Leaders are more important than ever in politics. Though we live in an iconoclastic and anti-politician age, political leaders are still the prism through which many voters see and understand parties.
Irish politics is highly localised by international standards, and it should always be remembered that voters don’t vote for parties when they mark the ballot paper – they vote for candidates representing political parties (or none). Nonetheless, the profile, competence, record, personality and bearing of the leaders all matter. They are the chief communicators, the voice and face of the party.
So how are the leaders of the major parties faring as they embark on a few weeks’ break?
Mary Lou McDonald had a busy and purposeful first few months as leader, but she has not had a good week. On Monday she told the Press Association that a no-deal, crash-out Brexit should not be the trigger for a Border poll; on Tuesday she told journalists at Leinster House the exact opposite – if there is a no-deal Brexit there had to be a Border poll.
Despite requests the U-turn went unexplained. Into that vacuum charged the obvious explanation: long-fingering united Ireland as a Sinn Féin priority displeased the Boys of the Old Brigade, it was suggested, and they made her walk it back.
That was certainly the interpretation that Micheál Martin, Brendan Howlin and Charlie Flanagan gleefully put on it. No seriously competing explanation was supplied by Sinn Féin.
This is damaging to McDonald because her success in the last few months has been precisely in presenting a new and fresh face for Sinn Féin. As she did that she pushed open the door for coalition in Dublin with either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael – the whole point, I think, of her leadership. That objective has received a significant setback with this week’s flip-flop.
Stand-out success
Martin has not had an easy time of it either these past few months.
As a matter of politics his stance on the repeal of the Eighth Amendment – where he aligned himself with the views of the public rather than his parliamentary party – was a stand-out success. But like all political capital, that is a wasting asset. A bit of acting the maggot over the presidential election by fans of Éamon Ó Cuív – the putative candidate himself maintaining a silence that was telling, not gnomic – is testament enough to that. Martin’s party, spooked by the polls, is its usual restive self.
But Martin is not in as bad a shape as some of his opponents fancy. He has skilfully parried Varadkar on the early-election question. Wait until you see Fianna Fáil candidates making hay on post offices, on broadband, on waiting lists in rural constituencies. Dublin remains his biggest problem, but by and large Martin plays a bad hand well. It is still, however, a bad hand.
But it’s not as bad as Howlin’s. The Labour leader is facing some sort of a mini-revolt from his councillors, alarmed at the party’s flatlining in the polls and inability to break through in any meaningful way. Like everyone else he needs the break, though he has more reason than most to fear it. Rebellious councillors tend not to appear by accident.
Knuckled down
The Independents don’t have a leader, but Shane Ross is their most prominent member. The Independent experience of government has been mixed, to say the least. Only Katherine Zappone and Finian McGrath have knuckled down and learned to work its complex and tardy levers and processes with any effect.
Ross remains isolated, apparently frustrated, largely ineffectual. His latest wheeze – a proposal for a “granny grant” of €1,000 for child-minding grandparents – has attracted widespread derision, including from the Minister responsible for childcare.
Ross feels that the political and media establishment is ranged against him. But the public has noticed too. The most consistent trend in poll since the last election is the collapse of support for Independents and small parties. Ross must take a chunk of the responsibility for that.
And so to the Taoiseach, now beginning his second summer holiday in that role. Many of his lieutenants are bullish, pointing to robust polls, Fianna Fáil’s timorousness about an election, the booming economy, the healthy public finances. Fair enough.
Yet they would be wise to also consider the softness of some of those numbers, the enduring housing crisis, the crowded emergency units, the conflicts brewing with nurses and the ominous rumbling of the cervical care controversy. Varadkar has shown he can do the job – no mean feat – but he has not transformed his Government.
First white heat
He reacted unwisely in the first white heat of the cervical controversy. He overegged the backstop last December. Both were short-term political judgments that will come back to trouble him in the autumn.
He retains a touch for the public mood but sometimes acts rashly – a practice at odds with his previous modus operandi, which was to think carefully and then act. Now he sometimes seems more likely to feel for the public mood and then act. The thinking comes later. Understandable, perhaps, when a dozen issues a day are thrown at you, but dangerous nonetheless. That is the difference between being Taoiseach and being a Minister.
Some of Varadkar’s boys (they are all boys) reckon he will broaden Fine Gael’s appeal and construct a light blue coalition of Fine Gael, transactional economically-motivated former Fianna Fáil voters and social liberals left homeless by the decline of Labour. Perhaps he will. But he’s not there yet.
Voters want competence. But also dynamism; politics is inherently forward looking. In an increasingly demanding political environment the leaders who can combine the ability to get things done with an ability to describe the future are those who will prosper.