Bertie steps into Maggie’s slogan shoes

WHEN Bertie Ahern wants to spur the masses, he turns to the Iron Lady rather than the Republican men of steel.

Far from being driven by the words of Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone or the poetry of Pádraig Pearse, the self-declared Republican Party is inspired by the words of the decidedly anti-republican Margaret Thatcher.

Fianna Fáil’s slogan for this summer’s General Election is The Next Steps Forward — echoing Thatcher’s bombastic speech to The College of Europe in Belgium in 1988.