'O'Dea resigns as Greens get scalp", the Irish Independent thundered on Friday morning in one of the most braindead pieces of political analysis seen for a long time. If you hadn't been following the events of the week, you'd assume from the headline that the Greens had suddenly found some backbone, had laid claim to the moral high ground and refused on principle to countenance working with an alleged perjurer like Willie O'Dea. Bravo John Gormley, man of political integrity and crusader for high standards.

Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. In fact, one of the very few clear conclusions from a confusing few days was that Williegate, as some people will insist on calling it, was an unmitigated disaster for the Green Party, which has become under Gormley a collective of self-interested, see-no-evil sellouts who have confirmed all prejudices about the cynicism of politicians and engendered new cynicism about the environment. For if Gormley or Eamon Ryan or Mary White were to tell you that the earth is warming, would you not, now, looking back on their time in government, immediately go out and buy a new coat?

If credit has to be handed out for O'Dea's resignation, then give it to Fine Gael Senator Eugene Regan, the first politician to spot the significance of the altered affidavit. Or to Enda Kenny or Eamon Gilmore, who made powerful Dáil speeches in the Dail during Wednesday's confidence vote. There is even a case for giving some credit to former Green senator Déirdre de Búrca, whose resignation from the party last weekend, and her parting shot at her party leader, set the context for the week that followed.

De Búrca's former colleagues took great enjoyment in trashing her reputation, accusing her of throwing her rattle out of the pram because she wasn't given the Maire Geoghegan-Quinn sweeties she had demanded. But contained in de Búrca's letter were claims and accusations that must have resonated with anybody who has been following the Green performance in government – principally that the party under Gormley had not been able to stand up for itself and had been outmanoeuvred by more experienced, more politically wily, Fianna Fáil ministers.

Less than a week after de Búrca made these claims, she was proven spectacularly right, when Brian Cowen called a sudden confidence motion in O'Dea and bounced the Greens into declaring that the defence minister was a fit candidate for ministerial office. Even the most loyal Green hack would have realised, on mature reflection, that – as de Búrca said – Fianna Fáil had run rings around them again. And so we had Thursday's circus, during which Dan Boyle, tweeting haplessly from his bunker in the Seanad, implicitly berated his colleagues for their support for O'Dea. What happened subsequently was not that the Greens stood up for standards in office, but that they acknowledged the truth of de Búrca's parting criticism and threw a few pathetic shapes to try and look relevant and strong. (They were helped in this by O'Dea's News At One interview, which made his position untenable). It was the latest in a series of mixed messages from the party, which has turned into an embarrassment, a badly-led laughing stock which is as ill-qualified to be in government as Willie O'Dea, albeit for different reasons.

Aside from the Irish Independent, who do they think they are fooling with their odd behaviour, which sees the party leaders do one thing while some lower-level patsy is dragged out to whinge and complain about them? In the past, Paul Gogarty has played that role. Now that GoGo is Gone Gone, safely neutered and babbling blandishments with the best of them, Dan Boyle has become the boy who cries wolf.

Finally, a brief reference to a man called Matt Larkin. Two years ago, Larkin was given a three-month suspended sentence in Limerick for making a false statement to gardaí in which he claimed he had been assaulted in a Limerick pub, punched several times in the stomach and grabbed around the throat. His assailant, he said, was Willie O'Dea. O'Dea denied the claim in court, and as a result of his denial – which was believed by the judge – Larkin was convicted for deliberately telling lies to the guards. The conviction was subsequently overturned when the appeal judge acknowledged there was a possibility that Larkin had been grabbed by the throat. The obvious point here, of course, is that the accused in this case was convicted for lying to the gardaí about O'Dea, but O'Dea has had no similar sanction for swearing a false affidavit. So far, anyway. As Dan Boyle might tweet himself, there may be a few chapters to run in this story yet.

Gatelygate: columnists have the right to be stupid

Jan Moir's column on Stephen Gately in the Daily Mail after the death of the former Boyzone singer was stupid, ill-informed, offensive and ignorant. Moir herself may be an imbecile. Nevertheless, the decision by the Press Complaints Commission in Britain to reject hundreds of complaints about her article was the correct one and is to be welcomed. Any other decision would have been to create a system which pre-approved particular opinions or points of view but outlawed others on the basis of some arbitrary rules. Moir has the right, as I and all other columnists do, to be stupid. The public can then decide if they want to read us or not.

ddoyle@tribune.ie