Boutros Boutros-Gormley pushes the envelope

DÁIL SKETCH:THE UN'S loss is Ireland's gain.

For we are blessed with Boutros Boutros-Gormley – facilitator extraordinaire, who has been waving his bona fides about with such abandon Brian Cowen can scarcely bear to look.

It must be difficult for the Taoiseach, pretending to support the Green Party leader and his “let’s all pull together in the national interest” wheeze.

But you could see his heart wasn’t in it yesterday.

Growling at Eamon Gilmore about “the Stickies” is more his style. He did plenty of that in the early afternoon, before he had to half-heartedly row in behind Gormley’s consensus idea when Leaders’ Questions came around.

It’s all very fine for Gormley to dispatch begging letters to the leaders pleading for cross-party harmony, but when the enclosed reply envelope is addressed to him, Brian Cowen can be forgiven for feeling a bit sour.

Boutros Boutros-Gormley, in his “consensus” letter, asks his political rivals to consider a “new mode of political engagement.” He urges them to put aside any “scepticism” in the national interest.

Perhaps John should have sent a missive to his senior Coalition boss as well, because Biffo wasn’t exactly the soul of conciliation during Leaders’ Questions.

Consensus? Nonsensus, more like. It’s what you would expect from such a dyed-in-the wool Soldier of Destiny like Brian Cowen.

Naturally, in these difficult times, the Taoiseach is all for working “constructively” with “everyone who is like-minded”. All contributions gratefully welcomed from the Opposition, but on his terms.

The nation may be baying for an election, but for the time being his Government is in charge.They will do what they have to do.

Look for support from a “Sticky” like Eamon Gilmore? Are you mad? Earlier, Gilmore had a go at the Taoiseach over a new government website called MerrionStreet.ie. According to Cowen, “it’s intended as a service to citizens who wish to get a clear view of the working of government”. He’s all for the new media, is the Taoiseach. “I deal with all media, including the internet,” he declared.

This particular website is causing concern among working journalists in Leinster House. After the Taoiseach had talks in Government Buildings with a senior Chinese politician, he did just one interview on it, conveniently with a Government-employed official who runs this website.

No difficult questions, naturally, and journalists who wanted to ask the Taoiseach about the meeting were referred to this website.

“There is a distinction between information and propaganda” snorted Eamon Gilmore. “This is a propaganda site.” The Taoiseach waffled. “It’s been well commented on by media sources as a good source of information,” he told the Dáil, as the few journalists in the gallery fell around the place laughing.

But he was irritated by Gilmore’s questions. “If Eamon sez it, it must be true” sulked Biffo, before smirking about “the Stickies” and “training camps in Meath”.

This is just as well, because if he was hoping the Green Party leader might come in to support him, he was sorely mistaken.

John Gormley, backed by Eamon Ryan, may have floated this “consensus” idea, but they didn’t show their faces in the Dáil chamber when they knew the Opposition was going to ask their Taoiseach about it.

Strange, that.

You see, the Greens are different. They don’t do politics, not even when they feel the moist breath of a general election on their necks and it scares the hell out of them. They don’t do politics, even as they cast an eye at their brutish Fianna Fáil bedfellow and wonder if they can slip unnoticed from the coupling before the alarm goes off.

In fairness to Biffo, he is doing his best. No one ever expected him to be anything more than an unreconstructed FFer. He tried to do the Ban Ki-Biffo stuff, but he couldn’t. That’s more Brian Lenihan’s bag.

“I’m not tying you into a process that you may have reservations about and I am not tying myself into a process that suggests we all end up with some arrangement where bits of everyone’s proposals can be considered...”

Boutros Boutros-Gormley is having no luck. His Opposition counterparts are more than content to counter his earnest billet douxwith Dear John letters of their own. As they see it – you take the sense of out consensus and what does that leave you? "Con" and "Us".