Fergus Finlay: Presidential race highlights how leaders grow — or shrink — under pressure

British prime minister Keir Starmer. Starmer committed himself to a political campaign that refused to allow the Tories any basis for attack, when he should have been pursuing an all-out attack on them.
If you want to know what a politician is really made of, put him or her in an impossible situation. They’ll shrink, or they’ll grow, and you’ll have a pretty good idea from that moment on about the character you’re dealing with.
Year and years ago I watched with great trepidation as my then boss Dick Spring walked to a microphone in the Cork City Hall. He had just emerged from four difficult and tortuous years in government, at the end of which he had clung on to his seat by a legendary four votes. Now he was facing a vote at a party conference, the result of which would determine effectively if he had the confidence of his party. Lose that vote, and it was over for him.