Eamon who? Labour needs profile and a strategy

JIMMY SANDS we will never forget you, went the joke about the status of the 1981 hunger strike in Irish history.

That joke was always a bit of a cheap shot and I suppose it is an even cheaper shot to start a peroration (oops Pat Rabbitte is no longer there), ahem, an argument on the future of the Labour Party.

As he prepares to give his first leader’s address to his party’s national conference (and his preparation was thrown off kilter by the death of his mother, Celia, this week) Eamon Gilmore has two major problems as leader of the Labour Party.