Colonel Flustered’s battle plans a real mystery

UNFORTUNATELY for a party trying to put all that unpleasantness behind it, the imposing grey manor house chosen for Fine Gael’s parliamentary get-together is the perfect location for a murder mystery.

Thunder rolled ominously over the sumptuous grounds of Faithlegg Hotel as the suspects, sorry loyal deputies, gathered to praise their leader Enda Kenny, not to bury him.

It was Prof Glum, Richard Bruton, in the shadow cabinet room with the rope who tried to put Enda in his box last time.

But Prof Glum hadn’t really thought the whole thing through and, in the end, only had enough rope to hang himself, as Enda, Colonel Flustered, put in a surprisingly strong fight back and refused to be bundled into an early political grave, thus dashing Miss Scarlet’s, Lucinda Creighton’s, long-savoured plans to dance upon it.

But all that was ages ago and now, 12 weeks later, it’s all so different as the Fine Gaelers couldn’t be happier together.

Lighting never strikes twice, surely? Oh dear, was that another fork of electricity from the sky crashing down dangerously close to Faithlegg House as the thunder continued to roll?

And to think things had started out so gloriously on a sun-kissed South Eastern afternoon – then, Mr Kenny began an al-fresco press conference and as soon as he announced the party was now completely united behind him (even though he was surrounded by precious few rebels) the skies opened and Enda was hit by a rain storm. It felt like a rush of tears from heaven – and after all, the Baby Jesus hates liars.

Damp, but determined, Mr Kenny went on to add Fine Gael was now on an election footing, which at least made a change from the party’s usual stance of a (civil) war footing.

Back in Dublin, Anglo Irish was belatedly being split into a Very, Very Bad Bank and a Quite Naughty But We Need To Keep It Going To Save Face Bank after the EU finally put its foot down.

Sadly, European hopes of splitting the Irish Government into a Good Government and a Bad Government floundered when they failed to find any assets to put into the former. Faithlegg stirred from its self-obsessed simmerings of post-heave suspicion to acknowledge the financial news and express despair at what Michael Noonan branded a fudge with a €30 billion price tag for taxpayers.

Fine Gaelers then retreated back inwards and tried to get down to the serious business of tearing themselves away from tearing themselves apart and figure out how to fight non-Blueshirts and keep the massing Labour hordes at bay – and it seems that battle plan remains a mystery about which they still just don’t have much of a Cluedo.