Several bad by-elections, a terrible general election and a frightful performance in the president ial contest have severely dented the image as political virtuosos of the Labour Party leader, Dick Spring, and his advisers. Their previous good fortune and the electorate have deserted them in huge measure.
The Labour leadership's strategy of choosing a candidate on the basis of what they thought Fianna Fail would do proved a disastrous blueprint. In an attempt to turn the clock back to 1990 and to repeat the Mary Robinson story, they hurriedly chose Adi Roche to oppose Albert Reynolds.
After five hours of discussion with Ms Roche, the party's political director, Fergus Finlay, and its former national organiser, Pat Magner, recommended her to Mr Spring. He accepted their counsel, which was not unusual, given his deep faith in Fergus Finlay's political wisdom.
She was endorsed by the parliamentary party and the general council before, sparkling with fervour, she embarked on a campaign which was practically all downhill. It seems a vague memory now but, in the middle of September, during that brief period when Ms Roche was foremost in the polls, Mr Spring was congratulated by his parliamentary party for a clever choice.
It was critically important to Labour, if only for psychological reasons, that Ms Roche should finish third, rather than fourth, in the race. That an independent candidate such as Dana, who campaigned without a party machine, without much money and with virtually no posters, should finish ahead of Ms Roche is a real reverse for the party.
With the benefit of hindsight, party sources yesterday agreed that the leadership should have closed ranks behind Michael D. Higgins and sent him forward as their standard-bearer.
"There is sympathy for Adi in the party. She should never have been chosen. She had an excellent CV, but she was not politically experienced. She was unable to articulate her ideas and motives. She could not explain what she was doing in an inspirational way . . . Spring went for her out of bad judgment", one source said.
Whither the leader and his party now after yesterday's devastating electoral harvest? If Mr Spring intends to stay on as leader - and there is no evidence at this point that he will give up politics - he is safe to continue. The two obvious successors, Ruairi Quinn and Brendan Howlin, are not in pugnacious mood.
According to sources, the former finance minister is certainly not of a mind to launch an offensive which could split the party.
"It was clever of Spring to appoint Ruairi chairman of Roche's election campaign committee", one source in Leinster House commented last night, alluding to the fact that the deputy leader will have to absorb some of the blame for the dismal showing. Ms Roche pulled in less than 7 per cent of the first preferences in Mr Quinn's own constituency of Dublin South East and jibes have been made at his lack of participation in the campaign.
As the full scale of the defeat emerged yesterday, Ruairi Quinn rejected suggestions that he had not done enough and pledged support for his party leader.
Mr Howlin, the other potential leader and a Spring loyalist, is seen as keen to be the anointed successor rather than as an aggressor in quest of the leadership.
However, while a leadership coup seems to have no part in Labour's immediate future, the harsh reality of the election debacle will be investigated when the Parliamentary Labour Party meets next Wednesday. ail business.
"Dick will ask his party colleagues to tell him what the alternative is", one source said.
Calls will follow for a revamping of the party, a return to core values and a refusal to "keep pandering to the concerns of the chattering classes", he added. Given yesterday's election outcome, at least one thing appears clearer. With party morale so low, it would be injudicious to press ahead with the Limerick West byelection to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Jim Kemmy. So the party is likely to face this test, and another in Dublin North, in March.
On the bright side, Labour can look back at the 1987 general election and see that it had just 6 per cent of the vote and 12 Dail seats. Ten years on, it won 10 per cent of the vote and has 17 seats. The difficult bit to stomach is the fact that, in the interim, the party secured an unprecedented 33 seats.
It promptly lost support for going into coalition with Fianna Fail; then, two years later, it managed to shake off even more admirers by dumping its partner and going into government with Fine Gael and Democratic Left.
"One of the oddest things Dick Spring did was to completely cut Fianna Fail off as potential partners in his annual conference speech in Limerick before the general election, and to give no reason for doing so", one source said.
Following the defeat of Ms Roche, Mr Spring's detractors are now better armed than ever to criticise his tactics and to raise again the spectre of his alleged arrogance.