All this spin is making us dizzy, so give it to us straight before we’re sick

Stinker opinion polls about any government that is well into its period in office create a ritual dance between commentators on the one side, and, on the other, the lads and lassies in power.

As well as analysis of recent face-in-mud episodes, the commentators inevitably announce that the Government, three years into office, is arrogant, out of touch, listening to nobody and living in a bubble. In response, some Government spokespeople shake their tawny locks, scattering the usual hail of virtuous claims that because they’ve been working like dogs, so they have, they haven’t had the time for ‘spin’. They modestly accept that the Government party or parties have ‘failed to get the message out’. It’s all, in short, down to communications. Get those PR guys in here and tell them what’s what.

Of course, it’s not all down to communications. People didn’t fail to vote for Coalition candidates in the recent local elections because of maggotty press releases. Labour voters went over the wall to Sinn Féin because — rightly or wrongly — they believed their guys had been subsumed by Fine Gael. The voters who last time around plumped for Fine Gael because they believed that party would take a bad situation by the scruff of the neck and shake sense into it, failed to vote FG this time around because they were getting tired of the party catching them, the voters, by the scruff of the neck and shaking money out of them.