INSIDE POLITICS - BIFFO BLASTS BACK

Unless something new comes out in the wash today, the BertieGate saga has now finished as an election issue. Brian Cowen took a couple of questions (they were almost asked as a matter of form) but you realised as soon as he responded that there was no further life left in that dog.

Anyways for an hour before that he had lorded the press conference with a magnificent performance of biff, bluster and bravado. He dissed the opposition's economic policies, claiming that the FF figures all stacked up, and that the opposition would "bust" us.
BertieGate was swept aside by use of the magician's trick of misdirection.

And singlehandedly Cowen changed the direction of the campaign for FF, putting BertieGate behind it, pushing the agenda on. It was his intervention during the great unpleasantness of last autumn that changed course for FF. The more you look at him in this form, the more you think: the leader in waiting.

INSIDE POLITICS - PDs OUT OF GOVERNMENT

Bertie Gate - The Sequel is the story that keeps on giving.

It's going to take us right into week two of the campaign.

We'll have to wait until tomorrow morning to see the impact of new Sunday newspaper revelations and what the PDs will do.

If the PDs pull out, it will mean little in terms of Government... it's on half-throttle in any instance since the election was called.

But it will leave the PDs very isolated. They will have severed their ties with FF. None of the other parties wants to treat with them. They'll have to make a very good pitch as to why they will be any relevance.

And as for FF. The papers will damage them more. The PDs pulling out will damage them more. The Mahon Tribunal, by timing the Quarryvale 2 module to coincide with the election campaign, may have unwittingly taken the Government down. Everything that is damaging Bertie Ahern is coming from documents that the Tribunal distributed to witnesses and which one of them is now leaking.