Labour leader Ivana Bacik kicked off the first in the (lengthy) series of September political think-ins in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, on Thursday, pledging to use the coming Dáil term to push the Government on housing, the cost of living, Gaza and neutrality.
But she was quickly on the defensive on Labour’s endorsement of Independent TD Catherine Connolly’s campaign for the presidency. Partly, that was down to the man standing beside her when Labour’s TDs faced the media, her predecessor Alan Kelly. And Kelly, to put it mildly, is not Connolly’s greatest fan.
The Tipperary North deputy was in ebullient form, welcoming guests to his hometown, waving a Tipperary flag and, a little later, escorting Tipp hurlers Mikey Breen and Jake Morris around the Abbey Court Hotel with the Liam McCarthy cup.
Presumably, this was in case anyone would forget that they were in the home of the All-Ireland champions, which was unlikely, as Kelly mentioned it every five minutes or so.
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He wasn’t resiling, though, from last week’s bit of ground hurling, which marked his refusal to back Connolly’s campaign for the presidency. Not a bit of it.
“I haven’t changed. That will not change,” he said of his stance on the former Labour member.
His leader – who, let us not forget, was the beneficiary of the coup which deposed Kelly as leader three years ago – insisted the party was wholeheartedly behind Connolly as the “candidate of the left”.
Does the presidency matter?
Well, that’s not quite the way it happened. Connolly announced herself as the candidate of the left and Labour – for want of a better plan, or indeed any plan at all – fell in behind her.
Now, the party is faced with the task of making the best of that decision. On the evidence so far, it won’t be an easy job.
Labour gossip suggests that a furious Bacik, in the wake of her predecessor’s bombshell interview last week, threatened to move the think-in from Nenagh if Kelly didn’t row back.
An uneasy way forward was found – Kelly issued a statement to party colleagues expressing “regret” if his comments caused “confusion or concern” and the think-in stayed in Nenagh.
In fairness, there’d be no chance of the Liam McCarthy cup attending if they moved it to Dublin Bay South.
Bacik refused to comment when asked if she threatened to move the think-in, saying “these were private conversations” but didn’t actually deny it. She insisted that Labour is now “part of the Catherine Connolly campaign”.
That’s certainly true of a large chunk of the party. After all, a clear majority of those who voted approved its support of Connolly.
But it’s also true that a sizeable number of Labour people are either outright opposed to Connolly, or else nurture deep misgivings about supporting her.
Should Connolly flop, or otherwise embarrass Labour during the campaign, those voices will hardly refrain from saying, “we told you so”.
Bacik was strongly – if perhaps performatively – critical of Sinn Féin’s long delay in deciding whether to run its own candidate or back Connolly.
But her long-term political strategy is to co-operate with Sinn Féin and enter government in a coalition without either Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil. So, basically, one led by Sinn Féin.
There is a political logic to that strategy, though it makes some Labour people deeply uncomfortable. There is also an obvious danger to it – that the big beneficiaries of a broad left front are not Labour and the other smaller left-wing parties, but Sinn Féin, and that its gains would come at the expense of their smaller left-wing allies.
For now, however, Bacik has made her choice.
