Long a darling of the media, Pat Rabbitte established himself as a man of the people last night when he emerged from a uniquely democratic election as the new leader of the Labour Party.
The first-choice politician for talk-show producers proved almost as adept at attracting number-one preferences from Labour members, taking almost half the votes in a leadership contest decided by the masses.
Masses might be putting it a bit strongly in the context of a membership of 3,944, but this takes nothing from the achievement of the Mayo-born TD, whose 1,587 first preferences give him an unprecedented mandate in a party where one of his predecessors - Frank Cluskey - became leader on the strength of eight votes.
Apart from anything else, the new electoral system went some way towards rehabilitating the reputation of the envelope in Irish politics. Wisely, Labour chose white envelopes for the all-postal vote. Wisely too, given the strong feelings in leadership elections, the paper-knives were under the control of independent auditors, as was everything else in the process.
Like Mr Rabbitte's journey to the Labour Party - via Sinn Féin the Workers Party, then the Workers Party, New Agenda (briefly) and Democratic Left, the count was a long-drawn-out affair. But as soon as the first tallies emerged, showing joint favourite Brendan Howlin well in arrears, there could only be one winner.
The new leader has sometimes been accused of over-exposure, but he was a shrinking violet for most of the day. While Éamon Gilmore and Róisín Shortall braved the envelope-opening and early tallies, Mr Rabbitte stayed in his hutch in Leinster House. Mr Howlin was equally shy until, at teatime and with final tallies known, he arrived to concede.
It only remained for Mr Rabbitte to make a triumphant entry, not that this would be a problem. Entryism was a strong point in the Workers Party and when it came, Mr Rabbitte's was as smooth as ever. Patting his hair for the cameras, he blamed the bad weather on the Government and dealt deftly with suggestions that his victory was a Democratic Left take-over.
With Liz McManus rivalling Willie Penrose in the deputy leadership vote, the old DL was close to completing a 1-2-3 (Proinsias De Rossa is party president) of the leadership. Either way, there were suggestions that Mr Rabbitte's next move would be to open talks on a merger with Fine Gael. But the man who once prematurely predicted news that would "rock the State to its foundations" has learned restraint and confined himself to a promise to arrange "for the earliest possible replacement of this Government".
