Micheál Martin may have survived the Fianna Fáil autumn think-in, but his long-term prognosis as Taoiseach is far from certain. The diagnosis is grim: he is suffering from a malignant, festering amiability. He is, simply, too nice.
His refusal to stick the boot in on Merriongate – he seems almost as bemused as some members of the public as to why it's still news – is the latest manifestation of his stultifying cordiality. Instead of taking a strong position on the issue, he has reverted to his natural state of "not angry; just disappointed". "Lessons must be learned," Mr Congeniality said in interviews in recent days, calling for balance and perspective. "Transparency will flow," he continued, sounding less like a leader determined to unite an embattled Government than an Ayurvedic masseur hoping to unblock the Coalition's chakras by sheer force of his amity.
The old maxim that you should never let a good crisis go to waste seems to have passed the Taoiseach by here. Yes, the controversy is an annoying distraction from the core issues, but it is an annoying distraction that might have shown the public it is possible to distinguish Fianna Fáil from Fine Gael – even if it was just to say: look, there Fianna Fáil are; the hopping mad ones on the left. But he didn't take the opportunity, and as a result, the Taoiseach is a close contact for the highly-virulent Zappone variant of political entitlement.
In a perfect world... Martin's refusal to get dragged into mud-slinging would be perceived as the actions of a leader focused on the bigger picture. In this world, however, it looks weak
Talking to people in different parts of the country this week, it's clear most don't much care about the botched appointment of Katherine Zappone to a €15,0000-a-year position in the UN. Nobody I've met is up at night worrying about whom she might have canvassed, or when the spec was drawn up, or when the Taoiseach knew about it. They do care about the perception they may have been deliberately misled. They care that text messages which officials in Tánaiste Leo Varadkar's department claimed must never have existed later turned up somewhere no one thought of looking – on the Tánaiste's phone.
It was – depending on your perspective – either a sign of a political culture obsessed with trivialities and gossip, or further evidence of the Taoiseach's inability to take control of the narrative, that his big post-think-in interview on Morning Ireland on Friday kicked off with Merriongate again. In reality, it is a bit of both. By failing to stamp a clear identity on either his party or his tenure, Martin has left a vacuum readily filled by noise. The longer this particular controversy goes on, the more he sounds like a Fine Gael apologist.
Jim “when a vacancy arises” O’Callaghan is suffering no such identity crisis. He unleashed an entire thesaurus of outrage in the direction of the “Fine Gael omnishambles” – it was “casual, inappropriate, disrespectful, cavalier... cronyism” and evidence of “low standards by certain Ministers in Fine Gael”.
In a perfect world, voters would not be won over by such displays of rhetoric. Martin’s refusal to get dragged into mud-slinging would be perceived as the actions of a leader focused on the bigger picture. In this world, however, it looks weak. It looks as if, as John McGuinness put it, Fianna Fáil is willing to bend like a daisy in a storm whenever Fine Gael sighs.
The autumn think-in was characterised by some party members as “a no-confidence vote without the vote”. That seemed an appropriate metaphor for a party at a loss to figure out what it stands for, or even what it won’t stand for.
The problem for Fianna Fáil is not just that it became indistinguishable from the party in government, as the internal report by Seán Fleming concluded, it’s that it has become indistinguishable from Micheál Martin. And it’s far from clear what he represents, aside from being the nicest guy in the room, so nice he allows even public displays of disloyalty to go unchallenged. The politics of “careful now”, maybe.
There's a bit of wishful thinking to Martin's insistence that he will fulfil his term because 'it's not about personalities, it's about the issues'
“Careful now” politics had an appeal during the pandemic, but we’re shunting out the other side. The world we’re emerging into is facing real and urgent problems. As the pandemic stops monopolising every aspect of Government and our lives, politicians will have to confront the fallout, as well as all the other issues that never went away, including climate change, rising inflation, the housing crisis, the nearly one-fifth of children at risk of poverty, the nearly 1 million people on hospital waiting lists, the uncertain future of Sláintecare, the impact of Brexit, the rise in domestic violence and all the societal problems that have yet to materialise as a result of one of the most prolonged lockdowns anywhere. Martin is right, of course, that the issues are what we should be talking about. But there’s a bit of wishful thinking to his insistence that he will fulfil his term because “it’s not about personalities, it’s about the issues”.
The issues do matter most to Irish voters, in my experience of reporting on the last election. But they also expect the politicians and parties they vote for to stand for something that is clear and readily identifiable. Ideally, the party leader should be a shorthand for that something.
Towards the end of the Morning Ireland interview, the Taoiseach finally got a chance to talk about one of those big issues: Brexit and the future of the Northern Ireland protocol. Europe was in solution mode, he said, and "the UK government has indicated it's up for engagement with..." But we never got to find out with whom, as the interview cut off mid-flow. It was "just coming to a close" anyway, Mary Wilson assured listeners, going to the news. Martin will be hoping that's not a metaphor for anything.