Still standing, but few believe a word he says

IT was the week that Bertie Ahern said Irish politics was lying in the gutter — and the opposition shot back that the Taoiseach was just lying.

They accused him of lying in the Dáil and lying under oath in Dublin Castle — a rebuke which, if true, would mean the Taoiseach was lying in State (property). But, despite the calamitous battering taken by his reputation, as so often in the past, it was far too soon to start writing his political obituary.

It does not mark the end for Mr Ahern, but this week may well be the one we look back on to pinpoint the beginning of the end.

Ridiculed, abused and called a liar to his face in the Dáil, Mr Ahern saw his notional majority of 13 sliced back to five in the no-confidence vote that followed the ugly debate.

A mixture of incompetence and arrogance the following day meant the Government’s controversial policy of putting the Shannon crisis on auto-pilot almost crash landed as it scrapped home with one vote — its brakes screeching and an engine on fire during a very bumpy Oireachtas touch down.

The Taoiseach is starting to acquire the look of an unlucky leader. One who is buffeted by events rather than in command of them.

A number of Fianna Fáil TDs who are prepared to back him to the hilt in public will say privately they have as much difficulty believing the extraordinary twists and shifts in the evidence he gave to the Mahon corruption probe regarding the large and

numerous lodgments of monies into his accounts while finance minister in the mid-1990s, as most independent observers who watched Mr Ahern scramble in and out of the Dublin Castle witness box last Monday.

Those same FF TDs are ready to keep the faith, and thus keep the show on the road for now, but openly wince at the Taoiseach’s tortured, changing story of how Stg£30,000 appeared in his account in early 1995 supposedly after he entrusted a person he now cannot remember with a large amount of his savings to buy the currency.

If his own TDs do not believe him, it is hardly surprising a large majority of the country feels the same.

At the national ploughing championships, where he licked his wounds in a brief respite between the no-confidence mauling and the Shannon shambles, Mr Ahern was given a warm reception.

But often, once he had moved past, onlookers would laugh as they traded jokes about him doing a “sterling job” and wondering if he would be driving the “get-away car” back to Dublin. It is clear that the public do not hate him, but much of them do not believe him either and, dangerously, for many he is on the brink of becoming a bit of national joke.

The downturn in his fortunes has been hastened by an emboldened opposition no longer willing to show deference to an office they feel Mr ahern is robbing of dignity.

The Taoiseach may deride this coarsening of public life, but it just proves his memory must really be as dodgy as he makes out if he has forgotten the brilliantly effective way Fianna Fáil behaves like a pack of rabid dogs during its spells on the opposition benches.

And what about the possibility of an enemy within? The best speech from the Government benches during the no confidence debate was not the Taoiseach’s but Brian Cowen’s.

And ominously for Mr Ahern, it made scant reference to the boss, yet the Tánaiste managed to lay into the opposition as savagely as he did during the election campaign.

With the Taoiseach scheduled for another gruelling and, no doubt, credibility-sapping series of appearances at Dublin Castle starting from November, FF TDs are well aware they have a strong, popular alternative leader waiting in the wings should they suddenly decide on regime change.

The past five days have rocked the Taoiseach, but he is still standing.

However, 25 years on GUBU no longer stands for Grotesque, Unprecedented, Bizarre and Unbelievable in the unforgiving lexicon of political abuse, GUBU has now been transformed into the General Understanding Bertie’s Unbelievable.