Cowen isn’t up to it and the Government should go

IN relation to recent polls, pointing now with some consistency towards deep unease about the Government out here in the real world, what is at issue is not popularity, but confidence.

Does this Government know what it is at? Brian Cowen is very able, but he is not able for this job at this time. The evidence has been piling up for at least four years.

To take just one item: he missed what all practical politicians must have seen as a once-off golden opportunity when he formed his own Government to reshuffle Mary Harney out of Health to almost anywhere else. Fair? Gentle? Loyal? Maybe not entirely so, but exactly what a hard-headed politician on top of his game would have done.