Enda Kenny’s surprise decision to allow Fine Gael TDs a free vote on the proposed repeal of the constitutional amendment on abortion was the latest demonstration of a ruthless pragmatism that has served him well as Taoiseach.
The abortion issue suddenly blew up out of nowhere and was threatening to provoke a damaging split in Fine Gael on the cusp of the general election.
At the beginning of the week Kenny was reportedly furious with his deputy leader James Reilly for giving a newspaper interview in which he called for a referendum to repeal the eight amendment to the constitution early in the lifetime of the next government.
Labour had already committed itself to insisting on an early referendum as the precondition of any new coalition with Fine Gael if the two parties have the numbers to form a government after the election.
Reilly’s intervention exposed the fact that a number of Fine Gael TDs also want to see the amendment repealed and the issue suddenly threatened to divide the party and to divert attention from the economic argument which will be the bedrock of the Fine Gael election campaign.
After consulting some of his Fine Gael colleagues Kenny quickly put his annoyance to one side and decided to neutralise the issue before it could do serious damage. He told an astonished and relieved parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday night that he planned to put the abortion issue to a “citizen’s convention” with Fine Gael TDs and senators would be allowed a free vote on its recommendations.
“It was a very clever move,” said one pleased senior parliamentarian who is strongly opposed to abortion. “We are a Christian Democratic party with an urban liberal wing. Most of us want to keep the pro-life amendment but the liberals in the party want it out of the constitution. This way both sides are happy and it won’t distract from the election.”
Kenny is already being accused of double standards for not allowing a free vote on the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill in 2013 which saw five TDs and two senators expelled from the party for defying the whip.
The cold political reality, though, is that without the whip that Bill might have been defeated and the Coalition with Labour would probably have fallen apart as a result.
The other political reality is that a citizen’s convention on the eight amendment will probably take a long time to find a consensus, if indeed one is possible. The easy part is to say the amendment should go; the difficulty is to say what legal regime should be put in its place.
One way or another Kenny has defused a potentially divisive and damaging internal issue for Fine Gael.
Labour TDs were taken every bit as much by surprise as their Fine Gael colleagues. Those who feel strongly about repealing the amendment, and not all Labour TDs do, believed that it would give them a good point of distinction with their coalition partners during the election campaign.
They were preparing to make a strong appeal to those voters who want the Coalition to remain in office to provide stability but who also want to see the constitutional ban on abortion repealed as the only way of achieving both objectives.
“Enda has managed to transform Fine Gael into a catch all party and that has changed the political dynamic,” said one Labour figure.
One of Enda Kenny’s great advantages as a politician is that he has been so consistently underestimated by his political opponents and derided by an array of commentators ever since he became leader of Fine Gael in 2002.
By any yardstick his record in the Taoiseach’s office has been impressive with the economic recovery a testament to his ability to run a coherent and cohesive coalition capable of decisive and courageous action.
That achievement may not have impressed his critics but the latest Irish Times poll conducted this week indicates that the public is coming around to making its ultimate judgement on the basis of performance rather than emotion.
Kenny’s burning ambition is to do what John A. Costello, Liam Cosgrave and Garret FitzGerald failed to do: win two successive terms in office and he is getting ever closer to pulling it off.
To ensure it happens Fine Gael will need to gain more support from now to election-day but at 30 per cent the party is nicely positioned to repeat the gains it made during the 2011 campaign. If Fine Gael can get back to the 36 per cent it won last time around the party could even come close to winning an overall majority.
Earlier this month SIPTU general secretary Jack O’Connor warned that this could happen if more voters did not switch to Labour. At the time O’Connor’s claims were taken with a grain of salt as it did not seem feasible for Fine Gael to come anywhere close to winning a majority of Dail seats.
Now, though, it is at least in the realm of the possible and that poses a challenge for all other parties, particularly its coalition partner.
Back in 2002 when Fianna Fail suddenly appeared to be on the cusp of an overall majority Michael McDowell, the then Attorney General in the Fianna Fail-Progressive Democrat coalition, famously climbed a lamppost in Ranelagh to proclaim “Single party government: No Thanks.”
That dramatic intervention halted the Fianna Fail juggernaut and saved the PDs who actually doubled their number of seats from four to eight. The challenge facing Labour is to devise a similarly arresting strategy. (ends)