Eamon Gilmore must change voters' perceptions of Labour but preserve its principles, writes Mark Hennessy
Eamon Gilmore did not expect Pat Rabbitte to quit so quickly after the election, believing he would stay on for a year or so.
Two weeks ago, Gilmore, a Dún Laoghaire TD since 1989, mused on how he could face five more years in Opposition, with power further away than ever.
Today, the Galway-born former students' leader must begin to prepare the plan that will protect the party's core beliefs yet revive its attractiveness to the electorate.
He faces huge difficulties. Since the election, some within and others without Labour have argued it must change its "brand" if it is to enjoy a resurgence.
Certainly, Labour's core messages are not getting through to an audience that is, for now at any rate, more interested in SUVs than social solidarity, and in property rather than poverty.
But were voters ever otherwise? Summing up some of the party's difficulties yesterday, Gilmore said some people believe Labour "wants to abolish wealth. We don't want to abolish wealth. We want to abolish poverty."
Labour under Gilmore will not, he made clear, seek a Clause 4 to dump from the party's rule book, as Tony Blair did in his efforts to change the public's view of his party in the early nineties.
"Labour in Ireland will not be changing philosophy. We have our core values and they are not for changing, or compromising. We stand for them, we are proud of them," Gilmore declared.
Back in the late 1980s, Labour under Dick Spring did not win voters' hearts on the economy. It did so attacking the Haughey government's record of sleaze, and backing social change.
Labour under Spring, in power with Fianna Fáil and then Fine Gael, left behind a record of political achievement, including divorce and equality legislation.
Gilmore must now seek to capture the "zeitgeist" of the age, as Spring did, and he must do so while getting his party operating at high speed, and keep it united.
He faces difficulties. Like his predecessor, Pat Rabbitte, Gilmore started out as a students' leader in University College, Galway in the early 1970s before joining the ITGWU.
Unlike Rabbitte, however, Gilmore has not made himself a nationally-known figure, even though he was often more significant in the backrooms of Workers' Party politics.
He must do so now, and quickly. Gilmore is intelligent, thoughtful, likeable and decent, but has failed often to leave a powerful impression upon the mind.
His leadership style is different from Spring and Rabbitte. Spring ran the operation with a kitchen cabinet of loyal advisers, and pretty much ignored everyone else.
Rabbitte, on the other hand, thought that he listened carefully to what all colleagues had to say before acting, including the party's once-fractious national executive council. Most of them, however, believed that he did not listen, and that it was better not to bring unwelcome news to his table.
Gilmore is genuinely more collegial and co-operative in style, and burdened with less of an ego than either of his predecessors, though there are times when that is a vital ingredient in politics.
But Labour is not an easy party to lead, even when things are going well and they are not going well now, as the decision of Brendan Howlin to accept the Leas Ceann Comhairle's job only too clearly displays.
Left demoralised by the election defeat, Howlin opted to accept the Taoiseach's job offer. Others are equally despondent, though less public in the ways that they show it, though a few bodies from the Parliamentary Labour Party at Mr Gilmore's coronation yesterday would have been both welcome and expected.
However, politicians have to be lucky generals, and Gilmore has a chance that he could become one as Fianna Fáil prepares for the post-Bertie era.
Fianna Fáil was re-elected on economic grounds. There was little of love about it. If those grounds are weakened, then both Gilmore and Fine Gael's Enda Kenny have room to grow, even if both are going to do so independently.
Has Gilmore arrived at the right time in the cycle?