On the last Questions and Answers (and we're all grateful for that release), Brian Cowen was certainly playing the brave soldier as he told the nation to "pull together" and trust in the "good instincts" of our politicians.

These fine, if banal, words bear no relation to the realities Mr Cowen must face, because not only do our political Spoilt Princes lack good instincts, but the nation certainly isn't pulling together.

On one level, the defeatist cynical despair is understandable, for it is an astonishing indictment of how we had been governed that Brian Lenihan's two terror budgets have been nothing more than acts of liposuction.

Even as the Government tries to build up enough courage to even publish the report of An Bord Snip Nua, the bad news is that the amputation stage of the process will begin in the autumn.

This lot may have spent their first two years in power ducking and diving, but the maitre d' is tapping his finger and no amount of hemming or itemising will change the contents of the bill we must pay for the economic frolics of Bertie.

Of course, Mr Cowen's call was technically correct for we are at the edge of the closest equivalent to war we as a State have experienced since the Seventies. However, we are not even poised to secure the incidental benefits of war, because, while conflict can sometimes regenerate a nation, we are in real danger of experiencing the sort of dirty little civil war which can destroy a country for decades.

The even worse news is that our civil war will not be confined to two fronts, as the growing internal knife fight for the dwindling resources of the collapsed Tiger is likely to evolve into a war of attrition between four factions.

Ireland's economic civil war will be unique in one regard, for this will be the first war in history where the generals will get their hands dirty.

In theory, this should be an inspirational prospect, but, in a state turned venomous by years of indolence, our politicians and civil service mandarins are getting their hands dirty not because they want to save us. Instead, from the very start of this crisis, the cabal of Venetian doges who run the country have been trying to carve out as large a share of the Tiger carcase for themselves as possible.

Our "toffs" have taken the occasional nip and tuck, but, since this crisis broke, all of the actions of our caste of aristocrats -- within the Dail, the law library, the civil service mandarins, hospital consultants, top university professors and administrative militias such as the HSE -- have been informed by self service rather than public service.

But even aristocrats need allies, and up to last year our elite was buttressed by the whole apparatus of social partnership. Unfortunately, poor Mr Cowen is learning the hard way that, like all venal courtiers, the public sector trade unions were only up for the game when the pickings were good.

Once the centre shattered, the sole response of the public sector to our national trauma has consisted of a snarling attempt to protect their unique status as the best paid employees in the most bankrupt economy in Western Europe.

In fairness, "I'm all right Jack" O'Connor and his Colombian friends are merely the proletarian mirror of their friends from Ibec and a governing class which would struggle to lead a flock of sheep.

However, that will not stop the most disempowered group in our society from looking askance at their activities.

They may be the sole economically productive class, but Middle Ireland must wonder if they are perceived by the Government as being the enemy of the State.

Over the last year, their pensions have been bankrupted, their jobs have been swallowed up, and their houses made worthless -- yet, like Joe the infamous insurance fraudster, the Government is now planning to put its hand into their savings via a series of property and carbon taxes that are needed to secure the perks and privileges of its crony capitalist friends and its trade union pals.

Though Middle Ireland is generally a placid creature, will there come a point where it, too, will revolt against a state which appears hell bent on reducing it to penury so the state can enjoy its privileges?

After all, in the end even a political giant like Margaret Thatcher was brought down by the poll tax. We suspect it may be interesting to see how Mr Cowen will implement a property tax in a country which couldn't even accept a rod licence.

In truth, the State will be looking far more warily at a

very different grouping.

Nothing captured the great apogee of the Celtic Tiger more completely than that defining moment where those in employment breached the two million mark.

The most appropriate measure of our status is the increasingly desperate state of "breakfast roll man" and his newly pregnant "country girl" fiancee. It is bad enough that a breakfast roll man who is living in a €500,000 semi- detached house in Portarlington which he cannot afford hasn't worked for six months, but the collapse of the social welfare system means that -- were it not for the St Vincent de Paul -- he and his family would be starving.

What is even worse is the sense of enervated despair of a government which -- had it been in charge of Britain in 1940 -- would have cancelled Dunkirk on the basis of the inevitability of a German victory.

Breakfast roll man and our country girls are in such collective shock over their reduced circumstances that they cannot even begin to be angry over the Government's fatalistic belief that unemployment figures of 500,000 are written in the stars.

When they realise that the plan is to consign them to the status of human surplus for a decade without any possibility of redemption, their response to the sight of a cosseted class of mandarins, politicians and judges whose eyes are focused upon their own interests may turn a lot livelier.

After all, as one wise soul noted in Leinster House last week, "All it took was a mob of several thousand to burn down the British embassy." And, while we can flap our hands all we want about law and order, if a state cannot feed its citizens, can we blame them for taking to the streets?

A better organised country would follow Mr Cowen's advice and "pull together" lest it hang separately.

Sadly, Bertie Ahern's decision to pawn the country's wealth to sate the greed of a mercenary coalition of interests and social partners who continuously voted Fianna Fail into power because the money was good, means Brian Cowen has inherited an utterly failed political entity.

The Taoiseach can make all the inspirational appeals he wants, but our elite are like all other mercenaries who decide, at the point when patriotism and honour are needed to carry the battle, to splinter as each man seeks his own interest.

If Ireland is to lose its status as the sick man of Europe, Brian Cowen must find a way to end this and put the country back together again -- and he will not do it by merely issuing bellicose roars at the Opposition.