Republican News · Thursday 6 June 2002

Kenny to lead Fine Gael

As we go to print, Fine Gael has announced that Enda Kenny is to be its new party leader. Banished to the beck benches after he was beaten by Michael Noonan last year, Kenny has now come back to wrest control of what is widely regarded as a poisoned chalice.

Young Fine Gael, the youth group that brought you a poster of a man and a woman having sex for the Nice Treaty, with the legend "yes, yes, yes", had to do some growing up this week when they found that their motion for democratic elections of the party leadership had been unceremoniously put aside.

Despite a successful Fine Gael Árd Fheis motion to the contrary, the consideraby culled parliamentary party, its TDs, MEPs and senators, decided that it would elect the new party leader without any input from the rest of the allegedly 25,000-strong organisation.

The eventual selection on Wednesday of Kenny, who beat off Richard Bruton, Phil Hogan and Gay Mitchell for the leadership, was emblematic of the Golden Circle mentality that reduces the major decisions of political life in this country to whisperings in the Dáil Bar.

Kenny declared that "Fine Gael's mourning period is over" but he has already had a lack lustre and inauspicious start.