I met a very irate Fianna Fail man recently. He was clearly seething at Enda Kenny's outburst against his leader. No doubt, the Fine Gael man has opted for the tough approach, presumably that is the advice he is getting from his handlers. It doesn't suit him at all well as he had always been seen as a decent man. The danger for him is that in his pursuit of power he is in danger of forgetting who exactly he is!

Anyway my man was no admirer of his and he asked what had Enda Kenny ever done to suggest that he has what it takes to handle the top job if is was to fall into his hands. He made the case that the main opposition leader has been thirty five years in Leinster House without a single achievement of note to his credit. In fact, he is now the longest serving deputy in the Dail! It was hard to argue the point with his detractor and I suppose this goes some way to explain why many of his party faithful don't think that he has what is required to lead their party back to power. It will be interesting to see how the new Enda Kenny takes it from here. Young tyros like Dr. Leo Varadkar and Lucinda Creighton have not forsaken well paid careers to languish in the back benches. Creighton has made that very clear and their leader is very conscious of where they stand and what they represent.

Dr. Varadkar isn't afraid to speak his mind whatever the occasion. He is on record as saying that the recent general election was, in fact, the first election campaign in decades where Fine Gael lost support. He claimed that Fianna Fail had "won the battle of those who made their minds up in the final days because Fine Gael had not won on policy or competence". I don't imagine that either would have much in common with the old guard. The leader cannot ignore men like that. Varadkar certainly made his presence felt when the no confidence motion was being debated. He was not in the least inhibited by the fact that he was making his debut in the House. He succeeded in getting up Bertie's nose in a big way with his no punches pulled approach. "History will judge the Taoiseach as being both devious and cunning, in the words of his mentor, master and, clearly, role model," Dr. Varadkar said. Tough words indeed. Bertie was stung by his "gutter comments."

"I'm big enough to take it, but when you hear a new deputy who isn't a wet day in the place not alone castigating me but castigating Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, I'd say he'd get an early exit,"was his re-action. The new Fine Gael man might do worse than to heed those words. No doubt, he was the subject of much back clapping from his party colleagues in the aftermath of that debate but he might well reflect on the fortunes of Madeleine Taylor-Quinn! The Clare deputy was the darling of her party when she engineered the removing of Jim McDaid from the Ministry for Defence but her own political career has all been down hill since. In fact it was only the threat of going it alone that got her added to the party ticket last time around.