Go on admit it. You’ve said it. “I’ll tell you what this country needs: A dictatorship.”

Go on admit it. You’ve said it. Maybe you were watching the news and the Dáil was in uproar.

The Ceann Comhairle was ringing his bell, everyone was shouting from all sides and all you could hear was: “Iwillnotremindyouagaindeputy-ACeannComhairleifIcouldjust-Ahames!- WellitwasyerecrowdbroughtintheBankGuarantee-thedeputywilltakeherseat!DINGDING-BLUESHIRTS!-NorthernBankRobbery-DINGDING-Thatswhatshesaidtoolastnight-GOBACKTOKILDARE-TheDailissuspendedfortheafternoonDING.”

You took a slurp from your tea and said it: “I’ll tell you what this country needs: A dictatorship.”

At some point in wishy-washy democracies, ordinary decent people despair and dream about a different way, fantasise about the strong leader. A nice dictator now, mind. Not a complete lunatic who might make his or her cat the Tánaiste, or try to change the week to have eight days.

Take Vladimir Putin. (Well you could try but I’d say he slap the head off you in a fight.) Obviously he was democratically elected. And with only 64% of the vote, he comes in comfortably below the Suspicious Election Result Percentage That Dictators Get. Some would say he is a de facto dictator. But if you talk to enough people you’ll eventually find someone who begins a sentence with “Say what you like about Putin but ...” before describing how tough the bail laws are in Russia.

Putin has cultivated the strong man image with those pictures of him sitting on a horse topless (Putin, not the horse). Enda Kenny tried that for a while with the cycling shorts and we lapped it up. I partly blame fairy tales for our sneaking admiration for autocracy. Many of us have been brought up on stories of all-powerful kings and princes who just made things happen. There was never any democratic process to hold things up. There wasn’t time — just a few minutes before we fell asleep as children.

Take Sleeping Beauty. A king’s daughter is cursed by a fairy that one day she will prick her finger on a spindle and fall into everlasting sleep. The king has all the spindles destroyed. Just like that. We don’t hear about lobbying from the weaving sector. There was no debate in court about the fact spun thread — a valuable foreign currency during a time beset by ogres and billy goats gruff — is being ruined for personal reasons. Spindles are a problem so spindles have to go. THAT’s leadership. One strong noble leader is all you’d want. Fair, but firm, sitting on a throne dispensing justice and destroying tools.

We even had it for a while. Sort of. Remember when the IMF came? Yes there was handwringing about the loss of our sovereignty but there were also murmurs of admiration. We hated the cuts but looked from under our doffed caps at these accountants who didn’t give a hoot about trying to get a medical card for Seanie Whathisname, attending Nora SoandSo’s funeral or “DEPUTY! Standing Order 42 says you can’t have ham AND chicken in the same sandwich!”

They came in like Harvey Keitel’s character, The Wolf, in Pulp Fiction. Fast, humourless, efficient. And then they were gone. To allow us to democratically make our own mess. So that’s the secret — dictatorship for a while. Then when the crisis is over, the dictator will renounce power and gracefully leave the scene when their time is up.That’s what normally happens isn’t it? Now that’s a fairy story.