Licked!

Whisper it! Enda Kenny will still be Taoiseach in 2 years time.  As much as the political focus is on the General Election which is still over a year away, there is at the moment only one obvious outcome.  The recent interview with Gerry Adams tacitly accepts this.  He says that he may not be the Sinn Fein  nominee for the office.  Given the significance of 2016 and the fact that he drove the SF policy of achieving power with the ballot box and the armalite, if it wasn’t about achieving power in Leinster House then where was it about? Seems a strange thing for Gerry Adams to say after over 35 years as President of Sinn Fein?

Since 2011 Fianna Fail have gained very little in real support in national polls, Labour as part of an outgoing government will be hoping to get back as a partner party, then despite what media and people say about Kenny, there is no other show in town.

The real election is within Fine Gael, its Leo versus Simon. It’s an open secret that if Leo is in the paper on Sunday, Simon will be on Morning Ireland the following morning.  The pair of them cannot wait for 2017 to see who can take over from Kenny.  It’s getting a bit tedious.  Simon’s real mistake is not so much dumping Labour out of his calculation but his presumption that he’s going to be playing a key role in a government with Fianna Fail.  Does he really think that Martin McGrath and himself are all going to be senior cabinet Ministers in his dream coalition?  3 cabinet ministers from the one constituency in the country?  12 representing the other 42?  Often Simon makes a presumption which is not based on nothing other than wishful thinking.

Simon spent last Summer doing the rounds of the farming industry saying his farewells and wishing the incoming  agricultural minister after the reshuffle well. Can you imagine his disappointment when Enda Kenny told him he was going nowhere and reappointed him to Agriculture?  Still better in than out.  But Simon is at least still mentioned in dispatches .  The succession is Leo’s to lose.

Which brings me to Sinn Fein.  Remember the old adage never wish for something, just in case you get it?  Well in the run in to the UK General Election Sinn Fein are a bit miffed that Martin McGuinness is not allowed to debate with other party leaders.  Given that SF have no intention of turning up in Westminster regardless of their policy, one wonders as to the value of anything they say in that poll.

Perhaps they may be saved an embarrassment on a wider stage.  While Long Kesh was regarded as the university for republicans there sure was no economics department on campus in Gerry’s time as evident by tonight’s debate between Gerry Adams and Joan Burton with Claire Byrne.

Adam’s inability to understand his own basic figures, dismissing the reality that there is nothing left for a government to spend jars, owning 2 houses and saying that there was nothing wrong with the property market.  Burton’s  grasp of what is achievable in a sustained way is not challenged by Adams who focuses on the notional idea taxing incomes of over €100K and a naive notion that people will not tax evade!  Has he ever heard of Michael Lowry?

The nadir of the debate for Adams was when Burton pointed back to Adams that Connolly said that without its people, Ireland meant nothing.  Seems that Gerry Adams has had a tough night but that the going will get tougher. Perhaps he should have had a word with Simon Coveney earlier in the night?