Perhaps you missed it. “Fionnuala, you are down there. I know you put up with an awful lot. You’re a great woman, the best I met.” Ah here, Enda. “The best I met?” About your wife?
Hardly Cam 'n' Sam, sighed an observer. Or Barack 'n' Michelle. But the words and sentiments were Enda Kenny to his authentic marrow, speaking at the Fine Gael presidential dinner last Saturday, as reported by Fiach Kelly.
It was the kind of Enda-ism that puts a smirk on the faces of the metropolitan set. And in fairness to any foreign visitor, his tribute might have been confused with a shout-out to the lassie who gets the cows in for the milking twice a day, hail or shine.
But was it strange ? Not if you’ve been in their company.
In a 2009 interview with this writer, there was an awkwardly hilarious exchange about how they met.
He was about 30 and had “been around the field a few times”. Then one day he was speaking in the Dáil “and this apparition appeared up in the press gallery, hair flying, blue dress. And I said: ‘Now this I must see again’.” And what did the apparition think? “I never noticed him at all,” she said.
His quarry
He persisted, chasing her into the Fianna Fáil lair where she worked for
Charles Haughey
, even getting himself ejected from the Fianna Fáil Christmas party. It paid off. “He kind of crept up on me,” said his quarry, a savvy, humorous Dublin woman with a master’s in French and a diploma in European studies, hand-picked for the Fianna Fáil press office by Haughey. Remember that last detail.
It took the playboy of the western world another 10 years to propose. Meanwhile, she flourished at the dark heart of multiple leadership heaves, ending up as head of the Government Information Service, earning more than her swain.
When he finally offered marriage, he did it on Inisheer, where a forefather had been a lighthouse keeper.
“I went down on one knee with the Atlantic washing up and surf breaking all around us, and asked her to be my wife,” he said, rather dreamily – before demolishing the buzz with a classic Enda-ism: “And then I was down that aisle like the hammers of hell.”
Ah here, Enda. Was he actually implying that the bride was in a desperate hurry? Pause. He looked at her ruefully: “Are there times you could strangle me?”
Probably. She may have wanted to strangle him after that tribute last Saturday night, too. But since she left her native city and the gossipy backrooms on which she thrived, to rear their children in rural Ireland, not alone has Fionnuala Kenny resisted mariticide, she has never put a foot wrong. She has never discussed his morning breath, as Michelle has about Barack's.
She and he are very much a political unit, but a very private one. Her influence within the party reaches well beyond that of any kitchen cabinet yet most people would struggle to recognise her voice. Indeed there are many who would fail to identify her in a crowd.
Whether this is a good or a bad thing may depend on the colour of your politics, the level of influence considered appropriate to any unelected partner or friend, and that indefinable element that voters seek in a political spouse/partner.
During the British general election, rarely a day went by without a feature on “plus one” style. Sam’s “gently draping emerald dress” was deemed “a winner” by the Times – but my word, what about those “gnarly toenails”? Ed Miliband’s wife, a senior environmental lawyer, was “poor Justine”, who had “abandoned lacklustre black and unflatteringly saggy cuts for the colour-me-photogenic approach”, earning her a “solid B+”. Nicola Sturgeon’s (male) spouse failed to appear in that feature. Odd that.
In that pressure-cooker atmosphere, where it became de rigueur to film campaign videos in family kitchens – with the wife looking busy yet in control, for that vital Mumsnet demograpic – it was probably inevitable that someone like the Commons speaker’s wife would pitch up for a photoshoot in a bedsheet, then join “I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!”
By contrast, whatever your view of their politics, Enda and Fionnuala are an oasis of authenticity and stability. As are Joan Burton and her husband, Pat Carroll. Carroll is said to be Burton's closest adviser, but so discreet a presence that few ordinary voters would know his face.
Political spouses
Likewise, how many could identify Micheál Martin’s wife, Mary? Or Gerry Adams’s wife, Colette ? In another time, political spouses ranked down there with “surrendered wives”, losing at every level; abandoned all week, hostages to the children and the constituency, while the husband kicked his heels up in the smoke. It happens still, as we heard from Fionnuala’s spouse, who said, “she had to put up with an awful lot”.
But perhaps it’s a sign of our maturity as a nation and a fourth estate that for better or worse, they can get on with their lives, without worrying about close-ups of their toenails .