Tossing out sweeties to the voters – and giving FF and the rest a good slapping

AN additional week’s wages for every worker! The apparently unscripted line Michael Noonan delivered at 2.45pm yesterday is destined to be repeated over and over by Government politicians when the election whistle is blown – if it’s true.

It’s much better than ‘A chicken in every pot’ with which FDR wooed American voters in the middle of the last century, or the considerably more vague ‘You’ve never had it so good’ offered by Harold Macmillan.

Noonan’s form of the ‘Christmas bonus’ for everyone in employment is simple, comprehensible and powerful.

And with that voting in mind, it warrants an early campaign medal for whatever whizz kid came up with the encapsulation.

In truth, the Budget speech began and ended with l arge sections of unadulterated party political broadcast, with a decent selection of political jibes peppered in between.

When the minister promised an end to boom and bust, he made sure to l i nk such clown- car economics with Fianna Fáil.

Again, as last year, he mocked the famous catchphrase of Charlie McCreevy and ‘the attitude of, “If I have it, I’ll spend it”.’

HE also made pledges of further relief in the years ahead if the Government is returned to office – another repetition from last year, which suggests that Mr Noonan was contemplating his failed push for a November 2015 election from a long, long way out.

It was unmistakably an election address. And Brendan Howlin, wearing a unashamedly red tie, followed up diligently. He, too, mocked Fianna Fáil, this time by name, pointing out that public spending was ramped up by over 25 per cent in the run-up to the 2007 election.

Making a virtue of the Government’s tied hands by dint of European budgetary reforms, he jibed: ‘That’s election bribery for you, Deputy Martin!’

Yet enticements are relative, especially after years of savage cutbacks. Two Government TDs rather gave the game away when exiting the chamber after the second speech. One remarked to the other: ‘Well, if that doesn’t do it, nothing will.’

What on earth was he talking about? Meeting the Troika’s final deficit target? If you believe that, you must live in Brussels.

Meanwhile, Howlin moved on to lofty references to a ‘shared prosperity’ as he dished out the largesse in spending. What he clearly also meant was a widely spread indebtedness in the recipients to their benefactors in Labour, predominantly, and Fine Gael. Not forgetting his own constituency, where 1916 Centenary spending on something called the Athenaeum in Enniscorthy is mentioned in the same breath as the GPO and Moore Street.

Ah yes, Moore Street – home of the street market and crowdpleasing offers, much like a very cannily constructed Budget where apples were cunningly mixed with oranges to present the most attractive and beguiling display as the Government sets out its stall for 2016.

Just pay no attention to those shadowy figures in the background selling their smuggled smokes.

And no, the Government’s special new measures for the self-employed did not have such lone traders in mind, even though the 50 cent hike in the packet of 20 will do their livelihoods no harm at all, while they harm the lives of others.

Noonan the barker was asking people to roll right up to sample his economic and electoral wares yesterday. USC, the Universally Severe Chokehold on people’s throats, is to be relaxed – and the minister promises to release his grip completely, abolishing the charge in coming years.

Odd, then, that he happened to mention the ending of the private pension levy, which saw his other hand reach into our back pockets to steal money that was never his in recent years.

THOSE wi t h long memories will find it very hard to forgive, and that was a cashgouging brainwave of Noonan’s own, and nothing to do with Fianna Fáil. The self-employed were stroked and told they were entrepreneurs, hence deserving of a special tax cr e di t , despit e t hei r selfassessment ability to write their own tax bills. Here Noonan was l ooking unashamedly to Fine Gael’s legion of shopkeepers – and SME-keepers just doesn’t have the same ring.

Howlin kept up his end of the tag-team, bouncing back off the Troika ropes to announce more gardaí, nurses and teachers, cradling a little child in one cherishing arm and an elderly person in the other.

Then, warming to his role like a sweetie-dispenser effortlessly early for Halloween, he rounded on Labour’s rivals on the left. ‘ Who speaks of Syriza now?’ he asked.

Thus it was that the Coalition, distilled to two individuals, performed their tricks.

They will expect their electoral treats in the new year.