John Bruton’s leadership set template for how to run a coalition government

With a political career that extended from his election to the Dáil in 1969 until retired as European Union ambassador to the United States in 2009, John Bruton leaves a rich and varied legacy of public service and applied commitment to democratic ideals.

Consideration of his life and career since his death on Tuesday at the age of 76 after a long illness inevitably reminds us not just of the contribution that he made to his country but also how that country and its politics has changed during that period.

He was the last, probably, of a certain type of old Fine Gaeler: with roots deep in the tradition of the Irish Parliamentary Party – so much so that he kept a portrait of John Redmond in his office; landed, probably, or in the professions, or the more genteel ends of commerce; their privilege lightened by a sense of obligation and service that, in Bruton at least, was a deeply Christian part of being a Christian Democrat.

His palpable antipathy to armed republicanism – sharpened by the murder of his friend Fine Gael senator Billy Fox by the IRA in 1974 – and his unwillingness to leave it outside the door made him an awkward figure when stewarding the early days of the peace process as taoiseach. Sinn Féin and the IRA never hid their discomfort with Bruton, nor he with them. Nowadays Fine Gaelers have to dress their antipathy to Sinn Féin in the garb of policy differences.

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His career threaded through an era when the simple choice in Irish politics was between Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil; either one party was in government (it was usually Fianna Fáil) or the other one was. That certainty was cracked irrevocably in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, the bailout and the subsequent period of austerity. The certainties of the Bruton era are gone; now Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael must cleave together to remain in government, as Sinn Féin eyes power on both sides of the Border.

An instinctive conservative, he pushed for change in the divorce referendum in 1995, leading from the front and making what may well have been a decisive intervention in the days before the vote. Not 30 years ago, remember, the country came within a whisker of voting (for the second time in a decade) to maintain a ban on divorce in the Constitution. Without Bruton’s late campaigning, it might well have.

But he also, like all successful politicians with long careers, learned he had to change himself, too. He overcame his scratchy history with Labour and his unease about the extra-parliamentary activities of the forerunners of Democratic Left to do a coalition deal with them in 1994, prompting Dick Spring to leave Bertie Ahern at the altar. The subsequent rainbow government, despite its stumbles on Northern Ireland, was a model of coherence and harmony, which delivered a package of reforming legislation and the State’s first budget surplus.

[ John Bruton: A life in pictures ]

Labour’s collapse at the 1997 election (Fine Gael, by contrast, gained nine seats) meant that Bruton lost out to Bertie Ahern in the race to become taoiseach. Ahern went to a rollercoaster ride over the following 11 years, for him and for the country, while Bruton was eventually taken down in yet another of Fine Gael internal heaves. Fianna Fáilers did him the compliment of celebrating when news of his defenestration came through.

But he left behind him a job well done. Bruton’s leadership set the template for how to run a Coalition government – stick to the programme for government, present a united front, listen to your partners’ interests – which was followed by his successors, including Ahern. It’s an important part of his rich legacy of public service.

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