How inert Enda failed to bank on his own lovely Lee

BEEN there, done that, thought I should have been Taoiseach.

Mere political pygmies like Winston Churchill may have had to wait 40 years in parliament before their full abilities were finally recognised by a grateful party and nation, but that was not a fate worthy of the likes of George Lee.

To some of us, eight months in the Dáil may not seem the longest of stints – indeed, it often felt like some of Mr Lee’s mesmerically monotone RTÉ reports went on for longer than his Oireachtas career – but it was enough for our man of destiny to realise he’d landed in Lilliput when he belonged in the Land of the Giants.

Why, he’d blown Dobbo away on the Six One News even more often than he’d outshone Anne Doyle’s garish Newbridge jewellery on the Nine? Didn’t this fool Kenny know who he was dealing with?

Mr Lee was keenly aware time was running out, he’d already thrown away his tantalisingly real chance of becoming the first president of Europe, thanks to his selfless embedding with Fine Gael, and now it looked like that upstart Ban Ki-moon was determined to thwart his chances of assuming his rightful mantle as Secretary General of the UN by insisting on serving another term.

George had to act quickly to save his reputation and explain to an exasperated nation why he had not yet led them out of the wilderness and into the sunny uplands of counter-cyclical, endogenous growth theory.

Mr Lee then realised the only option of dignity left open to him was to do what any self-respecting statesman would do – he talked to Joe as the RTÉ airwaves lit up with his hubris and woe.

We had not heard such tales of personal betrayal since Princess Diana went on Panorama in 1995 and declared that she would still be the Queen of Hearts.

Now, Ireland listened transfixed as Mr Lee enthroned himself as our very own Drama Queen of Hearts.

He told Fine Gaelers who felt let down that they didn’t “own” him, that he’d been “used” and “isolated” by the party big guns and that if this had been a personal relationship between him and Mr Kenny it would have broken down due to “irreconcilable differences”.

Heady stuff. It seemed there were three people in this political marriage of inconvenience, Mr Kenny, Mr Lee and Mr Lee’s ego.But, alas, Mr Kenny was too busy apologising to his already near mutinous troops over his bizarre train-wreck appearance on the Late Late Show, and his lack of basic policy knowledge, to notice that he needed to love-bomb the banks of his own lovely Lee.

As he ran for the Dublin South seat last June (oh, how long ago it seems... ), Mr Lee appeared to adore the limelight as he gave off repeated messianic messages that he was “doing it for the kids”.

How ironic then that when he came to it, his commitment to life in the Dáil didn’t even last as long as a full-term pregnancy.

RTÉ have to take him back and rumours immediately started circulating that he had turned down the job of hosting A Week In Politics as he thought that was far too long a commitment to give to politics.

But Mr Lee knows he can pick and choose, because Mr Lee knows he shares the fate of other historical luminaries once rejected by an ungrateful nation, then embraced in triumph as iconic totems once their true stature was finally realised.

Yes, fear not, for one day George will join the likes of Churchill, de Gaul, and, er, Jedward, in such a pantheon of the greats.