Varadkar triggers new dawn – for party and Irish politics

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

A week may be a long time in politics – but the Fine Gael succession race proved it still wasn’t enough for Simon Coveney. Even the two weeks he eventually had to try to arrest the collapse of support for him was ultimately never going to make that much difference.

Leo Varadkar was so far ahead that it would have taken either a calamitous gaffe by him – or Coveney discovering the power of walking on water – to make a difference.

Within 24 hours of the contest being declared, the sluice gates opened and the endorsements flooded towards Varadkar. The parliamentary party had given Varadkar an unassailable lead. With this college alone carrying 65 per cent weight, the sums were never going to add up for the Minister for Housing.

Coveney had two choices; he could quit – or he could change tactics and go for a long-shot.

So he focused solely on the other two colleges: the country councillors (ten per cent of the vote) and the 21,000 members (25 per cent). If he could get a big majority of both to back him that might just shame five or six TDs or Senators to vote the other way.

In reality, it was wishful thinking, but at least it was a plan – and to a certain extent it worked.

The early declarations gave Varadkar an impregnable lead and left him in slightly strange circumstances. Like a team which is defending a huge lead after the first half, the tendency is to become cautious and defensive.

Everything he has done in the past week has been controlled and prepped to excruciating detail, with the kind of restrictions to access that might become slightly worrying if it were to continue once he became Taoiseach.

It’s clear that many months of preparation had gone into the campaign and the coordinated launches were impressive for the kind of detail and ideas he came up with. His argument that Fine Gael should not be Fianna Fail-lite, and should not try to be all things to all people, was a decisive statement of intent.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.