Earth doesn't quite move for political newlyweds

It's not so long since the idea of Labour and Democratic Left spending two nights together under the same roof would have meant, almost by definition, a dirty weekend.

Last night in Tralee, however, the former Mr and Mrs Smith of Irish politics checked into the Brandon Hotel with a marriage certificate in one hand and a reservation for the honeymoon suite in the other.

And if the remains of the two old parties knew each other too well for any shy fumbling between the sheets, the new circumstances must still have taken a bit of getting used to.

Conference co-chairman Pat Brady attempted to set the tone early when he remarked in his introduction that "the process of bedding-down has been smooth, relatively-speaking".

Then Brendan Howlin took up the theme, reminiscing sweetly about the courtship process that was the Rainbow Government. The way Brendan told it, love blossomed during those two and a half years in which Labour and DL played footsie under the Cabinet table - the chemistry making Fine Gael's gooseberry hairs stand on end - and the eventual merger was inevitable.

But Proinsias De Rossa knows that too much smoothness, or sweetness, is bad for a relationship, and was quick to restore a little of the mystery.

The supplied script for his first presidential address began with a eulogy for Kerry and Dick Spring, which was so well designed to milk audience applause you could almost hear it moo.

In the event, the old teaser delivered it in Irish, and although most of the audience got the gist, the applause was less than climactic. It was exciting, all right, but the earth didn't quite move.

Still, the weather looks set fair for new Labour's honeymoon, and today's programme may find competition from beaches, golf courses and the Dingle peninsula.

As it was yesterday, many delegates were late for the opening of the event, thanks to horror stories involving bank holiday weekend traffic. Tralee was a little like the oasis after the desert crossing last night as bedraggled delegates poured in at the end of marathon car journeys; or drooped, tired and hungry, off Iarnrod Eireann's "special" (that's a mild word for it) trains.

A slighter infrastructural setback was the apparent reluctance of the hosts to fly anything on the flagposts outside the conference hotel, until a member of the Spring family intervened. By the time the event got under way, however, the flags of France, Italy, Germany and others were fluttering proudly, and the Springs had maintained a socialist tradition: we'll keep the flags of our European neighbours flying here.