Sir, – In your coverage of the election of Holly Cairns as leader of the Social Democrats, you failed to note that the resignations of Róisín Shortall and Catherine Murphy as co-leaders of that party marked a significant moment for the political left in Ireland (“Social Democrats swiftly complete a no-drama leadership change”, News, March 2nd).
For the first time, none of the parties of the left in Dáil Éireann have a leader from a working-class background.
Mary Lou McDonald, Ivana Bacik, Paul Murphy, Richard Boyd-Barrett, and Peadar Tóibín – the leaders of Sinn Féin, the Labour Party, Solidarity, People Before Profit and Aontú, respectively – all hail from middle-class or very well-off backgrounds, and all of them except Mr Tóibín attended prestigious fee-paying schools in south Dublin.
Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – the parties they excoriate as representing the wealthy – are led by the son of a CIÉ employee and the son of an immigrant.
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The Social Democrats were founded in part as a reaction against the gradual abandonment of the Labour Party of its working-class base, a process brought to completion by Labour’s bizarre decision to dump Alan Kelly as leader in 2022.
So it is strange to see the Social Democrats following Labour along this path of “champagne socialism” by dropping two leaders with impeccable working-class credentials and replacing them with a leader who might well appeal to NGOs and voters in south Dublin, but who will have almost no traction among the very voters who the party claims to represent. – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.