All bark and no bite, McDowell admits: ‘My view is irrelevant’

“MY view is irrelevant,” Michael McDowell announced. It was an extraordinary response to being asked whether he had confidence in the Taoiseach. He might just as well have added “and my party is ridiculous”.

Swaying dangerously on a razor-wire tightrope stretched to breaking point between moral certainty and electoral obliteration, the Tánaiste visibly struggled to remain upright at a hastily gathered news conference which at times lapsed into chaos.

As the high political drama unfolded live on Newstalk radio, the Taoiseach sat in his car on the way back from Mass to St Luke’s listening to his deputy, if not actually call him a liar, then strongly suggesting that Bertie Ahern and the truth had, at times, lost contact with each other over the years.

Then, emerging from a Sky News interview in which he had been asked directly if he was a crook, the so-called Teflon Taoiseach, still plastered in make-up from the TV encounter and covered in something far more difficult to clean-off from the maze-like twists and turns of the payments crisis, prepared to offer another explanation of his previous explanation for the seemingly unexplainable.

It is a very strange way to run a Government.

A very odd way to fight a General Election campaign.

We are not yet back in Gubu land, but we have crossed the border into weird territory.

It had been such glad morning at the Morrison Hotel, one week ago, as the PDs launched their manifesto and declared tomorrow still belonged to them.

Seven days later, the Tánaiste, abandoned by his parliamentary colleagues, gave a masterclass demonstration of hand-wringing, while struggling to keep his dignity and party together.

With brilliant flashes of his legal linguistic skills he insisted the Taoiseach had not lied to him as Mr Ahern had never told him something that was “expressly untrue”.

It was like one of those over dramatic TV movie press conferences were everybody shouts above each other to be heard and the central character turns on a switchblade from calm to angry and back again.

The $45,000 dollar question hanging over the room was whether the Tánaiste believes his boss.

We did not get a definitive answer.

Mr McDowell has called for yet another statement, Mr Ahern has indicated he will give one. They may both prove to be the last politically-relevant pronouncements from either man.

The pair meet on Tuesday at Stormont.

Perhaps they will pick up some tips from Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness on how a first and deputy minister can learn to trust each other.