Micheál a chara,

It’s hard, I know, and my full heart leaks sympathy for you. As a TD you’ve suffered more than your share of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. You even were round that ministerial table with Taoiseach Brian Cowan in 2008 when the Fianna Fail roof fell in.  Your critics may whine and finger-point, but how many of them can stand up as you can and echo the words of that proud Irishman Frank Sinatra: I did it my way.

Two weeks ago you were given a mandate by your parliamentary party to go out there and kick the living shit out of Mary Lou. Now I hear you had a parliamentary party meeting last night and there were nasty little voices raised telling you to stop kicking!  What kind of political latchicoes are these people anyway?

You were right, of course you were right to stick it to Mary Lou and her grinning up-the-ra mob: Fainna Fail should never allow its whiter-than-white garments to become smudged by people who are directed by shadowy figures.  Although I’m told that last a certain Fianna Fail TD who shall remain nameless called Robert Troy, TD for Longford-Westmeath, had the neck to tell you to stop going on about shadowy figures making decisions, that Fianna Fail itself has unelected people making decisions for it! Write his name in your book, Micheál, and we’ll attend to him when the dust settles.

And we’ll make sure to include as well the name of  John Lahart, TD for Dublin South West, who says you should be talking to everyone, including and especially Sinn Féin. Is that fecker for real? Didn’t he hear a fortnight ago when we said we’d give those moral nordie-loving  lepers a wide berth?  

And wouldn’t you know it, John McGuinness  and Eamon Ó Cúiv up on their hind legs too, bleating about how you must get in there and talk with the Shinners. Arlene Foster was right – the leopard doesn’t change his spots and the crocodile is one nasty dangerous bastard of an beast.  But fair dos to little Sean Haughey – I hear he rallied to your side, told McGuinness and Ó Cúiv where to go. Not the first place you’d expect support to come from, given his da and that gun-running thing in 1970, but you have to take help where you can find it.

And two more names for the black book, Micheál: that Joe Flaherty from Longford-Westmeath and Sean Fleming from Laois –Offaly, telling you you must lay off Mary Lou, you were only giving her lot free publicity, saying it was like Tesco arranging free publicity for Dunne’s Stores.  We’ll attend to that pair of Judases when we get them in the long grass, have no fear, Micheál.

There were others last night, I know, who heavily implied  you were drinking in the Last Chance Saloon, in terms of becoming Taoiseach. The fools, the fools, the fecking bloody fools – don’t they know they’re measuring you by their own pathetic standards, and that you have not ambition in your great heart but only the good of the state?

The day is not far off when Fianna Fail will take its rightful place as the government of the state. And when that day comes, the little black book will be taken out and the bunch of feckers running off at the mouth will be confined to the back benches while, led by you, the country is renewed and refreshed and, yes, given coronavirus,  healed, and the Shinners will be but the dust beneath your chariot wheels.

Be of good courage, Micheál- it won’t be long before we can say, like true republicans, Tiocfaidh ár lá!

Le meas

B P  Parcell