Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t

I will be amazed if Brian Cowen carries out any major reshuffle of his cabinet even though he needs to do that if Fianna Fáil are going to have any chance of putting up any kind of fight at the next election.

People are tired of the same old faces. They want change if only for the sake of change itself.
For too long the security and privace of their living rooms have been invaded by the voices and faces of individuals on tv like Mary Coughlan, Martin Cullen, Mary Harney and Noel Dempsey. They also, of course, want to see Brian Cowen himself riding off into the sunset.
But Brian Cowen is not going to oblige. He is not going to sack himself and I doubt very much if he has the will to carry out the radical changes that are needed. The Government is shaky enough already without risking further instability by Cowen making new enemies for himself.
He has enough opponents or potential opponents on the backbenches such as Mattie McGrath and Jim McDaid without adding Mary Hanafin, Noel Dempsey, Mary Coughlan, Dermot Ahern or any of the other old cabinet veterans to the list.
Rather than strenthening Fianna Fáil, such a radical reshuffle would cause a huge amount of resentment in the Parliamentary Party.
The only Fianna Fáil leader to carry out a major reshuffle in modern times was Albert Reynolds when he was elected Taoiseach nearly 20 years ago. And he didn’t last too long afterwards.
So that’s the problem Brian Cowen is faced with. He’ll be damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
If Fianna Fáil are to have any chance of saving seats at the next election the party needs to have a completely new image. And to display a new image, they need to clear out the old faces and have new people at the top. People like Tony Killeen, Dara Calleary, John Curran and Pat Carey.
You might argue that people like Killeen or Carey are not “new” and have been around for decades. You might argue that any cabinet reshuffle should include really new deputies like Timmy Dooley. But such a promotion would cause far more trouble, especially in Fianna Fáil in Clare. And Brian Cowen could do without that.
So my belief is that, despite the need for radical change at the top, Brian Cowen will play it safe. He will only replace those who have to be replaced, people like Willie O’Dea who is gone already and Martin Cullen who is likely to retire because of a back problem.
He might, of course, remove Éamon Ó Cuív because he knows that Ó Cuív would go quietly to the backbenches and not indulge in any kind of bum-biting like others would. But that would be unfair to Ó Cuív who is one of the best performing ministers, despite what his detractors might say.
So Brian Cowen will, more or less, leave things as they are. He may move ministers around from one department to another and call departments by different names and call that reform. But we’ll be left with the same tired old faces like Cowen himself, Dermot Ahern, Mary Harney, Noel Dempsey, Mary Coughlan, Brendan Smith. You know the names yourself. And Fianna Fáil will be hammered at the next election.
They will probably be hammered anyway no matter what Brian Cowen does. So his best hope for survival over the next two years would be not to upset too many people on the frontbench by banishing them to the backbenches. He is probably resigned to losing the next election anyway so his only hope is to stay on as long as possible, knowing that he will be going to the opposition benches after the election with fewer TDs than ever.
However, even if Brian Cowen were to amaze me and carry out a major reshuffle of his cabinet, such a reshuffle would never please me. The only kind of reshuffle I want to see is a reshuffle to form a Government of national unity.
Our people have little or no confidence in the ability of the present Government or of the Opposition parties to sort out the economic mess we are in. And we are not going to solve the problem until the people have confidence in the future of the economy. But a government made up of the best in all the parties should be able to inspire that confidence once more.
The situation is too serious to allow politicians to continue play-acting. Under the present system, any effort by Government to try and solve the problem was, is and always will be rubbished by the opposition in simplistic, headline-grabbing terms. In a crisis they should all work together rather than against each other.
So the cabinet reshuffle I would favour would have Brian Lenihan as Taoiseach, presuming he is able to overcome the illness that threatens to stop him in his tracks. Richard Bruton would be my Minister for Finance with Eamon Gilmore as Minister for Employment. Brian Cowen and Enda Kenny would also have minor roles to play. The Greens would have one Minister as would Sinn Fein. Martin Ferris as Minister for Defence? I think he might look better behind a machine gun than Willie O’Dea did. Now that would excite people and make them sit up.