Which Enda are you?
Read more about: Fine Gael 
Imagine your Enda Kenny. Fianna Fail are now down two TD’s so on 83 seats. Opposition are now on 81 seats. Suddenly the Dail dynamic is a bit different. 1 TD changes alot. John O Donoghue’s casting vote is required. 2 TD’s change and the government is down. Devins and Scanlon can’t be the last ones to be considering leaving the whip over a local issue. With the Dail in recess Enda comes out and says “Day one of Dail being back we are calling a motion of no confidence. ” Suddenly back in their constituencies ever Fianna Failer is feeling the pressure for the next month or so. People saying “you can do it, you can rid us of FF, you’ll be forgiven. ” .
Speculation in the silly season comes rife. You dominate the airwaves. You call for an election in Donegal. Asking why is it delayed. The government is “delaying this to save themselves”, you cry. You create a prefect media storm, nothing better then speculation to get people talking. The government looks weak. Looking over their shoulders wondering who will be the next Judas. They look paranoid, weak, leaderless. You look like the man who will be Taoiseach. Come the opening of the Dail scared for their livelihood 2 TD’s turn or abstain. You have just pulled off the greatest political maneuver in Irish political history.
Or else you will have called a No confidence motion back in June that was doomed to failure so much so that no Fianna Failer would cross the floor as they knew it would have little impact and likely get them in trouble. You get a day or two of media you lose the vote 85 to 79. And you prevent yourself calling a no confidence motion for 6 months and capitalise on better numbers.
“Imagine you’re Enda Kenny. Fianna Fail are now down two TDs, so on 83 seats. The opposition is now on 81 seats. Suddenly, the Dail dynamic is a bit different. One TD changes a lot.”
Make a bit of an effort, yeah?
The column assumes that Fine Gael are anxious to wrest power from the soldiers of destiny immediately. Circumstances are certain to get worse before they get better.
Surely the shrewd move is to let the Fianna Fail make difficult decisions, ostracise themselves further from certain sectors of society. A hard Winter of discontent could put FF out of office for a decade, and possibly give FG enough of a mandate to govern without Labour support.
An election this Autumn could still be turned in the government’s favour, if there are unreconcilable differences between FG and Labour’s economic policies.
Why push FF from the window, when they can be made throw themselves out?
Now lads lets not get ahead of ourselves.
possibly give FG enough of a mandate to govern without Labour support.
Two words for you: moriarty tribunal.
I agree that the motion of no confidence was a badly time idea – one which didnt make much sense then and makes less now. However the idea that anyone wants power in advance of this december’s budget is not mad – the one who makes the budget sets the tone for the next few years – do FG want to come in and play to FF’s tune for two years? Or prefer to get on with their own strategy.
The truth is no one has a clue. Its seat of the pants stuff and no side is capable of making the electorate want to elect them to office tomorrow. So we muddle throug and wait for Cowen to fudge through a solution.
Imagine your Richard Bruton. Had you pushed Enda 3 years ago you would be Taoiseach now but you would be up to your neck in an economic Crisis so dodged a bullet there.
So you move now and risk being the Taoiseach who has to oversee the most unpopular budget in the history of the state or do you wait until the new year and risk Enda completing his purge of senior members from the front bench by replacing you with George Lee.
When has a Fianna Fáil TD ever voted against a Fianna Fáil government and caused it to fall? All this nonsense about the government losing votes – whether they call themselves independent or whatever Harney, Grealish, Healy-Rae, McDaid, Scanlon, Devin, Behan and O’Donoghue will always always absolutely always coast their vote for Fianna Fáil if there is even the remotest chance that them voting no would cause an election.
These ‘resigners’ can no more not vote FF than O’Donoghue can ever be impartial.
There was never going to be a push from Fine Gael to cause an election this side of Christmas because it is not in Fine Gael’s interest – so of course it used the no confidence after the June vote.
Fine Gael needs to make sure that the penny drops with public that this mess is 100% the fault of Fianna Fáil – given 25% of the voting public still voted FF in June there are still those who doubt it.
FG has learnt from the past where it ends up in government after FF mess up, does what needs to be done to put things right and gets zero thanks for it.
Next March-ish is plenty of time for an election.
However, if Cowen loses Lisbon then all bets are off. But assuming he gets it passed then let him put through the budget from hell and let all these independents stick their colour to the mast.
FG are no better than FF, but they should leave FF in there to deal with the sh*t they have created. I would hate to see FG going in now to deal with one of the worst economic crisis in decades and worse still doing a good job and then having FF come back in to take the credit. I will vote FF just to keep those SOB’s in power so they can squirm for the next 5 yrs as the house of cards come tumbling down.