That old leftie Daniel Cohn-Bendit apparently doesn't think much of the Irish Greens. He'd think even less if he knew that their leader, Trevor Sargent, recently appeared on the platform of an "anti-war" rally which backed the "resistance" to the new democratic government in Iraq, writes Kevin Myers.
Of course, we've long known that an unreal quality infests the Irish Green movement, a uniquely Irish anti-American sanctimony hybridising with the general pieties of international Greenism. But we are surely the only country in the world where the green movement has thrown in its lot with the opponents of democratic government in Iraq.
Admittedly, strange configurations are no strangers in Irish political life. Sinn Féin, the party which shoots, breeze-blocks and baseball-bats the elbows and knees of those alleged criminals it does not exile, opposes community banning orders on humanitarian grounds. A virulently anti-republican Minister for Justice proposes a firearms amnesty for all save republicans, who are - by Government policy - allowed to keep their guns.
All right, consistency isn't the most consistent quality to be consistently found in the corridors of Dáil Éireann; nonetheless, it's a little strange to see the leader of the Irish Greens effectively supporting those fellows in the Baathist Party, who yearn for the good old days of government by poison gas and genocide, or their chums who set fire to Iraq's oil wells in the hope that they'd cause vast underground explosions, making the entire region an ecological disaster zone for 10,000 years.
So, let us enter the phantasmagoria of the Green leader's mind: in the Sinn Féin headquarters there, at Sir Edward Carson House, near the Sargent cerebellum, Brigadier Adams VC DSO KCMG is planning the celebrations to mark the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. His batman, Corporal Michael McDowell, is on his knees, polishing the Brigadier's boots. To hand is a glass of the brigadier's favourite tipple, Hearts of Oak Trafalgar Naval rum. A merry barcarole is issuing from the brigadier's lips - let us draw closer and hear what music beguiles this fine fellow. Why, it is of course There'll Always Be An England. The brigadier looks up and catches sight of his visitor. A broad beam alights on his face, as is if it has been smitten by a vast ray of sunshine.
"Why top hole, my favourite journalist, the author of An Irishman's Diary! How are you, old chap? Take a pew. Now. What do you think about the new guidelines from the MCC about the leg-before-wicket rule? A retrograde step, I fear, a retrograde step. If it was good enough for W.G. Grace, it's good enough for G.W. Adams."
"G.W?" I reply. "And the W stands for. . .?"
"Wilberforce," he says, drawing heartily on his Hearts of Oak Trafalgar Naval Rum, and smacking his lips with pleasure. "The great English liberator. My popular name, wrongly believed by many to derive from 'Gerard', is in fact from 'Jeremy'. As in Jeremy Bentham, another of my family's English heroes. I took Horatio-Winston as my confirmation name.
"Ah. Here comes Ian. Sit down and take the weight off your feet, old fellow."
Ian Paisley saunters in with a mini-skirted Salvation Army she-major on each elbow, one blonde, the other Nubian black, a glass of Paddy whiskey in one hand. He declines the invitation to join us, and follows his companions into the William Booth Steamroom and Sauna, which had been attached to the Sinn Féin headquarters since the IRA and the Salvationists amalgamated. Around him a platoon of uniformed Salvation Army female privates perform a writhing striptease, to the sounds of the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction.
"An odd place, this world according to Trevor Sargent," I muse aloud to Brig Adams, while from his feet come supplicant noises. It is his batman asking permission to clean between his commanding officer's toes with his tongue.
"Not today, McDowell," replies the brigadier, in that languid Home County accent of his. "I've got a chukka presently with the Prince. Yes, indeed," he then adds, looking at me, "a dashed strange place it is. Oh my sainted aunt, here comes trouble."
The figure of David Trimble struts into the Sargent cerebral cortex. He has donned an Irish Citizens Army slouch hat and is bearing the unmistakeable banner of Irish socialism, the Starry Plough. He draws his Peter the Painter Luger pistol from its holster and summarily executes a couple of Orangemen who stray into his vision. "Our goal is to unite Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter," he intones, a strange Manchurian Candidate look in his eye. Blinking owlishly, he casually tosses a bomb into a Remembrance Sunday service, and exits left, still uttering the republican mantra, as a new figure comes into view.
"Ah, the Pope. Excellent," mutters Brig Adams. The former Cardinal Ratzinger dazedly wanders around the Sargent frontal lobe, but now in the skimpy attire of a Sumo wrestler.
"This is very strange," he says, rubbing his temples in a baffled manner. "I woke up this morning in the Vatican, in my full papal regalia, and now I'm padding round almost nude, with this peculiar garment around my loins. Did I die? Is this hell?"
"After a fashion," I reply. "Reality has been taken over by Trevor Sargent's brain. He can turn anyone into anything, it seems. He's made you into a Japanese wrestler."
"The bloody bastard!" the Pope snarls angrily. "Typical of those shagging Greens. When he could have made me into Colin Farrell!"