Another taxing situation for Lowry, the Alan Partridge of Irish politics

LAST November on this page I compared independent TD (and former Fine Gael minister) Michael Lowry to Mario Balotelli, the petulant bad-boy of European football who once pulled up his shirt to reveal a t-shirt bearing the legend “why always me?”

I was wrong. I should have compared Lowry to the comedy figure Alan Partridge. Lowry has become the Alan Partridge of Irish politics.

Partridge briefly became a star with his own television chat show, one that lasted about as long as Lowry’s ministerial career. The story continued with Partridge’s decline to the rural backwater of Radio Norwich where he was important and blamed everybody but himself for his own misfortunes, to hilarious effect.