Michael D Higgins was looking forward to one high office as delegates were counting the days Brian Cowen had left in another, writes MIRIAM LORDin Roscommon
ARE YE right there, Michael? Are ye right? (Toot! Toot!) Do you think the nomination is in sight? (Toot! Toot!) Oh, it’s all depending whether, I get all me votes together, And I might now, maybe, sure I might! (Toot! Toot!)
The Labour Party bade adieu to Percy French country yesterday afternoon, with Michael D Higgins in a ferment of anticipation for the campaign to come.
The previous day, in a lather of excitement, he launched his bid to get his party’s nomination for the presidency.
He listed off his impressive CV at length, failing only to include his Irish dancing medals and Primary Cert results. (Or so we thought.)
Michael D hit the ground running. He dripped charm for the rest of the evening, glad-handing the startled media and gently threatening the assembled parliamentary party members to give him the nod over chief rival Fergus Finlay.
He went missing for the main course. The waiter wondered whether he should take back the seared sea bass and keep it warm.
“Ah no, leave it down there,” replied one of his dining companions. “He’ll canvass that when he comes back.”
At the end of the meal, he was presented with a cake to mark his 25 years in the Dáil, whereupon Michael D launched into an anecdote-laden speech before reminding his colleagues to back him for the Áras. He blew the candles out with such force that Eamon Gilmore’s glasses nearly fell into the butter, before declaring: “I am in the whole of my health.”
Then he cut the cream sponge with a theatrical flourish and handed the slices around in a brazen cake-for-votes ploy.
But by breakfast, he was distracted. But then, so was everyone else in the Abbey Hotel – distracted by the continuing fallout from Garglegate.
In the space of 24 hours, one sensed a discernible shift in mood on the subject among the Labour politicians. When they arrived at this hidden gem of a hotel in Roscommon town, they were dismissing Brian Cowen’s Galway interview disaster as “yesterday’s news”. They didn’t want to personalise the issue of one man’s humiliation. They didn’t want to become involved.
(Better to remain aloof in a statesman-like fashion. The media was doing all the heavy lifting, in any case.) Instead, they confined their criticism to the purely political.
And indeed, it seemed as if the frenzied reaction to the Taoiseach’s embarrassing lapse in discipline before a crucial radio interview was dying down.
Then came Cowen’s cringe-inducing, belated and confusing apology on the evening news. It was awful. And while the Labour observers watched this political car crash, transfixed, from the sidelines, the Taoiseach’s Fianna Fáil colleagues suffered it personally with dismay in their hearts.
News of their unhappiness filtered down overnight to Percy French country. By yesterday morning, as Gilmore’s troops gathered on the lawn for the family photo, the talk was not of an election next year, but of Brian Cowen’s immediate future.
On Wednesday, most seemed to think the storm would pass and the Taoiseach, with no contenders willing to challenge, would limp on.
A day later and the whispers were ominous. Some senior Labour figures were beginning to doubt if Cowen would be able to hang on. Talk about talk of a heave was gaining pace.
“I don’t think he’ll make it,” confided one TD, in tones devoid of any point-scoring. This was the terrible side of politics, the one they all dread and most have witnessed at close hand. It doesn’t matter which side you are on, these occasions unsettle them all.
There was an edge to Eamon Gilmore’s final press conference, when he called for an immediate general election.
Gilmore, Kenny and the rest, they’ve been banging on about the need for an election for months now. But there was something about the way the Labour leader spoke that conveyed the feeling he really meant it this time.
Whether he wanted to or not. Maybe that was it – a slight tinge of fear, almost, to his confident words.
Was he right? The radio silence that descended on Fianna Fáil yesterday gave some credence to the shift in emphasis.
At the same time, in a bizarre twist to this extraordinary story, a story came in on the wires from Reuters that golfer Philip Walton – an Irish Ryder Cup hero in 1995 – was angered by reports that Brian Cowen had mimicked him during one of the comedy skits he performed for politicians and journalists during the now infamous pub session at Fianna Fáil’s think-in.
“You couldn’t make this up,” was the universal reaction in Roscommon to this latest development in Cowen’s unfolding nightmare.
It will make this saga international again.
Even before the Walton intervention happened, Gilmore was before the microphones declaring “this cannot go on”.
And it’s very, very, difficult to see how it can.
What a distraction. And distractions, the Government kept telling the nation, are something we do not want.
Thank heavens for Michael D who, as we mentioned earlier, was caught up in a distraction of his own.
He thought he had been thorough when outlining his CV. There are his “strings”, which he feels are more compelling than Fergus Finlay’s.
“He will bring his own strings to his advocacy for his nomination.” But wait.
Go bhfoire Dia! How could he have forgotten, and us all in Roscommon? So let us complete the record: Michael D was also honorary president of the Percy French Summer School. Dear
old Percy, who gave us The Mountains of Mourne, Phil the Fluther’s Ball and Are Ye Right there Micheal?
Michael D won’t be travelling by train on his campaign, and he’ll be going a lot further than from Ennis as far as Kilkee. But he will have a battle bus. “Oh yes, we must have a bus!” Keep us a ticket.
There was no singing at Labour’s think-in. Eamon said he was in bed early after “a glass of stout with warm milk and sugar”. Sensible, perhaps. After Phil the Fluther’s Ball in Blazers Bar in Galway, too many people are facing the music today.
It looks bad for Cowen.
By the way, has anybody seen the Greens? (Toot! Toot!)