Monday, September 3, 2007

TB Is Not To Be

I kind of figured Tommy Broughan was not going to be standing for leadership of the Labour party when he phoned my mother on Wednesday night about a pretty minor local matter she had raised with his office. This was not exactly the mark of a man forming a kitchen cabinet and preparing to launch a campaign for the hearts and minds of Labour members.

Tommy is a hard working constituency politician, a reasonable Dail speaker and by most accounts, a decent fellow. Unfortunately for him, these are not sufficient qualities to be party leader. He lacks any visible support from any Labour big hitters. He lacks a national profile - but possibly this will-he-won't-he business was intended to raise one. Perhaps he thought that in a potentially divisive election between rival Labour factions he might - conceivably - have got in as a compromise candidate in a Jack Lynch, Jim Hacker sort of way. With no one else opposing Gilmore, that slim possibility was gone.

Since the election the point has been done to death but the lot of an opposition backbencher really is not a particularly happy one. He got my mother's minor matter sorted out with admirable efficiency but possibly this was the final straw for him.



'Screw this' he must have thought 'if I don't give this leadership lark a go, I'll be stuck dealing with this shite out of that shaggin' caravan 'til I retire'.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Note the rose on the side of the van. I have it on good authority that it was painted in the tricolour rather than red because TB wanted to grab the tricolour back from FF (and perhaps these days SF).

I know him a little and always liked him. A leader? Well, who knows. People grow into such jobs (incidentally I think you might be right that he'd have seen himself as a compromise candidate). A pity though there was no run from others inside LP.

Still, no harm for his profile both within and outside the LP.

Pavement Trauma said...

.. and then he gets Transport. Not bad but not much of an upgrade from he had before.

Must have been the caravan.

Anonymous said...

Now that's just mean ;)

You wait and see. He'll be close to party leader some day... yeah!

Anonymous said...

I know Tommy Broughan well. He is a fundamentally decent man and deeply committed to politics. He was never going to be a leader - not because he was not qualified (loads of experience in the Dáil, good command of the briefs he's held over the years, and a couple of MSc degrees in economics and education), but because he is too modest - he does not have the ego needed to be a leader of what is fairly stroppy bunch of TDs.