That there will be a reshuffle among Fine Gael ministers in a year's time is hardly news to the party's TDs. This has been their running assumption since the Government was formed a year-and-a-half ago.
When the big switcheroo takes place this time next year - on December 15th, to be precise - and Leo Varadkar becomes Taoiseach, he is certain to refresh his ministerial team. The leader of Fianna Fáil - and the leadership of that party will become an open question at that point, if it is not already - is likely to do the same, as both parties look to the inevitable run-in to the next general election.
It is part of the condition of being a politician that they think about jobs and their prospects all the time. This sounds conceited and self-centred, but the desire for politicians to promote themselves is a necessary condition for politics to work: otherwise nobody would run for election.
So when Varadkar indicated to his parliamentary party on Wednesday night that a big reshuffle is in the offing next year, he wasn’t telling them anything that hadn’t crossed their minds already. The question some Fine Gaelers were asking themselves was, why was he doing it now?
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They suggested various reasons to each other last night and this morning. An end-of-year rallying cry to the backbenchers and junior Ministers? A warning to Cabinet Ministers to keep in line in their Christmas interviews? A signal that it will be a different Government with him in charge? An acknowledgement that the next election will require a fresher campaigning face for the party than the one which didn’t work so well in 2020?
All of the above. But underlying all of it are three political facts of significant relevance.
The first is that Varadkar has not had a good year. Support for Fine Gael has fallen in every one of the four Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI opinion polls this year. And it fell in the last poll of 2020. That has spooked a lot of TDs; of course it has. Varadkar’s personal ratings have tumbled from the stratospheric numbers he enjoyed in the early months of the pandemic to the mid-40s, where he has the company of Micheál Martin and Mary Lou McDonald. Not much to choose between them.
Voters once thought there was something different about Varadkar, that he wasn’t a normal politician. There’s not much evidence of that now. And some Fine Gael TDs discuss quietly what this might mean in the next election. Last time, says one, the electorate did not buy the Varadkar offer. So it will have to be a different offer next time, won’t it? Not a different leader - few people think that Varadkar won’t lead the party into the next election - but a new appeal to voters.
Against this, one ally says, this was always going to be Varadkar’s most difficult year - last year he was taoiseach for half the year and next year he will be preparing to reassume the role.
The second fact is that the long-running, below-the-radar anxiety about the Garda investigation into his leaking of a document to his friend Dr Maitiú Ó Tuathail has still not reached a conclusion a year after its commencement. While there is little expectation anywhere that this will result in a prosecution (an eventuality that would have catastrophic consequences for him), either in legal or political circles, lots of people in Fine Gael have asked themselves - why is it still ongoing?
It will hang over him until it finishes, one way or another.
The third fact is this: the latter half of next year will be dominated by the preparations for that big change, and the political machinations that inevitably surround it. After all, the rotation of the taoiseach’s office within a government has never been attempted in Ireland before. It will introduce a new dynamic both within and between the Coalition parties next year. Reshuffles will only be a part of it.
