Cowen will go down fighting

Fianna Fáil are stuck with Brian Cowen as their leader going into the general election, whether they like it or not.

It can also be said, of course, that the country is still stuck with Brian Cowen as Taoiseach and the country has not had the luxury of a secret ballot to decide whether or not we want Brian Cowen to continue as our leader. Well, not yet, anyway.
I do not believe the country was too interested one way or another whether it was Brian Cowen or Micheál Martin that was going to lead Fianna Fáil into the election.
The country doesn’t want either of them. The people of this Republic cannot wait for the opportunity to dump Fianna Fáil out of office. They blame Fianna Fáil for all the misery and all the defeatism we have had for the last two or three years.
They might not be too happy with any of the alternatives to a Fianna Fáil-led Government but first and foremost, they want to see the back of Fianna Fáil and then worry about what might follow after that.
They believe the longer Fianna Fáil stay in office, the worse things will get and that while Fine Gael and Labour might not be able to solve our economic difficulties, they have no hope at all while Fianna Fáil and the Greens remain in office.
That is the reality and it is a reality that the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party recognises. It is a reality that led to this week’s vote of confidence in Brian Cowen’s leadership. What way would you put it? Fianna Fáil have no hope with Brian Cowen leading them into the general election and they have no hope at all without him. It is as simple or as confusing as that.
This once proud party, or institution, if you like, is fighting for its very existence and, as Mary O’Rourke put it, it is now too late to change the leader. That should have been done some time last year.
The party was never more demoralised, never more disorganised going into an election than it is at present. They know that Brian Cowen is a fighter and that it was his fighting spirit that saved them in the final week of the last general election campaign. They feel he is the only hope of salvaging something out of the looming election.
But they also fear – as Mary O’Rourke again put it – that Mr Cowen will once again become “silent and withdrawn” rather than display the fighting qualities that won him this week’s vote of confidence.
Brian Cowen cannot, however, do in two months what he failed to do in almost three years and that is breathe some fighting spirit back into Fianna Fáil.
I have stated in this column on many previous occasions that the Brian Cowen I have known for almost 30 years is a decent, honourable and intelligent man. Even his enemies inside and outside the party recognise that.
But his leadership has been a total disaster. A lot of that was due to his own mishandling of a very bad situation he inherited. I wonder, though, if anybody else would have handled it any better. Brian Cowen has been in a no-win situation since his appointment as Taoiseach nearly three years ago.
I believe his biggest failure was not in what he did nor did not do but in his failure to communicate with the Irish people. He seemed to have an attitude that he couldn’t care less what the Irish people thought. He knew he was right and the majority of the Irish people had no right to be wrong. Shades of de Valera?
I know Brian Cowen is a patriotic Irishman and has always wanted to do what is right for the country he loves. The fact that he has failed in his task is the great pity of his leadership but his failure is due mainly to a set of circumstances rather than all his fault.
I believe that the confidence debate this week will have further damaged Fianna Fáil. If prominent people like Micheál Martin can come out publicly and say they have no confidence in him, how can they expect the ordinary people of Ireland to vote confidence in him in two months’ time?
That, of course, can also be asked of the man who is almost certain to succeed him as Taoiseach. At least half the people in the Fine Gael parliamentary party have no confidence in their leader, Enda Kenny. But they are going to foist him on the people of this State in a few months’ time.
It is widely accepted that Micheál Martin has enhanced his chances of succeeding Brian Cowen as leader of Fianna Fáil after the election. The fact that he was prepared to put up rather than shut up should improve his standing in the parliamentary party.
The opposite can be said of his potential rivals for the leadership of the party, Brian Lenihan and Mary Hanafin.
It will, however, be a far different parliamentary party after the election. Neither Brian Lenihan nor Mary Hanafin – nor Micheál Martin either, for that matter – may be around then.
It could be said that Brian Cowen might have decided to fold his tent and quietly decided to steal away rather than take it upon himself the thankless task of leading an already defeated party into a disastrous election. But that is not the Brian Cowen I have known. He will go down fighting.