Taoiseach’s tribulations are all of his own making

What an awful – and unnecessary – palaver that was about the timing of the general election. Ministers like Simon Coveney trying to assert that the Taoiseach had been consistent all along; how utterly loyal Simon is these days – and how utterly wrong he was on this occasion.

Because it was the Taoiseach who was the author of all his misfortune; he had been saying for months that it would be 2016 but in the past few weeks he began to change his tune.

It came to a head last Monday week when he refused to give a straight answer on timing to RTE’s Teresa Mannion who interviewed him in Mayo. I think she may have asked four times. And then later in the week, he displayed the same ambivalence until he pulled the shutters down on Sunday.

It was clear there was a school of thought in Fine Gael which wanted the election, including several Ministers.

If this had been Britain and the Tories, the election would have been held in November. But it isn't – and there were two factors that mitigated against an early election.

The first was the Labour Party; it just didn't want it. You talked to anybody who mattered among its high-ups (and I spoke to a lot of them) and they told you the whole thinking was spring.

The Fine Gael side kept on saying that Howlin wanted November but his colleagues in Labour were adamant that wasn't the case.

It wasn’t that Labour threatened to pull the nuclear button. It was just that if Kenny wanted to take a decision to go for November and then needed to rely on Labour for support to form a government, it might present a difficulty – especially if the party performed poorly and blamed Fine Gael for pulling the rug from under them.

The Conservatives were ruthless about this but the calculus here is different. Elections results are never as clear-cut. Besides, our parties aren't really as cut-throat as their British counterparts.

The second factor was Kenny himself. I don't believe he had ever plumped for November but he was trying to play it both sides.

As Stephen Collins reported in The Irish Times last week he was leaning towards it. But by no means had he made his mind up.  By the end of the week, the wind changed, and he was leaning away from it.

My own view is that Fine Gael strategists wanted voters to get more into an "election frame of mind" rather than the non-thinking wishy-washy views you get at mid-term.

If people were thinking election and if the Budget was good and if the succeeding opinion polls were very good, then Fine Gael would pull the trigger.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.