SLICING THROUGH THE SPIN EVERY MONDAY Never mind the ballots..It’s Simon
NATION IS FOISTED WITH UNWANTED TAOISEACH
EXACTLY two weeks ago this column called for a general election following the Government’s devastating double defeat in the Family and Carer referendums.
In fact, the last line said — “Time to go, Leo.”
At least he was paying attention and has slung his hook.
But Varadkar’s departure, followed with breakneck speed by Simon Harris’s coronation, has simply turbo-charged the demand for an election and a root-and-branch clearout of the Dail’s deadwood.
But Harris and his cronies are intent on hanging on to power because they know they’d get a massive kick in the ballots if they went to the country now.
Spark
They’re hoping a change of Taoiseach might spark a revival in Fine Gael and they’re playing for time.
But just look at the state of the nation.
We now have a new Taoiseach — done deal, like it or lump it.
He’s no-one’s first choice apart from a small elite in his own party.
He even struggled to get elected in Wicklow at the last general election, limping home on the 15th count.
And a Sunday Independent poll yesterday showed that 21 per cent want either Simon Coveney or Paschal Donohoe as the new Taoiseach and new leader of Fine Gael.
Meanwhile, Harris came in third at just 16 per cent, ahead of no-hopers Helen
McEntee and Heather Humphreys on seven per cent each.
Harris’s elevation to the Office of Taoiseach hasn’t been so much a coronation as a bloodless coup.
But if the Blueshirts thought they’d get a boost from a new leader and new Taoiseach, then think again.
A whopping 62 per cent said that Varadkar’s exit and Harris’s entrance would make no difference to their voting preference — with only 15 per cent saying it would.
On top of all this, there’s at least 11 fed-up Fine Gael TDs who have thrown in the towel and won’t be standing again in the next election. This might lead some observers to say the rats are deserting the sinking ship while new Captain Harris is busy reshuffling the motley crew.
It all points to a massive new democratic deficit the size of the hole in the ozone layer. We’ve a Taoiseach no one bargained for.
This unwanted Taoiseach is going to present us with a reshuffled Cabinet, which, by the rules of natural justice, he’s no real right to appoint.
The Government’s plagued by TDs queuing up at the emergency exit while demoralised ministers are just going through the motions.
Rollover
And they’re all presiding over their own hopeless handiwork after 13 years in power — disasters in housing and health; a breakdown in law and order; a country awash with drugs; a rollover cost of living crisis for low-income families; a brain drain in medicine, teaching and the Garda Siochana; and the haemorrhaging of public funds in the new National Children’s Hospital, broadband roll-out and – a money-pit in the making – the Metro.
But most of all, our democratic process has been shattered by a silent erosion as the elite conspire to hold on to power despite their own abysmal failures.
At least Leo Varadkar admitted he’d run out of road when he said: “After seven years in office, I don’t feel I’m the best person for that job anymore.”
It’s just a great pity for our democracy that he didn’t take the rest of the losers with him.