O’Conall Street

The Sunday papers were full of the sad story of the PD’s steady and apparently fatal decline.

The Tribune described new leader, Sen Ciaran Cannon as the invisible man of Irish politics and I suspect very many of the papers readers will have stared at the front page picture and scratched their heads wondering who the middle aged grey haired bloke was.

This all makes the SDLP’s woes look very small indeed. 

According to the reports the PD’s are not meeting as a parliamentary party and there is little or no organisational activity on the ground. Brian Cowan, who was already having a bad weekend with his own ratings more than halved since his election as leader tow months ago, could pick up Senator Fiona O’Malley (a future FF South Dublin candidate?)  and TD Noel Grealish. Speculation is that Mary Harney will remain a minister as an independent TD. As for Senator Cannon these fifteen minutes of missed fame may be all we ever hear of him.

It’s a sad end to a party which made such a splash when in 1986 Dessie O’Malley, of ‘I stand by the Republic’ fame and some of Fianna Fail’s best talent split from the mother ship and proceeded to shake out the centre right of Irish politics bringing some much needed choice on that side of the spectrum.

Mark Durkan was right to say the SDLP is not for sale on Saturday. 

He has clearly decided to continue carving out an SDLP niche in irish politics, providing a distinct analysis and real choice to the Northern electorate. The PD’s gave up on that ambition about five years ago and this year they will pay the ultimate price for it.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 7:37 am and is filed under Business, Politics, Public Affairs, Public Relations, The Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.