Compared to the steamy antics at Westminster, Irish political scandals leave a little bit too much to be desired, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE
IT IS a terrible thing to be trapped 2,300 feet below the surface of the Earth. It is a terrible thing to have been trapped there since the beginning of August with 32 fellow miners, and to know that you will not be rescued until the winter has come. But some facts are too terrifying to be shared with the Chilean miners. Above ground, at Camp Hope, women alleging themselves to be the mistresses and girlfriends of the miners have come to claim welfare benefits and possible compensation payments, and are in conflict with the wives of the same men.
This has happened in the case of at least five of the trapped miners, but they have not been told. Presumably the prospect before them, or at least above them, is simply too frightening to contemplate. Yet a lot of people would prefer to be the Chilean miners than Britain’s able foreign secretary, William Hague, whose friendship with a young and handsome junior aide is currently the subject of fevered speculation.
British politics is now so sensational that it is little wonder that television executives have decided to take Big Brother off the air forever. Big Brother slinks away, unmourned. It relinquishes its role to a new reality soap opera, called Westminster. Oh, there are cameras in there already. And William’s in the Diary Room. Actually, they’re all in the Diary Room. They’re never done writing their blooming diaries and their memoirs, and they seem obsessed by sex.
The British do have such larks with their politicians – no wonder the queue outside Eason’s last Saturday for Tony Blair’s book signing was so long. But even in the steamy atmosphere which obviously prevails at Westminster, it was probably tempting fate for David Davis to repeat the former Tory party chairman, Lord Ashcroft’s remark characterising the new domestic arrangements with the Liberal Democrats as the Brokeback Coalition. Was that only in July?
Poor William Hague. Every tabloid genius in Britain will be taken off his or her search for paedophiles and match-fixers and Ashley Cole's mobile phone and devoted 24/7 to finding men of the foreign secretary's acquaintance who are willing to kiss and tell. The British broadsheet newspapers stand a little above this unseemly scramble – the Daily Telegraphsaid there had been rumours about Mr Hague's sexuality since Oxford, and the Daily Telegraphshould know – with only the fluttering figleaf of public interest to protect them.
Meanwhile, the Blairs are never done boasting about how heterosexual they are, with Cherie conceiving a baby in Balmoral, which she wrote about in her memoir, or Tony having sex with Cherie on the night on which party leader John Smith died, which he wrote about in his.
Here is a brief extract from Mr Blair’s book, A Journey, recalling how that sad night ended.
“ . . . I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength, I was an animal following my instinct, knowing I would need every ounce of emotional power and resilience to cope with what lay ahead. I was exhilarated, afraid and determined, in roughly equal quantities.”
Meanwhile, what do we get for discussion at our national water cooler?
A few crummy mobile phone receipts of allegedly doubtful provenance, and a lot of excuses about mileage.
These topics were only one, tiny thread in the rich tapestry of British parliamentary scandal; the chapter you could easily skip within the three-volume history of sexual crisis. Even on the respectable side of the British political street, British prime ministers have taken manfully to having children whilst in office.
All in all, the British public is greatly entertained by its politicians.
In contrast, the problem this country faces at the moment is that financial corruption is no fun, unless you got to spend the money at the time, and/or laugh about it with your mates afterwards. We must be honest enough to say that watching the clean-up, even after financial scandals as enormous as ours, is a dismal affair, like tidying up after uncontrolled drunks.
We are all aware that Irish politicians are too tired to have affairs, what with all the driving they allegedly do.
There is no doubt that this is completely true. Our lads aren’t like that, you see. However, it has been observed that, on the rare occasions when there was a sex scandal in Irish politics, the general public seemed even more eager to forget the matter than the politician concerned. It was as if we were particularly sensitive members of the erring politician’s family, instead of the slavering voyeurs that modern media life requires us to be.
If we happened to see the erring politician’s wife in the supermarket, for example, we were more likely to come home and lock ourselves in the wardrobe, overwhelmed with embarrassment, rather than phone some press photographers. At least that is the way it was in the past, and we were rather proud of ourselves for it.
Also, it did help a great deal that we have always had the News of the World in which to read about the shenanigans of a familiar but comfortably distant set of politicians, and so slake our visceral thirst for scurrilous gossip. It will be interesting to see, when the next sex scandal happens in Irish politics – and there is one due in about a decade – whether that decorous arrangement between the Irish public and our politicians still exists.