Let’s put the band back together

There’s good news for all you Police fans – or anyone who loves really bad music sung by really old men. They’re back together, and they’re coming to the Point in October. I can already see all the Mercs and Beemers parked on top of footpaths in Ringsend, the middle-aged rockers inside listening to a little Lionel Richie and Billy Joel to get themselves pumped up for a night of badass tunes. Some might even be downing small bottles of frappacino.
The only reunion that worries me more (and the Police reunion worries me alot) is the Mary Harney’s return to Fianna Fail, as suggested by John Minihan, the Progessive Democrat senator from Cork.
The election setback for of the PDs effectively ruins what Noel Grealish, the only other PD TD to be elected, called the “guts of 30 years” of work by Mary Harney. The PDs, before Harney became the Minister for Health, had a reputation as a competition-minded, laissez faire mavericks. They were – or were perceived to be by a nation becoming increasingly (almost ridiculoulsy) wealthier every day – the party of self-reliance and American-style entrepeneurship.
Last week, when the country went to the polls, the PDs were the party of arrogance, incoherence, ineptitude, and, most importantly, the fall guys for a Government that had more luck than brains – more fiscal serendipity than fiscal responsibility.
The PDs could not survive two things: 1) The move from business to healthcare and 2) The replacement of Harney, a charismatic sort, by Michael McDowell, who seemed to me to be the least liked politician since US Southern Baptist Pat Robertson. McDowell was called “bright” by Bertie Ahern, but bright doesn’t win elections.
The Fianna Fail party has to be delighted. They got away with (not literally) murder, and they can call all the shots now. The other elected PDs (all one of them) have questioned whether Harney has the energy or will to rebuild the party. It’s a good question. The only answer that matters is that she must, or it’s goodbye for the PDs, the short-lived political experiment that made a lot of noise for a few decades, then found itself abruptly, humiliatingly, and painfully under the proverbial bus.