New Labour leader will need a different way of doing business

POLITICS can be a sad business, and I don’t just mean for the electorate. There was a palpable air of sadness in Iveagh House last Monday as Eamon Gilmore announced that he was going to stand down as leader of the Labour Party.

Understandably the colleagues that surrounded him were emotional. They had just endured a weekend of electoral electric shock therapy, and now they looked on as their leader took responsibility for that disaster.

As we strolled out of the Department of Foreign Affairs afterwards there was agreement that the Tánaiste had brought great dignity to his departure. No one could say that he hadn’t worked hard, and been sincere in his efforts to get the country back on its feet. Had he a choice in the matter he would surely have wished to enter government at a more economically fortuitous time, and not one when austerity was the order of the day. He was wonderfully stoic while he was our tánaiste. But he was unable to get the message across to the public why Labour was doing what he felt was necessary in a time of crisis, or how Labour had curbed Fine Gael’s worst austerity excesses.