Eamon must up his game as Joan of Irk readies for battle

The red carpet had been rolled out to greet Labour’s big guns, but a sudden storm saw it rolled back up and left looking soggy and forlorn — a fitting metaphor for the party’s experience in government really.

Then an icy wind swept through the conference hotel — yes, Joan Burton and Eamon Gilmore had arrived in the same room and their fixed, fake smiles for each other were failing to ignite the experience.

But if Ms Burton wanted to warm up the meeting, she could always have set fire to all those “Gilmore For Taoiseach” posters she famously stashed in her late father’s shed.