Asked to choose between alienating Irish Times reporters and Labour Party TDs on one hand, and their own voters and activists on the other, Independent Ireland chose to ditch its own national chairwoman.
The whole point of forming the party was to build an organisation that could add more TDs and Senators in order to work towards entering Government. To do that, the party had to acquire a committed activist base. That is where Elaine Mullally came in.
At a stroke, and for no good reason, the party has just made itself untrustworthy to many of those who voted for it. It is a calamitous error of political judgement.
“A meaningful choice.”
Yet such an event would immediately shift the political ground rightward in Ireland by several degrees, and be a much better situation than that which faces those of us frustrated by the lie of the political land as it stands.
“We’re not going to win all battles.”
As counts continue
I fear, looking at the mess in this one EU constituency, that a hard lesson is going to be learned by many people on June 7th.
Radio host running in Dublin for Independent Ireland
Elections are hard, unless you have key advantages.
Radio host will contest Dublin
The problem now – the next step – is to identify a concrete proposal for change that can be placed before the voters.