Hi °C | Lo °C IT is difficult to think of a more useless politician than Gay Mitchell.
Anybody who has their doubts about Enda Kenny should consider the fact that it was Mr Kenny who almost certainly did the State some service when he prevented Gay Mitchell from becoming Taoiseach back in 2002 when the two men contested the party's leadership election.
The Dublin MEP has an unerring knack for making headlines by bashing Germany for all the wrong reasons.
Back in September 2007, he jumped up and down when former German ambassador Christian Pauls poked fun at Ireland's high wages, "chaotic" hospital waiting lists and doctors' description of €200,000 jobs as "Mickey Mouse" money.
Back then, exactly one year before Anglo Irish went bust, the bould Gay described Mr Paul's comments as "somewhere between resentment and spite".
Time shows they were bang on the money.
This week, Mr Mitchell was back in the news when he decided to take on another German institution: Bundesbank boss Jens Weidmann.
Few independent observers could deny that this month's deal on the promissory notes is monetary financing of governments by the back door – just as the promissory notes themselves were also a form of monetary financing.
Indeed, newspapers such as the 'Financial Times' have welcomed the deal for precisely that reason.
Not because monetary financing is a good idea but because it shows that the European Central Bank is prepared to be flexible as it continues to battle the financial crisis.
By denying the obvious, Mr Mitchell is simultaneously denying Mr Kenny's achievements in getting the ECB to break its own rules and waving a red flag at the Bundesbank bull.
That is rarely a wise thing to do. Having been proved spectacularly wrong by events since Ambassador Paul's speech, Mr Mitchell really ought to desist from provoking the poor Bundesbank, which has had to swallow rather a lot in recent years.
Perhaps Mr Mitchell might consider staying silent when he hears German accents in future?
Irish Independent
