Muesli comments only give Greens something to chew on

TREVOR Sargent is unique. No other political leader alive can get a cheer for simply mentioning organic wine in the first paragraph of the opening address of an annual party convention.

No other party would kick off a national convention with just 22 bodies present in the room for its leader’s opening address.

And no other party would give the floor to a 17-year-old intent on getting a dedicated skateboard park for Kilkenny.

But the Greens are a different breed of political party, one in which deputy leader Mary White refers to the “lonesome cry of the Golden Plover” in keynote speeches.

And there’s no harm in any of that, nor in the by-now infamous McDowell cliché of this sandal-wearing, muesli-chewing bunch.

Indeed, the very best of the Greens’ hardcore, acoustic-guitar-playing, child-in-tow, protest-T-shirt-wearing members are quite chuffed at the twisted logic of Michael McDowell’s rants.

It has given them ample ammunition to fire back and this weekend they did so with gusto. Hardly a speech went by without the verbal battle of the muesli being referred to.

Playing on Minister McDowell’s outbursts, chairman John Gormley even had some other suggestions for his constituency colleague’s next attack. “He forgot to mention the brown rice,” he told an audience not immune to cars smelling of chip shops.

“We Greens will always find the sandal infinitely preferable to the jackboot,” Gormley continued to yelps of approval.

There was lots more where that came from but, try as I might, there was actually not a single pair of open-toed sandals to be seen.

Nevertheless, there was no mistaking the colour of this conference. From children running up and down the aisle during the leader’s speech to eco-friendly wood pellets for sale in the lobby, it was definitely Green.

Nowhere else would you get a finance spokesman belting out an acoustic version of a Boomtown Rats’ number at 2.30 in the morning.

And nowhere else could you accidentally put a down payment on an arctic timber log cabin if you had one too many and took a wrong turn at the bar.