For once a true summer crisis — and nobody’s home

POLITICS, during the summer, is as dead as vaudeville.

Of course at the same time we need to ink our pages, even during the most taciturn and underwhelming days of silly season.

Since the dawn of civilisation, government ministers tend to disappear during August leaving one or two ministers on duty.

On very slow weeks, somebody will mention at a news conference that the Taoiseach is out of the country.

That will lead to the inevitable question from a senior editorial person: “Well if he’s abroad, who else had skived off? And who has been left behind to run the country?”

Occasionally, fate will deliver a golden hand and information will come back confirming that the only minister who’s still around is the most junior, gaffe-prone, incompetent, ill-regarded and generally most hated minister.

The next step in the process will be to find a crisis of some kind — no matter how unimportant — and then take the silk purse (a marginal rise in unemployment figures; some hospital cock-up) and make a proper pig’s ear of it.

“CRISIS AND LOOK WHO’S LEFT RUNNING THE COUNTRY?” will scream the (totally unjustified and totally over-the-top) headline, the following morning.

Yes, it’s cynical and it can be a cheap shot. But it can also be highly effective. John Prescott was Tony Blair’s deputy prime minister and the man in charge of the country when the PM was abroad. But the man who was nominally running the country was photographed playing croquet with his staff in his summer residence. That did untold damage to the country.

Last Sunday, we saw this phenomenon at its worst when the Sunday Independent launched Scuds of outrage and bombast in the direction of Tánaiste Brian Cowen.

His crime? He had gone off on holidays to the Algarve. The crisis? The housing market had collapsed and the economy was in freefall. I don’t know about you but somehow I didn’t notice Armageddon last weekend. It just seemed to pass me right by.

The fact is that crises during the summer are usually more manufactured than real. The last really deep summer crisis to beset a government here happened in 1982, with the sensational news that double murder suspect Malcolm MacArthur had been staying in the flat of then Attorney General, Patrick Connolly. The AG was due to fly out on his holidays to the US the next day and refused to alter his plans. The Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, was on his holiday island of Inisvickilaun and either at the end of either a very bad line or a very good wine. When first contacted he didn’t grasp the depth of the crisis. The following day — when all hell broke loose — he cottoned on very quickly.

But then, just when we thought silly season had reached its nadir, along came a real crisis. Not only did it catch the Government completely off guard, it also found both main opposition parties with their eyes off the ball — their transport spokespersons were nowhere to be seen this week.

What was extraordinary about the Aer Lingus story was that, for once, the ‘who’s left running the country?’ attack was valid. Since the announcement on Tuesday, the Government has given us the benefit of one full sentence.

The Taoiseach won’t speak. The Transport Minister won’t speak. The Enterprise Minister won’t speak. The Finance Minister won’t speak. And only belatedly did the Defence Minister speak. Willie O’Dea said he was aghast at the disgraceful decision. Sure, wasn’t everybody in the mid-west similarly aghast?

The question for O’Dea is: what is the Government going to do about it? It’s all very well for Willie O’Dea to criticise Aer Lingus but if the Taoiseach and the relevant government ministers are not going to do anything, or not even going to say anything, all he’s involved in is an exercise to give him political cover.

The Government made a huge play about safeguarding Heathrow slots and ensuring balanced regional connectivity when it allowed Aer Lingus to cut the apron strings. Was this part of an under-the-table deal? Did senior Government ministers really only learn last Friday? Why didn’t the Government use its 25.4% shareholding as leverage?

The capitulation of deed and word has been a disgrace. And the Government’s continuing silence is an insult to the people of the mid-west and also to its backbench TDs. The problem with third-term governments isn’t that the citizens begin to grow indifferent to them; it’s that they begin to grow indifferent to the citizens.