Battling for the ceremonial impotence of being an earnest President

IT’S completely illogical, but I still have the feeling that there’s a president-shaped person hiding in the long grass somewhere, who will emerge in the coming weeks to a chorus of “the very man/woman”.

If that were to happen, media would be thrilled, because media currently regards the presidential election as pretty close to Hamlet without the prince, or Cinderella without the princess, and the arrival of a previously unimagined candidate would set fire to the context.

We do, of course, currently have more than enough candidates to be going on with, even if some of them haven’t yet harvested enough county council eggs to make a presidential omelette: Michael D, Mary Davis, David Norris, Sean Gallagher and now Gay Mitchell.