Cowen should call an election

The Sunday Tribune is the first paper to call for a general election following the collapse of the Fianna Fail Technicolour coaltion's budget. 

I heartily concur. This is a very different country, economically, if not politically, to the one that voted 16 months ago. A government needs a clear, unambiguous mandate to implement the kind of changes and tough decisions that are needed at this time, and this discredited shower of clowns, elected in economic circumstances now consigned to the history books, and, in particular, Cowen, our anointed, selected/unelected Taoiseach, simply don't have that. 

He can limp along for the next few months, turning into the new Gordon Brown, but I can't see this government lasting another year anyway, not considering the new Dail arithmetic, not when there's the chance of another even more severe mini-Budget in the New Year, and certainly not when the government loses Lisbon II as part of the voter backlash.