Beleaguered Gilmore emerges from shadows at 11th hour

Is Eamon Gilmore already Labour’s lost leader before a vote has been cast?

His handlers never seemed to be able to tell you where he was canvassing, making one suspicious that either the Tánaiste was not bothering to hit the doorsteps much, or that those door-stepped hit back so hard that Labour did not really want independent observers to witness it.

Mr Gilmore insisted he was out every day meeting voters and then he suddenly officially invited reporters to watch him swing through the electoral jungle today.

But then Labour have probably calculated that at this stage of the game they have little left to lose — oh, except their Euro seats, half their council seats, and the two by-elections, that is.

Though the party’s battler for the third Euro berth in Dublin, Emer Costello, appeared to get support from an unusual quarter yesterday: Sabina Higgins.

The President’s wife posed with Ms Costello on the back of a vintage tram at the opening of a new Dublin Luas bridge named in honour of socialist heroine Rosie Hackett.

When asked if it might look a tad party political for Mrs Higgins to pose for such a photo just days before an election, one of her staff said: “They’re old, old friends. Very old friends.”

Nice to have old friends in high places so.

Though that is probably not what all good socialists must have thought when they saw Thacherite Transport Minister Leo Varadkar clamber to the upper deck of the open-topped tram just after he trashed Aer Lingus’s planned strike action. And to rub salt into workers’ wounds, Leo then unleashed the most sardonic of leers as he mugged-it up for the cameras and leaned nonchalantly out above the slogan on the tram’s side: “Join Jim Larkin’s Union: An Injury To One Is A Concern To All.”

Back on Planet Gilmore, Eamon was dismissing talk of a “meltdown” amid demands he switches to a domestic ministry after the expected poll rout.

“I think our campaign is going very well. I think the principle issue is not who goes to which post in Government, but the work we are doing to find jobs for those that don’t have them.”

Clearly, one job that ambitious Joan Burton would like is leader of the Labour Party.

But, quote of the day went to a Labour parliamentarian who was not too thrilled at the thought of Joan on the throne.

“It would be like putting Evel Knievel on the bridge of the Titanic. She’d go looking for icebergs, not avoiding them.”