It probably sounded like a great pitch at the time: hold two referendums on International Women’s Day, own the results on the day after, and then celebrate 24 hours later on Mother’s Day.
The women will love it.
“Patriarchal and patronising” pronounced opponents of the proposals, including those of the view that a decent dollop of patronising patriarchy never did a girl any harm.
The electorate agreed, dishing out an unprecedented drubbing to the Government and all the Opposition political parties bar one: the one with only one TD, Aontú, whose leader, Peadar Tóibín, did one hell of a job.
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The biggest No vote in a referendum in the history of the State came in the referendum on care.
‘Two wallops’ for Government as No-No vote emerges strong
But if success has many fathers, Senator Michael McDowell, universally acknowledged as the principal driving force behind the No campaign, was the daddy of them all.
A formidable lawyer, he lost the power of speech on Saturday once the scale of the Government’s loss became apparent. All he could do was purr, watching contentedly while the combined might of a nation’s elite political forces disappeared under the landslide.
McDowell was like the cat who got the cream, the dream and the extra sardine.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar fell back on quoting that old adage about success when he tried to put a brave face on the rout. “Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan… a lot of people got this wrong.”
Clearly, the Taoiseach wasn’t going to be left holding the referendum twins even if he was proud to call them his babies before reality set in.
Success has many fathers, failure has many fall guys. This seemed to make Leo feel better about the fiasco.
In the face of such a crushing rejection, Varadkar seemed almost disconnected from the carnage. He was certainly shielded from any of the unpleasantness outside in the courtyard as selfie-stick howlers and hectorers roamed the cobbles live-screaming themselves to the looniverse.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald had to beat a dignified but hasty retreat from a media briefing when the crowd went from roaring questions to shouting insults at her on behalf of “the Irish people”.
“Do you know what a woman is, Mary? Do you know what a woman is, Mary?”
“Traitor! Traitor!”
One woman, well-known as an early acolyte of right-wing conspiracy theorist Gemma O’Doherty, pushed forward, phone and selfie-stick aloft. “Do you think [Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth] Roderic [O’Gorman] should resign?”
McDonald looked around, brow furrowed.
“She’s sayin’: do you think Roderic should resign?” bellowed a man beside her.
The Sinn Féin leader prepared to leave the scrum. Senator Lynn Boylan moved with her.
“Don’t be proddin’ me with your elbow,” squawked the veteran in-yer-face woman at a bemused Boylan. “Don’t you assault me, please.”
Certain courtesies must be observed, but only by one side.
“Please don’t knock me over,” she yelped at one point, from the centre of a rolling maul.
“She’s an old lady, have some respect,” howled her irony-free sidekick.
For the ambitiously alternative Sinn Féin, it is the stuff of nightmares – community activists waking up in the middle of the night with their ‘Time For Change’ T-shirts drenched in sweat
At the same time, a side door was discreetly unlocked to allow some journalists and crew to leave without being followed and hassled. A few more gardaí arrived at the scene after the Mary “Get out of here, nobody wants ya” Lou barracking, and security was tightened.
In the entire day, three Government representatives turned up to face the music. Three.
Minister of State with responsibility for Media Thomas Byrne walked in through the main gates, where he shook hands with McDowell and did some interviews.
Roderic O’Gorman and the Taoiseach came and went via a different entrance. They gave separate press conferences in a room with many doors somewhere in the upper reaches of the castle, accessed by a winding staircase.
O’Gorman looked very much on his own. Varadkar was preceded by a raft of senior advisers, some from the Tánaiste’s staff holding a watching brief. Tánaiste Micheál Martin was in Cork and never, one suspects, happier to be there.
O’Gorman and Varadkar didn’t venture near the cobbles and they didn’t stick around for the official declaration of results. This went down very badly.
“It’s really disappointing that no Government representative is here. It sums up their attitude throughout the campaign to those of us standing up for carers and people with disabilities,” said Michael O’Dowd, co-founder of the Equality Not Care group.
A downcast O’Gorman, confidently predicting a double victory a week earlier, struggled to hide his dismay at the outcome. Varadkar strolled in with a well prepared mea-culpa, putting his hands up as leader of the country and fully accepting the foreseeable shambles of this ill-judged constitutional frolic as a joint debacle.
No excuses followed plenty of excuses.
“Clearly we got it wrong,” he said, outlining the obvious missteps in such detail that it was hard to figure out how he never twigged any of them when they were being flagged from inside and outside Leinster House.
His was a strangely nonchalant act of concession.
The Government’s heart was in the right place; the people are sovereign, you win some you lose some, and now it’s time to move on.
But who had the big idea to hold the referendums on International Woman’s Day in the first place when it was clear that there was doubt about the wording, tone and implication of the entire enterprise?
“It was never a particular consideration,” insisted the Taoiseach unconvincingly, waffling on about slipping timelines and dates.
“There was never a particular – eh – that day being chosen for any kind of particular reason, eh, if that makes sense,” he babbled.
Then he left. We know not how. Perhaps making good his escape from the castle – Red Hugh O’Donnell style – through an underground tributary of the River Poddle on his raft of senior advisers.
Had he taken a gander from the top of the turret before legging it, Leo would have observed a very large Fine Gael peloton back-pedalling furiously from a confusingly cack-handed campaign, their ranks considerably augmented by political back-pedallers from Fianna Fáil and the Greens along with Sinn Féin, Labour and the Social Democrats, all now regretting that they didn’t move that fast before roping themselves into the Government’s faulty line.
With many Coalition big-hitters ostentatiously melting into the shrubbery, Opposition leaders were furiously polishing their caveats and presenting them to the media for inspection.
They wanted the best for disabled people, carers, families and women, so they plumped for the two Yes votes, despite grave reservations. They held their noses and did it, even though they knew in their heart of hearts that the Government was going to make a hames of everything.
And weren’t they right?
For the ambitiously alternative Sinn Féin, it is the stuff of nightmares – community activists waking up in the middle of the night with their “Time For Change” T-shirts drenched in sweat, dreaming of a laughing Leo Varadkar telling them: “We’re all The Establishment now!”
But on the happy other side, a selection of unlikely bedfellows found themselves in possession of a rare and wonderful Royal Flush – the defeat of all three Coalition partners along with the main parties of the Opposition.
Exit all, pursued by a vacuum.
But the unlikely bedfellows are preparing to step into that space.
Aontú's Tóibín and Independent Senator Ronán Mullen and their reinvigorated battle buddies from the religious right are eyeing it up.
The campaigners seeking proper, as opposed to tokenistic, equality for carers and people with disabilities feel the vote could be a turning point for them too.
The cameras focused on McDowell, standing in the middle of a line of fellow Independents, their arms linked. When the result was announced, they buck-lepped and cheered like general election winners
And Michael McDowell, the former tánaiste and leader of the Progressive Democrats, who is like a man reborn since he took the No campaign by the scruff of the neck and made people sit up and think seriously about how they should vote, is dropping hints about a political comeback.
He was the darling of the No set on Saturday and was loving every minute. He was the toast of his fellow Independent Senators and a few independent TDs to boot. They came to support him, like a ready-made new political party.
A little “McDowell for President” vibe was starting up on social media.
Would he be nursing any thoughts in that direction?
“I don’t think Duke would be too keen on the Park,” he purred, referring to his beloved canine companion.
Seriously.
“No comment.”
And the talk of a new political party, which has been gaining ground in the last few weeks?
“NO COMMENT, in capitals, either,” he replied with a Cheshire cat smile.
The senior counsel said he didn’t take on the challenge of facing down the Leinster House establishment for political reasons. He was doing this because the amendments proposed by the Government were an affront to the Constitution, hence the donning of his Law Library three-piece suit for all his public outings.
He’ll have to be cut out of that waistcoat.
So he was offended by the sloppy wording?
“Not sloppy wording. It was all wokeism…demeaning window-dressing.”
Down on the cobbles, two men clutching cardboard shields with the words “People of Ireland” on them unfurled a banner saying “Woke is Dead”.
The No campaign was a very broad church, not that the high-ups in Government noticed.
McDowell agreed that he would not share the opinions of some of his more conservative comrades on the winning side, but he was adopting the wartime imperative of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
A small crowd gathered in the large hall. The cameras focused on McDowell, standing in the middle of a line of fellow Independents, their arms linked. When the result was announced, they buck-lepped and cheered like general election winners.
Among them were Independent TDs Noel Grealish, Marian Harkin and Verona Murphy and Independent group Senators Mullen, Gerry Craughwell and Sharon Keogan.
Independent Senator Tom Clonan chose to stand away to the side, near the disability campaigners. “We’re not interested in drawing attention to ourselves,” smiled Ann Marie Flanagan of the Equality Not Care campaign. They had got the result and the “vindication” they wanted.
Some of the group went to a party afterwards in the Ranelagh home of Geraldine Breen, McDowell’s right-hand woman when he was in the PDs.
Before the declaration, he took a copy of the Constitution from his waistcoat pocket. Not a well-thumbed version, but a brand new one.
“Pristine and inviolate,” he purred.
