Everyone likes you when you are gone, and Enda Kenny's statement at the parliamentary party meeting last night that he will deal "conclusively" with his leadership of Fine Gael when he returns from the US immediately calmed the boiling atmosphere in the party.
"He's gone, but on his own terms," said one anti-Kenny Fine Gael TD leaving Leinster House last night to face into the rain brought by Storm Doris.
The warm glow of sentiment was taking hold of this deputy, who just last week could barely say Enda Kenny’s name without wishing him ill. He was now speaking of Kenny as a future candidate for the Aras.
“Why not? The party is behind him.”
The manner of Kenny’s departure is to his credit, but Fine Gael will now move on from the Taoiseach to the race to succeed him. It will officially be a four-week roadshow with regional hustings kicking off when Kenny triggers the contest upon his return from Washington.
Unofficially, it is on now and has been for quite some time.
The contest proper will, however, be a crucial method of re-energising Fine Gael after a bruising few years.
Following last year’s general election, Kenny commissioned two reports into the party’s terrible showing.
One was carried out by TDs and another by Marion Coy, the chairwoman of the Collins Institute, a think tank associated with Fine Gael.
One of Coy’s key findings was that Fine Gael, as a party, lost some of its identity during its term of government between 2011 and 2016, given the almost overwhelming focus on the job of governing.
The machinery of any party suffers while it is in government
The machinery of any party suffers while it is in government, but Fine Gael’s case was particularly bad.
Kenny, to his credit, has in recent months restructured aspects of the party and made it a much slimmer organisation.
The next step, which will be undertaken by his successor, is to ensure Fine Gael has a distinctive policy platform and message, outside of the Programme for Government it has agreed with the Independents and the confidence and supply agreement with Fianna Fáil.
The upcoming Fine Gael roadshow will be a crucial vehicle to address this weakness. Candidates and members will have to grapple with the questions of what the party is now and what exactly it stands for.
The current governmental arrangement has pitched everyone onto the same territory. To keep the Government in place, there can be no policy difference of significance between Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Independents.
The coming months provide an opportunity for Fine Gael to develop a distinctive voice again. That will be just as important as the choice between Varadkar and Coveney.
That, too, is being “election ready”.
