Now is a time when we really could do with a strong and credible Irish Labour party. Which just makes what has actually happened there all the more tragic.
Alan Kelly is/was relatively kitchen-table focussed but the problem was that his personal abrasiveness made his relations with the rest of the party hierarchy terminally dire. Ivana, on the other hand, as a product of Alexandra College (Ireland's Roedean) has impeccable manners even if she has no idea how to relate to the Common People.
Of the remaining TDs, Ged Nash (Louth), Duncan Smith (Fingal), and Seán Sherlock (Cork East) represent the medium-to-small-town traditional Labour base, but the boundary changes have already doomed Sherlock who's standing down as a result, and make it very difficult to see Smith (the only senior figure young enough not to have the stench of 2011-16 attached to him and sensible enough not to be normie-repellent) get back in, as well as not helping Nash. Aodhán Ó Ríordáin is on the same wing as Ivana only more so and is running for the European Parliament and may get in as a result of the transfer Battle Royale on the bourgeois left, in which case that would be another Dáil seat irretrievably lost. Howlin retiring in Wexford leaves the seat there in peril, although the boundary change and reduction in seats doesn't actually damage Labour very much there as the area removed is a wasteland for the party. The only likely gain I could see at the moment is Kildare South and I don't see it as being even 50:50. The Seanad team are either based in gentrified inner Dublin (Kilmainham or Stoneybatter) or are terminally Yank-brained (yes, walking packet of fruit pastilles Annie Hoey, I'm looking at you).
The really hilarious thing is that the current leadership of the SDLP (Eastwood, Hanna, O'Toole) seem to be looking at this spectacle and viewing it as a model to be emulated.
