Can Kenny lead Fine Gael into the future?

Enda Kenny is a liability to Fine Gael and everybody apart from himself knows that. So what, you might ask.
Under his leadership the main opposition party has become the most popular party in the state for the first time in its history. The party had been written off before he took over the reins of leadership but today Fine Gael TDs are feeling secure in their seats.
Under Kenny’s leadership, Fine Gael is set to form the next government, whether the election is called in 30 months time or in three months time.
Former revered leaders of the party, such as Dick Mulcahy, John A Costello, James Dillon, Liam Cosgrave or Garret FitzGerald, failed to do as much for Fine Gael as Enda Kenny has done.
So why should his parliamentary party colleagues be muttering against him? Remember that those “mutterings” that George Lee spoke about last week were just that, “mutterings”.
There has been no heave against Kenny, no plot to get rid of him despite the efforts of some sections of the Dublin media to claim last week that his leadership was about to be challenged by people like Richard Bruton, Simon Coveney and Lucinda Creighton.
The party closed ranks around Kenny in the wake of the George Lee affair. And what else would they do in the circumstances? A heave would have got them nowhere.
But the fact of the matter is that Kenny’s leadership has been damaged, especially by recent events and so also has Fine Gael.
He is far less popular among the general public than the party. Which means he is a liability. The fact that there is no immediate threat to his leadership means that the liability is greater because they may be stuck with him for the next general election.
When Kenny was elected leader of Fine Gael in 2002 the party did not have a great pool of talent to choose from. Most of the brightest and best had lost their seats in the disastrous general election that year. Okay, they still had Richard Bruton, but having got rid of Bruton’s brother John a couple of years before that, they were not going to opt for another Bruton so soon afterwards.
So they picked the likeable Enda Kenny, who just might be the one to take the shine off Bertie Ahern.
And he almost pulled it off. Yes, the shine wore off Ahern but that was no thanks to Kenny. Still, a few more votes here and there and Enda Kenny would have been elected Taoiseach in 2007. Fine Gael came back to the Dail with 20 extra seats but the Labour Party under Pat Rabbitte failed to make the gains that were needed, so Fianna Fáil and Bertie Ahern were back in power.
But things have changed a lot since the early summer of 2007. Fianna Fáil are now so unpopular and have been so for the past two years that only a miracle can save them at the next election whenever that is.
Fine Gael will almost certainly be the main party of government, probably supported by Labour. But if Fine Gael want an overall majority – and that is their ambition – they will have to get rid of Enda Kenny.
Under Kenny they will still win the election. But they will not win as many seats as they would if Richard Bruton were leader of the party. That is the reality. They know that themselves but they will not move against Enda Kenny because, first and foremost, he is very well liked by those who know him and, secondly, because of what he has done for the party over the past seven years or so.
Kenny has been a disaster in recent television and radio interviews, not to mention the debacle over George Lee, and during the course of a high-pressure general election campaign, when television will play an even more important role than ever before, his failures will be further exposed.
Now, we have heard scores of speakers during the week absolving Kenny from any blame in the George Lee affair, but, as I said here last week, the buck stops with the leader. Fine Gael should have made far more use of such a high profile TD, rather than sending him around the country like a circus performer. We should have seen Lee more often on television if Fine Gael knew how to harness the potential support that was evident in the record 27,000 votes he got in the Dublin South by-election last June.
But they hadn’t worked out what to do with their prize catch and that’s the leader’s fault.
Now Enda has admitted himself that his recent media performances were not up to scratch and has promised that he would be “more myself” in the future.
If his handling this week of the Ryanair debacle and the loss of a potential 300 jobs at Dublin Airport are an indication of Enda being more himself, then I would suggest that he go back once again to being somebody else, who ever that somebody else might be.
Once again Enda Kenny adopted the populist simplistic line. Listening to him, one would think that all the Government had to do was hand over hangar six to Ryanair and give everything he wanted to Michael O’Leary and hey presto, the 300-plus jobs would be created. It’s a bit more complicated than that, as the party’s industry spokesman Leo Varadkar acknowledged later on radio last Tuesday.
Enda Kenny may well be the next Taoiseach but he has failed to convince me for one.