Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide

“APART from that it was a good press conference,” squirmed Dick Roche as the Cabinet ran ashen-faced from the wreckage of the Fianna Fáil manifesto launch.

As a description of the electrifying piece of political theatre which had just played out it was comparable to Emperor Hirohito’s upbeat assessment of his nation’s surrender after the second atomic bomb smashed down on Nagasaki: “The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”

Vincent Browne had bided his time before rising dramatically to lob a barrage of verbal hand-grenades in the direction of the Taoiseach.