Bertie ploughs on regardless but will the mud stick?

THEY say a politician in trouble ploughs a lonely furrow but the Taoiseach was never one to cultivate proverbs.

Just like in 1993, when friends gathered to pull him out of a personal quagmire, Bertie’s backers turned out in tractor-loads at the World Ploughing Championships yesterday with the communal urgency of a political hay-saving exercise.

“Never mind them oul’ gobshites,” a voice in the crowd roared as Bertie arrived at the Fianna Fáil tent to be mobbed by supporters and deafened by cheers and applause.

“Well done Bertie, don’t let them get to you,” encouraged one man. “Keep her going, Bertie,” called another; “Taoiseach, we love you,” one woman almost wept.

Someone had a death wish. “Have you any sterling?” they shouted. Bertie didn’t hear it over the sounds of hearty hands slapping his back. “We’ll battle on,” he said a little wearily.

The battle began the moment his chopper set down at 11.30am in the once-green fields of Grangeford, which 150,000 pairs of feet and fleets of outsize vehicles with outsize tyres had turned into a lumpy brown soup.

Jokes about mud sticking were on everybody’s lips but nobody wanted to admit to thinking in clichés. The mud, sick of being the butt of latent jocularity, hit back big time.

As the throngs of reporters swarmed around the Taoiseach, the brown goo literally flew. Up the legs of the hapless gardaí skating about in their attempts to maintain a protective ring around him, down the backs of the expensive suits of his handlers, smothering the nonsensical shoes of office-workers who had only ever seen mud before in jars in luxury spas, and splattering abstract patterns over camera lenses and recording equipment.

Bertie’s short green wellies looked as helpless as their owner, who gritted his teeth and sighed as he attempted a walkabout, trying to catch outstretched hands but avoid outstretched microphones.

“Can you survive as Taoiseach?” he was asked. “Can I survive this more like?” he replied.

It was all so different a few tents away where Michael McDowell arrived as if carried on an invisible hovercraft, practically floating on an air of confidence and remarking that the conditions provided a “firm to soft going — politically”.

Ostensibly, the Tánaiste was visiting the Progressive Democrats’ pitch to launch a party policy document. “I know you’re all here for this report — you’ve a great interest in rural planning,” he teased reporters.

Planning for a Rural Future was all he would talk about.

Planning for a future without Fianna Fáil was not on his agenda.

He paused under a canopy bearing the slogan “The best is yet to come”.

More accurately, Tuesday’s Dáil debate is yet to come. Whether it will be the best of times or the worst of times depends on how straight you plough your furrow.