Bruton like mosquito on hide-ing to nothing

GOD may love a trier but earthly audiences are much more demanding.

A performance has got to be a spectacular success or a graphic failure — Mr In-Between just doesn’t steal the spotlight.

However, that was the unenviable position Richard Bruton found himself in as he attempted to make Finance Minister Brian Cowen fluff his lines.

Like an uptight nanny chiding an affectionate uncle for giving the children too many sweets, Fine Gael’s number-cruncher had to try to make Cowen’s largesse appear criminally irresponsible.

Try as he did, Bruton couldn’t pull it off. The sweets tasted too good and nobody was thinking about future visits to the dentist.

The more he endeavoured, the more he looked like a street thug swiping Santa’s toy sack.

The sack opened up during yesterday’s budget was bulging with goodies. Tax cuts, welfare increases, extended reliefs and extra expenditure all spilled out gaily onto the playroom floor.

The minister even managed to chop the VAT on child car seats, so trying to make him look like the baddie was like pinning a cue card on your back bearing the words “Boo me”.

Still, Bruton persisted, buzzing about the chamber energetically, delivering stinging remarks about the Government’s questionable record on public services given their extraordinary wealth of resources.

At least he had the satisfaction of seeing Michael McDowell swish his tail in irritation as the Tánaiste took huffy umbrage at suggestions the PD’s beloved low-tax policies had only succeeded in bringing in more tax revenue.

“It’s called growth,” the Mighty Mac retorted. “Growth, growth, growth.”

His protestations didn’t appear to register with the two gentlemen to his right.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern barely lifted his head throughout the entire budget debate, preferring to adopt the pose of a recently sated lion lolling lazily under the midday sun.

As for Cowen, he made his opposite number look like an underweight mosquito trying to penetrate the hide of a buffalo. He didn’t even flick a hairy ear in response.

Labour’s Joan Bruton then strode onto the plain, hoping to make the more skittish creatures scatter in fear before her, but the stampede from the chamber had already taken place and by the time she got halfway through her critique, her verbal spears were falling on all of seven remaining Government deputies.

Bravely, she battled on, declaring herself brimful of scepticism at hearing a Fianna Fáil-led coalition claim they would spend prudently when an election lay within sight.

“You cannot get a leopard to change its spots,” she said.

But as yesterday’s opposition performance proved, it’s just as hard to get a powerful beast to walk to heel.