Teflon Taoiseach 2.0
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello and welcome to this, I suppose you could call it our Christmas edition of Path to Power. So happy Christmas to all of you. I'm delighted that today we're joined by Daniel McConnell, who is the editor of the Business Post and by John Lee, executive editor of the Irish Daily Mail. That's great to have you with us. Thanks for having us back. I know you'll be back next week when we'll be doing our sort of end of year review. And I sort of thought we'd get to an end of year review this week, except I suppose it's a review of Michal Martin and his position as leader of Fianna Fáil that we're going to be discussing, given that we had the parliamentary party meeting on Tuesday night to discuss the much delayed report into the presidential election debacle.
And there have been a lot of people saying during the week that this is sort of an inside politics thing. The public has moved on, that they don't really care about it, that it doesn't really matter. We know it was a disaster. The intricacies aren't important. But I'd actually argue that it's important for different reasons. It's important because it has weakened Michal Martin's hold on the leadership of Fianna Fáil and it has then, by extension, weakened his hold on the position of Taoiseach. So what I'd like for us to discuss is, does he get all the way to the end of 2027 as planned, as leader of Fianna Fáil and as Taoiseach? Or will Fianna Fáil move to replace him with somebody else who would have had the experience of having been Taoiseach before going into the 2029 election?
And I think it raises all sorts of interesting questions as to his judgment and his performance and as to whether his past is of any relevance to the parliamentary party members of Fianna Fáil and to their future. But I think it also raises a lot of questions about their ability, given that we had a gang who might like to take him down. And not only could they not shoot straight, they couldn't even get a shot off.
They couldn't even count the numbers. You know what I mean? As we know, and John and I have been... Many years walking the corridors, I mean, your basic arithmetic is important. You need to be able to have the numbers if you're going to do anything. And in the run-up to this, all of them would say, we have the numbers, we have more than enough numbers, we can do it, and we're waiting for this publication of this report. We were told that if it was confirmed that €400,000 was the cost of this thing, this debacle, then he's gone, all that kind of stuff. It's come to nothing. On one level, you say, without question, Micheál Martin is damaged. His judgment is in question. He's had a shocker in relationships.
And this was his whiz. This was his enterprise. This was his journey from start to finish. But on another level, you have to just admire the masterclass of brass neckery by Micheál Martin over the last year.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–10:57
2
What is the Christmas edition focus and who are the guest editors?
10:57–12:37
3
How did the presidential election report trigger doubts about Micheál Martin's leadership?
12:37–22:32
4
Why do commentators say Fianna Fáil 'couldn't even get a shot off' in the internal challenge?
22:32–46:08