Poor Micheál .
Poor Keir.
Micheál Martin has been getting it in the neck over a number of matters lately, but chiefly over his treatment of the fuel protestors, most of whom appear to have been farmers or hauliers. The farmers drive very big tractors and the hauliers drive very big lorries and when they come to town and plank them on O’Connell Bridge in Dublin or at the fuel depot in Cork, they have an immediate impact on normal life, whether that’s going to work or going for a cancer scan.
The frustration of journeys like these caused widespread unease and anger, so Micheál maybe thought he was safe in saying he’d meet the leaders of the hauliers or the farmers, but not this raggle-taggle band of people holding the rest of us hostage. And I’m sure the same sort of feeling was felt by Micheál’s heir presumptive, Big Jim O’Callaghan, when he suggest the army might have a role to play in this drama.
Big mistake.
While the road blockers did upset a lot of the populace, it began to sound like Donald Trump using masked ICE agents with weapons to sort out immigrants in US cities. Ironically enough, Micheál/Big Jim did eventually employ the Gardaí and the army to clear the streets, but not before Micheál and Big Jim had run up the white flag about meeting the people affected and pushing some money their way. Alas, the damage by then had been done. To such an extent that journalists were wondering aloud if Micheál would survive as leader and if Big Jim might take his place.
The message to Micheál is, You’re OK for now. Nobody wants to feel that their party leader was forced out of office by the likes of Michael Healy-Rae, who added to the mix by being very loudly annoyed with the Dublin government and withdrew his guile and cunning and support from that government. Next month will see FF’s Árd Fheis, marking the hundredth anniversary of the party’s birth, and FF will desperately want to look shipshape, with an experienced and well-known man at the helm. Big Jim may be waiting in the wings, but he’ll be as loud as anyone at the Ard Fheis in declaring how happy he is with the leadership of Micheál.
As for Keir, his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as UK Ambassador to the US is seen as really bad. Mandelson failed the security vetting for the role but Starmer says he was told there was no problem. Either there was a serious breakdown in government communication, which suggests incompetence, or Keir has lied to parliament, which is a hanging offence. Keir is hoping his critics will go for the first option, even though that doesn’t look too good either. The head of the Foreign Office has been thrown under the bus, but that may not be enough to satisfy Keir’s bloodthirsty critics. That’s his critics outside the party, because there are also some inside the party who want him gone. The many U-turns he’s taken since his big election win has left him sagging in the popularity polls.
But, like Fianna Fáil, Labour just doesn’t have a ready-to-wear replacement. Wes Streeting? Too glib. Angela Rayner? Popular in the party, maybe, but not much experience of holding ministerial porfolios.
The truth is, neither Micheál nor Keir has got the X factor, the appeal to voters that would turn their party’s fortunes around. When you hear Keir grind out another metallic pronouncement, when you listen to Micheál trying to gobble up his own words, you almost feel sorry for the pair of them.
The truth is, voters want not just policies, but government that has a bit of pizzaz, excitement, something that stirs the blood. But there’s mortal danger in switching leaders. Those who questioned Thatcher as leader should have remembered the old rhyme: ‘Hold on to the hand of nurse/ For fear of finding something worse.’
