Higgins looking at table for one as Socialist Party loses firebrand Clare

THE chances of a cracking Socialist Party ard fheis have just been cut in half.

It’s difficult to have a decent knees-up when two of the usual four knees have gone AWOL. Clare Daly’s are the knees in question, and they, along with the rest of her, have high-tailed it out of Joe Higgins’s party, leaving him on his own on the Opposition benches. He is now a party of one. He does, of course, have other knees around him, but none elected last time around, whereas my constituency returned Clare Daly to the Dáil. My personal belief is that we did more than that. We returned Clare and her anger to the Dáil. Two for the price of one.

Clare’s anger is as much part of her brand as her burgundy hair. During the last referendum, on one particular night, RTÉ had herself and Lucinda Creighton debating with each other on Prime Time. Clare and her anger swooped on every issue from above like a kestrel and worried the issue until it wished it had never been born. Meanwhile, Minister Creighton kept looking sideways at the socialist TD with an astonished horror as if Daly were a newly discovered species that should be undiscovered as soon as possible.