From The Illustrated, July 16, 2021
Reading Cusack’s Readings: The Prime Minister’s Book Club
From
In Safe Hands: The Radical Government, 2013-2023, by Jeptha Barbour, published 2023 by Albatross English
“...Cusack was having a bad home stretch to his leadership campaign as well. He refused to commit to standing for re-election or joining Charles Beck’s cabinet if the Deputy Prime Minister won. When asked by a reporter, he said he would “consult friends and family” first. His advisors wanted to avoid the Radicals assuming that they could vote for Beck and still get Cusack. He made this problem worse at a hustings on that Friday, where he refused to unequivocally say that he would serve in a government led by the Deputy Prime Minister or the Chancellor. Perhaps more damagingly, he responded to a question of whether he could one day take up the leadership of the Irish branch of the Radicals with something other than a denial, instead merely saying he was “flattered” by the possibility. That he was any more than flattered was afterwards vehemently denied by the Cusack campaign. But not too hard - he didn’t want to look like his home town was beneath him. It made the candidate look impulsive and indecisive at the same time.
Some Radicals started to wonder if Cusack was putting himself ahead of the good of his party. There had been constant gossip in the run-up to Helen Kendrick’s resignation, and all the way through the leadership election to succeed her, that at any moment Cusack would resign from cabinet and his Westminster seat to return to Dublin, either to take the leadership of the Irish Radicals from the beleaguered Sinead Price or to simply return to law and the courtroom, which was where many allies and opponents suspected his passion truly lay.
This was always vehemently denied by Cusack and his team - his brother Jacob especially believed rumours of returning to Dublin were planted by Beck to create an aura of dual loyalty and to alienate Irish colleagues and supporters. In his mind, denials of leaving Westminster would give the impression that, like many a Dublin boy made good, Ireland and its inhabitants were now beneath Kieran Cusack. Jacob, who had lived in London and worked in national politics since the age of 20, seemed far more concerned about this than the Trinity-educated Cusack.
Some pundits and Jacob Cusack wondered aloud over how Cusack’s Irishness and Catholicism would play to Radicals and the electorate at large, especially in Scotland and some big cities. Memories of sectarian protests and disturbances after Pope Innocent’s 2011 tour of Britain lingered. But Cusack’s background was in many ways an asset: his soft Dublin accent comes across as classless to many English voters, and he could speak to “regional” issues with far more credibility than Beck ever could. His foreignness gave him an air of authenticity that most of his political generation lacked. But at the same time, there were constant whispers that at any moment, Kieran could just “go back home.” Irishness was a liability in how it added to a perception of Cusack as impulsive, unready and immature. It kept coming back to age.
The age factor was never really about age. It was always code for (a lack of) experience, accomplishment and judgement, which as Cusack caught up to the frontrunner was increasingly being brought to the fore. Beck provoked laughter when in a debate he sarcastically remarked that Cusack’s “long years of service” were his greatest asset. Only forty, with six years of parliamentary experience, many wondered if he too little enough for voters to trust and identify with him. On the other hand, Cusack’s supporters threw this back at Beck. With his thirty years of controversies, scandals and backroom deals with two messy divorces to top it off, many questioned if the deputy PM had lived too much…”
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