Progressive Democrats - McDowell is life and soul of the party

When the general election of 2002 was called, the Progressive Democrats looked like the party in serious trouble, but Michael McDowell came to the rescue with a masterstroke.

He was able to exploit the misgivings of the electorate in relation to all the scandals surrounding Fianna Fáil.

The PD party has always been a kind of contradiction.

It was essentially founded to keep the late Charles J. Haughey from power, yet it came to his rescue and propped him up as Taoiseach during his last term.

In that period, Mr McDowell played the crucial role — at least in the public’s perception — of keeping Fianna Fáil straight, and he epitomises more than anybody else, the PD’s separate identity.

He also personifies a determination not to be subsumed by Fianna Fáil. The PDs would again seem to be in trouble, and it looks like most of the members of its parliamentary party are again going to turn to Mr McDowell to pull another political rabbit out of the hat in the next general election.

He has been such an articulate voice for the party that his views are seen as the essence of PD policy. Mr McDowell is strident and shrill, tends to lose his cool rather easily, and has a great facility for rubbing people up the wrong way.

If there is a leadership contest, he will be the central figure. The strongest appeal of any opponents will likely be that he, or she, is not Michael McDowell.