Is Brian Cowen a deep cover agent for an opposition party?

I’ve got to ask the question. Someone has to.

“I challenge the politically correct view that it was for the purpose of a stunt. Far from it,” [Brian Cowen] said. “What this election is about is the future of this country.”

‘Politically correct view’? WTF?

Walking along the street today I met someone today who asked me what was up with the resignations. That this person was a lot closer to the events than I made me smile.

Let’s start by acknowledging that on certain levels none of this is hugely important to the left, except – and this is important – as how it impacts upon the prospects of left candidates in a few weeks time. And it does. It really does, because a weaker Brian Cowen and a weaker Fianna Fáil offers an opportunity.

And my God, what we saw today was a comprehensive weakening by the man whose leadership was confirmed but a few days ago.

Who could predict this? A day in which surely the most botched cabinet reshuffle in Irish history took place. Where, as Enda Kenny noted on the lunchtime news the Tanaiste was unaware who was the Minister of Justice. Where the date of the election, March 11, was forced to the surface.

This goes beyond abysmal.

Equally abysmal was Cowen’s proto-electioneering rhetoric (shouting actually) in the Dáil chamber. And still (at 2.00pm precisely) talking about ‘this party’. Completely forgetting that he was the head of a Government who was in the process of allocating Ministerial positions.

There’s a fair bit of hot air about the ‘dignity’ of offices and institutions, but this, this was unseemly.

So as noted before this Government totters out with a skeleton Cabinet and not a lot else.

Anyhow, this seems to me to be yet further evidence of Fianna Fáil’s, or is it Brian Cowen’s, utter inability to read the public mood. A weekend and couple of days wasted, as the public sees it, on the leadership of a party where the wheels are in the process of falling off is followed by two days of resignations.

To what purpose? What was it all in aid of? A manipulation most likely. No better. To put new faces into cabinet, presumably in an entirely cosmetic effort to scrub up the party in the run-up to the election.

Didn’t anyone tell Cowen that this might be too little too late? Not least given that he’s the man who will be leading this ‘new’ team? Or that it would be so obvious that it could be turned immediately against him.

And as for his much vaunted – by some – bruising abilities in electoral contests, is it seriously contended that that will wash away the preceding years of indecision, ineptitude and, most bizarre of all, cowering from the public gaze? If the Dáil rhetoric is anything to go by he’s locked into 2007, not 2011. That may change, he may improve, but on today’s performance it doesn’t seem likely.

The door of the bunker has yawned open, and peering in, as was predictable, there’s nothing edifying to see there.

A Taoiseach who yet again prioritises party over country… amazing.

That everyone outside the bunker sees it differently is neither here nor there. The change of generals is displacement activity, indulged in precisely because the captains and the troops are fading away.

Though there’s also something crafty about ‘blooding’ the next generation so that they too will have some ownership of the previous years. It will be most interesting if any refuse the offer of cabinet positions. But given that every FF candidate, whether a sitting TD, Minister or otherwise, must have at least some doubt gnawing away at them as to the true state of the polls… well, who’d really relish the risk.

Moreover I had half a mind that we might see a slight resurgence in the FF polling numbers after the leadership ‘excitement’ abated. Nothing much, but just a little.

Next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at least one polling company will be enquiring as to opinions. If FF registers any upward movement… well…

Or as was said on the RTÉ extended news on lunchtime there must be more than one TD wondering about the vote they cast for leader earlier in the week.

This is shoddy stuff, unconvincing I suspect even to their own.

It’s an odd sort of genius that can, at almost every turn, make a situation worse for himself and his party. An odd sort of party that voted to retain such genius this week. An odd sort of a Dáil that continues – in part – to sustain them, a truncated Cabinet, in power even for the truncated period ahead.