiseach’s bum — to borrow the late PJ Mara’s memorable phrase — complain that their leader’s satisfaction ratings in opinion polls fail to translate into support for the party. True, but should this not trouble their own consciences at least as much as his?
When Martin became the leader of Fianna Fail in January 2011, after the bailout troika took control, commentators warned he would be the party’s last leader, as it was heading for oblivion. Having faced near wipeout in the following month’s general election, he toured the country in opposition, rebuilding the party and, in 2016, entered into a mould-breaking confidence and supply arrangement with the Fine Gael-led government. While it is arguable that he should not have extended the agreement after it expired, the time the original arrangement bought for Fianna Fail facilitated its return from the dead.
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While some in his party make plans to unseat him, a non-Fianna Fail cabinet member told me recently: “Micheál’s doing well. He seems to have found his confidence.”
Perhaps it’s because he knows he has little left to lose with just nine months remaining as taoiseach, but Martin’s enemies within should remember that those who predicted he was finished turned out to be wrong again and again. When he moves into the tanaiste’s office Martin will have his choice of cabinet portfolios, ensuring his continuing high profile as the next election approaches, one he has said he will contest as Fianna Fail’s leader. Conversely, Jim O’Callaghan, his putative main challenger for the leadership, forfeited that platform when he refused Martin’s offer of a junior ministry in 2020.
O’Callaghan, a Dublin Bay South TD, is seen to have an edge over Michael McGrath, the public expenditure minister who shares the Cork South-Central constituency with Martin. The renegades’ common wisdom is that Fianna Fail needs a leader based in the capital. From Thursday when — as is expected — Ivana Bacik is declared leader of the Labour Party, every Dail party will have a Dublin-based leader. That there is hunger in Fianna Fail to follow the pack probably tells us more about why the party is floundering than anything to do with its leader.
Martin may go down in history as one of the unluckiest taoisigh ever, but the epitaph on his political tombstone should be a reminder that reports of his demise were frequently exaggerated.
