CHURCHILL wasn’t the first to have the thought,  but it’s his phrasing of it that’s best known: “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time...”

Consider this one plus or minus, depending on how you look at it: If you’re in search of  a political job, in a democracy lack of experience or expertise is no handicap. Glance across the Atlantic. Up until 2016, Donald Trump had just been an obscene and obscenely-rich anchorman of a TV show called The Apprentice. He’d never held any political post, and yet in 2016 the US electorate voted him into the most powerful political position on earth. And just so nobody thought 2016 had been an accident, he was voted into the top job this year again. 

And as if to show the world his power, Trump last week announced his cabinet. This contained many jaw-droppers, but particularly Matt Gaetz as Attorney General and Robert F. Kennedy Jr as Health Secretary. 

Gaetz quickly quit his seat in Congress, which means there’ll be no further investigation into current allegations that he engaged in sexual misconduct and illegal drug-taking. Robert F Kennedy is an ardent anti-vaxxer and sees the use of fluoride in the US water system as a threat to health. ( He also admitted dropping a dead bear in New York’s Central Park and claimed a worm had got into his brain and died.) 

So the greatest democracy on Earth has managed to produce three people, Trump, Gaetz and Kennedy, who are – what shall I say? – a bit deficient in the skills required to do their job. If that depresses you, cheer up, it was a democracy that voted Hitler into power.

Here in Ireland democracy is busily at work. In the South they’re having a general election and according to the most recent opinion polls, Taoiseach  Simon Harris is the most popular politician in the 26 Counties. (No, Virginia, I am serious.) At the time of writing, Harris enjoys a 55 per cent opinion poll rating, which puts him to the top of the tree. 

As leader of Fine Gael, he is eager to present a younger image of himself to the electorate. And so he sprints from place to place, shaking hands, asking concerned questions, cuddling babies. His qualification for all this?  A year studying Valuation Surveying (whatever that is), then another year doing Journalism and French at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). He dropped out of DIT without taking his final exams. Now, at 38, he’s the youngest Taoiseach the state has ever had.

Like all politicians, he has goodies to offer the electorate, which he’ll be happy to speak about, and some baddies which he’ll bust a gut trying to cover up. Among the goodies, there’ll be free TV licences for tens of thousand of pensioners, who will also have their energy bills cut. Oh, and they’ll get an increase the state pension. 

It's called splashing the cash.

Housing? Well, they’re going to build looooaads more houses; and they’re going to improve the health service so much patients will think they’ve died and gone to Heaven.  

The thing is, since Fine Gael has been in government for fourteen years now you’d have thought they’d have worked out and delivered stuff on housing and the health service. But sure that’d mean action rather than talk.

Speaking of which, the former Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar said that Irish reunification should now go beyond an aspiration and become a strategy. But his successor Simon Harris appears to have reverted to the default Fine Gael line on the North: This is not a good time to be talking about, never mind acting on, Irish reunification.

If the six Westminster-ruled counties had been in Munster rather than Ulster, do you think they would have remained cut off from the rest of Ireland for over a hundred years? 

(Please, Virginia, stop swearing and answer Yes or No.)