THE infamous bacon slicer was certainly skittering around the marbled floors of Leinster House last week.

Our Taoiseach did manage to finally pull the plug out just as it came bouncing towards Pat Breen, but the mood had changed from the original lazy post budget autumn lassitude.

When it comes to an election, blood is in the water and the shark fins are far less distant. And intriguingly when it came to election fever, the brightest eyes were in Fianna Fail.

That is understandable on two fronts, for some TDs are on a nice each-way bet. Should Fianna Fail win, they win, obviously.

But, were they to lose well, like Fine Gael and Enda Kenny in 2010, they are getting a little tired of Micheal. For Martin, it does not help that Fine Gael’s new leader has raced off like a hare.

By contrast, Micheal has resembled the sort of super-fit tortoise who is as fast as every-one else but fatally slow when compared to Leo.

Bad news for Fianna Fail is obviously bad news for Micheal. But it is good news for the many someone elses who fancy taking a bite out of their leader’s fragrant posterior.

A bad election will see a vacancy being advertised for the leader’s office and there will be a long queue of anxious applicants.Our ambitious TDs might, however, be wise not to be too public about their ambitions just yet.

One of the more entertaining features of public life is how Micheal has adopted so many of the maxims of Bertie the Drumcondra philosopher.

And like many other things, it was Bertie Ahern who patented the original way of dealing with political trouble.

Generally, as we saw with ‘four dinners’ Denis Naughten, when a politician is under pressure they run around the place making statements, changing statements and denying they ever made the statement if they get into further trouble.

Such politicians resemble the child who responds to a wasp by running around the garden waving its jam sandwich at the buzzer, who, after an initial period of curiosity, gets increasingly snappy over the attacks on his persona when Mum runs out with a dish-cloth to protect her firstborn.

Sadly, we all know that ends with a deceased wasp, a lost sandwich and a large bandage on a crying child and no one being happy.

Ahern patented the other response where, in times of trouble, the former Taoiseach would turn still and silent to such an extent, when you walked past it was as though he was a little statue.

Bertie knew, however, that, a little like the child and the wasp, if you did not respond to trouble it would swiftly get bored with you.

Though he would indignantly deny it, Martin learnt a lot from Bertie — particularly after he had been shafted a few times by the ward boss. So, when it comes to Leo, instead of screaming and flapping at him, Micheal continued as before.

That was not easy because Leo is no ordinary opponent. Unlike Enda and John Bruton before him, Leo does not just wish to co-exist with Fianna Fail — Varadkar is the sort of George Foreman figure who wants not just to win, but to blast Fianna Fail off the face of the earth.

It would perhaps be excessive to compare Micheal to Ali. But, he is schooled and elusive and annoyingly hard, as Bertie would recall, to knock out.

So, while true to form, Leo has indeed speeded off, but Micheal has jolted the young pretender’s head back a couple of times.

And while we are past the half-way point of their short fight, Leo has not erased him from the face of the earth.

Martin has during that period experienced some pitiful times. He retains the real confidence of less than half his party who have singed his beard on the pro-life gig and had another go at it over Sean Gallagher.

But, ironically, the tide has turned on both those fronts to the extent where Micheal is seen to have picked correctly.

And now, after his stuttering dud of a budget, suddenly and quite alarmingly for Fine Gael, the Leo hare is starting to fall back towards the field — which of course, is still being led by the Fianna Fail tortoise.

Fine Gael might still be re-stored to government, but an election poses real difficulties. Leo’s campaigning skills are at best unproven, while the Government is already fretting on the ‘Posh Boys on tour’ imagery they will have to combat.

Micheal may stand for nothing more complex than a sort of vague decency, but in 2016 he ran Enda very close. And people are starting to tire of Fine Gael’s Lord Snootys quite quickly.

Mull'it over RTE
RONAN ‘The Bishop’ Mullen is, we are sad to relate, concerned over the unfortunate scenario where RTE is ‘hemmed in’ on some of the most valuable land in Dublin.Ronan believes it should find ‘virgin’ soil where it could have space for expansion. RTE is reluctant to move somewhere pleasant like Longford, Westmeath or Offaly.It is equally unlikely to be seduced by The Bishop’s example of “TV3, recently renamed as Virgin Media, which has its entire operation in an industrial estate on the edge of the city”.Ronan’s to hell or to TV3 ultimatum is certainly likely to have unnerved many in RTE, who believe anything 100 yards beyond West Berlin is some form of savage place. Yes, even Longford.
‘No need to shout’ about housing
HOUSING may be a national emergency but Josepha Madigan for one believes there is no need for bad manners on the issue.

During one of our many Dail squabbles on the issue, the Hyacinth of the leafy suburbs of Dublin-Rathdown lectured the frisky Sinn Fein deputies with four separate warnings that “there is no need to shout”.

Sadly, it did not work on Dessie Ellis, who, buoyed by rather different life experiences, is far less terrified of the fearsome Josepha than Leo Varadkar, the Cabinet and the national media.

Josepha then warned a fourth time that “if one’s words are strong enough, one does not need to shout. Nobody needs to shout”.

For one shocking moment it looked as though even the Archbishop of Dublin might not control the revolting Sinn Fein party.

Fortunately, the Government caught a break as Labour’s Brendan Howlin started to speak. That calmed the revolution down quickly.

As for Sinn Fein, they won’t be experiencing any candle-lit suppers with Josepha in the immediate future.

Building Gaffes
OUR man behind the bar is impressed by the performance of Louth County Council, which was recently lauded for its compulsory purchase orders scheme.

These, apparently, had the consequence of bringing more than 100 housing units back into stock. Sadly, canny Fianna Fail TD Declan Breathnach noted there had been a sting in the tail.

Seemingly, the council spent so much, it has now emerged that there is no money left for repairs.

The result of this is that it is now “boarding up almost a similar number of houses to those which were purchased under CPO”.

There’s housing reform for you Irish county council style. Seems like a classic case of start as you don’t mean to go on.