Time will tell if Labour will be at the races

It takes a brave party to allow its leader to visit a brewery, go through a mill, and then pose a nose behind statues of horses just hours after a poll showed it languishing badly in the election race.

And even more so when the starting point is beside a river which legend has it was created by a queen, who then drowned. But that is exactly what Labour did in Co Louth yesterday, as it attempted to place the spotlight on the jobs created by the last government and what it is promising voters if re-elected.

As Tánaiste Joan Burton and local constituency candidates super junior minister Ged Nash and senator Mary Moran were ushered into the Boann Distillery in Drogheda next to the river of the same name to launch the party’s jobs plan for the coming campaign, the senior figures gave a stout defence of their poll position.