Some familiar faces are about to leave the political scene: Bertie Ahern, Ian Paisley and George Bush next January. Unthinkable as it may have been six months ago, Gordon Brown could be about to join them. Mr Brown is such an unfortunate man that if he were to keep ducks they would surely drown. His popularity ratings have sunk so low that many of his backbenchers are casting their minds back to November 1990, when the Tories passed the black spot to Margaret Thatcher. They have, the conspirators believe, two years until the next election, time enough for a new leader to be established, for things can only get better with someone else in charge. This may sound drastic, but a poor performance by New Labour in the May local government elections may well add to the pressures on the beleaguered Prime Minister to step down.
These days he finds himself confronting many of his MPs over his decision, as Chancellor, to scrap the 10p tax threshold and thus to take money out of the pockets of some 5.3 million people in the poorest levels of society. Very few Labour MPs picked up on the iniquity of this proposal when it was announced a year ago, but recent swingeing increases in the price of bread, milk, cereals and other basic foodstuffs have exacerbated the situation. People faced with rising bills for fuel, energy, rent and mortgage payments are told that their tax bills are to increase in an exercise which they see as being designed to alleviate the tax bills of the better-off, at the expense of the less well-off. In vain may Mr Brown and his loyalists argue that the lot of the poor has increased over the 11 years of Labour rule: eaten bread is soon forgotten, and many former Labour voters have become disenchanted. They are unlikely to vote for the Tories, but they are very likely to stay at home on election day.
In the past, supranational forces have compelled Labour and other British politicians to make decisions that were unpalatable to them, such as the International Monetary Fund laying down the law to Labour Chancellor Denis Healey in the 1970s. Mr Brown and his Chancellor are free agents as the authors of their own tax regimes and they seem to be hell bent on a course of wilful self-destruction.
A Labour peer remarked last week that Mr Brown was giving the people a diet of porridge and haggis, nourishing enough to be sure, but hardly appetising. It was acknowledged by all, when Mr Brown took over last June, that he was a different proposition from his predecessor, Mr Blair. Blair was Flash Harry, but Brown was no Flash Gordon. He was seen as dull, uncharasmatic and humourless, but for all that, a safe pair of hands, and a welcome relief from the spin and the hoopla which characterised the Blair era. He has, in effect, proved to be cack-handed, inept and frequently "not at the meeting," as the colloquialism has it.
Last week's visit to Washington was a case in point. Perhaps Mr Brown hoped that some of their shine would rub off onto him from his 45-minute meetings with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. However, Brown and his counsellors were ill-advised to land in the American capital at the same time as Pope Benedict. The White House is adept at orchestrating the PR surrounding such visitations, and the Vatican is no slouch either. The result was that the British premier was virtually ignored by the American media. A touch of farce was added when he was forced to interrupt his schedule to phone home in order to persuade an obscure parliamentary secretary not to resign over the tax issue.
More trouble is brewing for Brown over his determination to push ahead with legislation to extend to 42 days the period during which suspects can be detained for questioning. This has upset many people of liberal conscience in British public life, as well as Labour backbenchers, and it allows the Tories to pose as defenders of freedom. This again is an issue which Mr Brown has brought upon himself, but he continues to persist doggedly with it. It is this lack of flexibility that has caused disillusion with Mr Brown's leadership, not only with the public at large, but within the ranks of his own party.
He is also perceived to be something of a ditherer, from his on-off election gambit last autumn, through the contrived solo signing of the Lisbon Treaty, to the decision to avoid the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics but to attend the closing ceremony, citing the 2012 London venue as requiring him, by protocol, to be in attendance at the wind-up in Beijing.
One despairs of British politics. Jack Straw, alarmed at the low turn-outs, – about 60% in recent general elections – has threatened to fine people or, to dock their entitlements if they do not go out to vote. Should this measure come to pass, there will be an awful lot of spoiled votes with rude messages written on them in the ballot boxes. The greatest threat to British democracy is the mediocrity of its politicians.
In evidence, the court heard that the defendant had been observed by police to be in a state of profound intoxication, so unsteady in his gait and uncertain of his ability to walk that he could propel himself along only by recourse to the support which he got from the railings surrounding a public park. His defending solicitor apologised for the abusive attitude he took towards the police, but pointed out that the defendant should be given some credit for deciding not to use his car to take him home. "Instead," said the RM, "he was going home by rail."
The Bushmills whiskey distillery has been celebrating the 400th anniversary of the date 1608, which appears on its bottles. The distillery was actually founded in 1784 and pressed on the matter, a spokesman for the company conceded that the 400th anniversary refers to the 1608 'licence to distil' granted to a large area of County Antrim in which Bushmills happens to be located. Sez he, "Bushmills does not make the claim that it has been in existence since 1608. We couldn't because there is no proof."
Aer Lingus has finally agreed that tickets inadvertently issued at ¤5 for a flight in business class to New York will be honoured, with travellers going economy class. This has not satisfied some punters who are insisting on full business class perks and comforts as advertised.
With Irish companies offering flights at 10 cent these days, you could not blame people for imagining that they were being offered a bona fide deal.
The new Heathrow Terminal 5 has finally cleared its luggage backlog. Aer Lingus is not the only airline that has been making a bags of things, lately.
Exercise in Irish one-upmanship: Spotted above an 8ft door in the arrivals area at Dublin Airport a notice - 'Mind Your Head'.
