A WIN’S A WIN ...BUT THEY’D HAVE WANTED A TOTAL VICTORY

IT WAS the most scrupulously polite form of suppressed Blue-on-Blue warfare in the Mansion House yesterday.

Tally teams wore ‘Leo’ or ‘Simon Coveney’ stickers on the backs of their jackets, for all the world as if they were down in the trenches in full-scale general election conflict at an RDS count.

This time the jostling competition was from their own side, a civil war in miniature – but with added civility from every combatant.

Within a few minutes, however, as the crammed Coveney ballots came spilling from boxes, the Leo team turned slightly testy. Shoals of Simon slivers came swimming into light, with few enough for their man Leo.

Simon Coveney’s indefatigable press aide, Caitríona Fitzpatrick, was suddenly wreathed in smiles, while Damien English, his campaign manager, was brimming with delight. They had won the ground war.

‘It’s what our canvassers were telling us,’ he said, sharing out some of the battle honours to those in the field. ‘But the councillors will be more even.’

THE first completed box of members’ votes showed 101 votes for Simon to 35 for Leo. Varadkar tally folk were suddenly unwilling to flash their clipboard counts to journalists, while an approach to their computer bank brought the rebuke: ‘We’ll let you know when we’ve something to tell you.’

‘I’m disgusted,’ said one Leo lover to another.

The tally of the first 11 boxes (of 25 from the membership) showed a commanding Simon margin of 68.5% to 31.5%. It was the Coveney comeback.

Instant analysis was being offered up. Was it anti-Dublin? Anti the early declarations of the parliamentary party?

The Leo side refused to accept that Simon had won the hustings, and yet the pattern was by no means confined to Cork – it was countrywide.

Someone recognised a box from Kildare (by means of a symbol added to a ballot, it was supposed), and there it was 60-40 in favour of Simon.

A senior person confessed that Team Leo had grown concerned in recent days and had leant heavily on its supporting TDs, urging them in turn to lean hard on their members to support their view.

It seems very few had – or if they attempted it, only provoked more determined cussedness.

By now the complaints were being made about the weighting of the vote, which gave only 25% to the members – unlike the 40% that Fianna Fáil has determined for its rank and file.

‘Sixty-five per cent for the parliamentary party is too much. It’s excessive,’ scolded one Coveneyite to another when back at Leinster House for a late lunch.

If the weightings had been reversed, it is conceivable that Simon would have won – but this was a system that had made the votes of 800 ordinary members equal to that of one TD.

And so a sense of unfairness brewed, and on all sides – with the Leo camp feeling somewhat cheated too, this time of total legitimacy.

However, the members are typically aged 60 and over. Were they rebelling against modernism and the ways of the young? Sage political interpreters were warning against over-interpreting their Simon-ism.

And in the end it was Leo, albeit with a twist in the tale – one that amounts to a twist of the tail for the new big beast on the Irish political landscape.

It would soften his roar for a while – and give him something to think about, when he gets up early in the morning.