As Dáil resumes, so does pressure for that democratic revolution

“EVENTS, my dear boy, events.” Harold Macmillan’s truism recast as cliché, ranks with the often inaccurately quoted aphorism of Enoch Powell about all political careers ending in failure as the great barstool platitudes on politics.

What Powell, lest we forget an Irish MP, actually said was “all political lives, unless they are cut off in the midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs”.

‘Time’ is the four letter word that forcibly sums up the natural law of politics. The largest object, figuratively at least, in any minister’s office is the clock. On arrival it generously predicts vast expanses of time to achieve policy ambitions, and enjoy the spoils of office.