Labour think-in: Burton talks up pact with party not named

The mortified couple coming from the hotel spa tightened the belts of their towelling robes as they flip-flopped through the lobby full of Labour politicians gathered for the party’s think-in.

Pat Rabbitte was among those who enjoyed the spectacle of the scantily clad pair in the Glenview Hotel in Wicklow’s Glen of the Downs.

“You get naked men running around the corridors. Better than anything you’d get at the Fine Gael conference,” he told us.

The giddy outburst was followed by a serious pep talk from former Tipperary hurling manager Liam Sheedy during a behind- closed-doors session for TDs and Senators facing into a bruising election.

But just how much of Sheedy’s drift would be caught by the many Dublin- centric deputies in Ireland’s most metropolitan of parties was open to question, one wily observer noted.

The hurling theme continued when Tánaiste and Labour leader Joan Burton, who represents Dublin West, fielded questions about the stability of her political relationship with deputy leader Alan Kelly of Tipperary.

Gossiping

Senior Fine Gael sources were gossiping about a clash of personalities between Labour’s top two, one reporter suggested.

“Really? Can I put my arm around him? Is that alright?” Ms Burton said, before moving to do so. It was excruciating.

“This must be Tipperary versus Dublin. Happily we don’t meet in football and Dublin is only working its way up to the hurling,” she added.

There always comes a moment during such happy events when the couple at the centre are pulled away from their guests for a set of keepsake photos.

Burton and Kelly were posed on decking beside a water feature against the spectacular backdrop of the glen. “Chat away,” urged the photographers.

Speculation about internal party dynamics aside, the proposed vote-transfer pact with Fine Gael was the main topic of discussion on the first day of the two-day event.

A good 10 minutes into her lengthy keynote speech, which was open to the media, Burton said she was happy to debate the record of Labour in Government “until the cows come home”.

She insisted her party had a good story to tell, “and plenty of time to tell it”, before a springtime general election.

While she did not mention a pact, or even refer to Fine Gael by name, Burton said it made sense for Labour to ask its supporters to continue their preferences to the party’s coalition partners in order to return the current Government. The alternative she characterised as “a political Tower of Babel, a Dáil made up of dozens of discordant voices”. Such a Dáil would not be able to elect a government, she claimed.

In private session, Brendan Howlin delivered a tub-thumping defence of the pact proposal. “We put out the fire and by Christ we shouldn’t accept being lectured to by the pyromaniacs,” he said.

Dublin Central TD Joe Costello was the only one to publicly question the pact.

Speaking to reporters after the session on general election strategy, Howlin warned of the cost of not having a “Left party” in government when asked for his view of Jeremy Corbyn’s recent elevation to leader of the British Labour Party.

“The last time the British Labour Party went for somebody out of the middle stream it put Margaret Thatcher into government for 14 years,” he said.

The formal ratification of the vote transfer pact means Labour’s unequal marriage of convenience to Fine Gael will continue for as long as the electorate wants.