Political dynasties - New blood needed for days ahead

FIANNA FÁIL is expected to elect a new leader, the party’s eighth, this afternoon but as the political merry-go-round careers through uncharted territories nothing can be taken for granted.

Despite the dispiriting upheaval of recent times the public face of the contenders’ campaigns has seemed more like civilised officers in a beaten army trying to decide which of them will volunteer to lead a rearguard so some of their number might survive to fight another day. What a change from the back-stabbing, the face-to-face, spitting deceit and feral brutality of earlier leadership campaigns.

No matter how gracious the process may seem it would be almost disappointing to imagine that there is no backroom intrigue in play as it would infer a new, unnatural tameness in what is, by some distance, the most colourful political party in our modern history.