Fear of Fianna Fáil is driving Fine Gael call on Enda Kenny to quit

Suddenly brought face-to- face with the prospect, Fine Gael is shying away from the potential trauma of immediately defenestrating its leader. But there is no doubt in the minds of virtually all its TDs that Enda Kenny's term as Taoiseach is drawing to a close.

None of the party's 50 TDs – who were all contacted by The Irish Times yesterday – were prepared to join the Kerry TD Brendan Griffin's call for the Taoiseach to be replaced over the summer. Instead, there was a phalanx of Ministers mustered to rally to his defence. But you'd wonder why that didn't happen last week.

Rubicon crossed

The sense among most Fine Gael TDs is that Kenny will have to depart after the budget. There is little stomach for swift regicide, but there is also a realisation that a Rubicon has been crossed in the last week. Something has become clear that wasn’t previously so: even those previously squarely in Kenny’s camp know that his days are numbered.

Many of the TDs who spoke on the record yesterday about how Enda Kenny should be given the time and space to depart on his own terms added privately that he should make that decision after the budget.

Kenny will have to figure out in the coming days how he can put their minds at rest without explicitly giving a commitment to depart – a statement that would surely accelerate the seeping away of his authority.

But the fact of the matter is that the leadership contest in Fine Gael is effectively on. TDs are ringing and texting one another, hungry for information or, failing that, gossip. Some were critical of their colleague Griffin for seeking to pre-empt matters yesterday without co-ordinating with others of a like mind.

Lessons

One TD wondered if anyone had thought to consider the lessons of the 2010 heave against Kenny, when a chaotic and half-accidental attempt to unseat Kenny floundered in the face of the Fine Gael leader’s determined and organised resistance.

Two things make this different to 2010, though. The first is that Kenny has himself acknowledged he will not lead his party into the next election. He has chosen his last Ministers; his stock of patronage is almost exhausted.

The second is that the middle ground of the parliamentary party has concluded that Kenny must be gone well before the next election. They differ only on the timetable and the niceties of the operation, not the diagnosis, nor the treatment.

This is because at the root of Fine Gael's jitters is the gnawing fear that has beset the party since the negotiations to form the Government: that Fianna Fáil will be the big winners from the present arrangement.

This fear of Fianna Fáil is driving the immediacy of the challenge to Kenny's leadership. As enunciated by Brendan Griffin – and felt by many of his compatriots – it is that Fianna Fáil will collapse the Government before Enda Kenny leaves, perhaps using the budget as an excuse.

Dread

This would leave Fine Gael facing its own leadership contest before the party could fight the election – a prospect that fills the party’s TDs with dread.

The level of fear went up a fair few notches when Fianna Fáil's poll numbers surged in last week's Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll.

The terror about this in Fine Gael is now acute. And Fianna Fáil is certainly enjoying that. But it is not how the Fianna Fail leadership sees the political landscape.

When the next election comes, there is no doubt that Fianna Fáil will ruthlessly seek to exploit whatever Fine Gael weakness it can find. But the meaning that Micheál Martin took out of last week’s poll was not that he should now bring down the Government, but rather that he should keep supporting it.

Why? Fianna Fáil has risen by nine points since the election. It may reasonably be concluded that a chunk of the public approves of the course Martin has followed. To collapse the Government in an act of transparent political opportunism would imperil Fianna Fáil’s recovery – the task to which Martin has dedicated much since 2011.

His goal is to replace Fine Gael in government. But it is one that he is prepared to pursue with some patience.

The events of the last week demonstrate the external threats to the Government are not as great as the internal ones.