Labour party leader Alan Kelly

jams100

Went under the news this.
Probably because labour are now irrelevant. What a horrible man this fella is, just shows how much labour have dropped to have him as a leader. With a bit of hope he'll finish off labour for good. Thought Brendan howlin actually performed well in the 2020 election debates on tv. Anyone actually like him or think he's a good choice?

Phoebas

As we emerge from the Covid health crisis and enter the Covid economic crisis we're going to need a party that can represent workers, and is willing to do that in government not just by soundbites from opposition.

This could be an opportunity for the Labour party to regain its relevancy. Not sure if Kelly is the man for the job, but he's closer to what's required now that AoR.

Seamai

The only positive thing I can say about Kelly becoming leader is that given the alternative of Ó Riordaín (far too "woke" for his own good), he's probably the lesser of two evils.
Kelly has never struck me as particularly bright, he won't do much to increase the party's vote share, I think it wont be too long before Labour is looking for another leader.

Ronan|Raven

A fine mahoc to the new dear leader!

Boggles

AK-47.

FG stitched him up badly when they dumped Irish Water on him and he unwisely decided the tactic to use would be bully the country.

Labour are done.

EmmetSpiceland

A sad day for the party.

mickdw

Ah but dont forget Power suits him.

Nigel Fairservice

Alan Kelly doesn't have much of a likeability factor about him. I always though he came across as quite cold.

fly_agaric

Seamai wrote: »

The only positive thing I can say about Kelly becoming leader is that given the alternative of Ó Riordaín (far too "woke" for his own good), he's probably the lesser of two evils.
Kelly has never struck me as particularly bright, he won't do much to increase the party's vote share, I think it wont be too long before Labour is looking for another leader.

Hard to decide which was worse really.

He is a more typical Irish politician I think [with the good + bad that goes with that] as opposed to someone who I feel imbibes opinions and issues directly from social media/twitter + US & UK left wing talking points regardless of relevance to Ireland.

Kivaro

Phoebas wrote: »

As we emerge from the Covid health crisis and enter the Covid economic crisis we're going to need a party that can represent workers, and is willing to do that in government not just by soundbites from opposition.

This could be an opportunity for the Labour party to regain its relevancy. Not sure if Kelly is the man for the job, but he's closer to what's required now that AoR.

Most definitely this country needs a party to represent the workers of this country. However, Labour is not that party.
If Labour adhered to their founding principles, they would have possibly achieved more seats than any other party at the last election .... due to the desire for change from FG/FF.

But no, Labour unfortunately has gone in a different direction and are now seen more of a social welfare party. Labour is now the anti-labour party.
They need a complete transformation for this view to change.

JohnnyFlash

Excellent choice. Kelly is articulate, intelligent, and a passionate social democrat.

jams100

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

Excellent choice. Kelly is articulate, intelligent, and a passionate social democrat.

He seems quite cold and out of touch to me, my abiding memory of him will be this. Celebrating like a mad man when on the same day his party was decimated. Seems like a man of little substance and class.

Pedro K

I'll never forget his cosying up to John Delaney. I think labour will regret appointing him as leader.

Jamie2k9

They have joined FG, FF and SF to have such unlikable leaders...

RandomViewer

Alan Kelly or Aidan O Snowflake, Labour voters had very poor choice, Strange that Champagne Jack didn't throw his name in the ring.

ricero

My first party I voted for was the Labour party and I would of been a supporter back in the day. The way they betrayed their core voters and the disastorous leadership of Joan Burton finished it for me and my family. We all vote Sinn Fein now and im sure so do most of the old labour voters.

Alan Kelly is an egomaniac and seems to me like a bit of a sociopath. Good riddance Labour.

jams100

Pedro K wrote: »

I'll never forget his cosying up to John Delaney. I think labour will regret appointing him as leader.

Forgot about that actually, and Kelly couldn't see what was wrong with that. Insert facepalm emoji here

Ashleigh1986

A nothing leader for a nothing party .
The Labour Party sold its soul a long time ago .
They could hold their ard fheis in a telephone box on O'Connell street .
" you reap what you sow " .... Bye bye labour

ChikiChiki

mickdw wrote: »

Ah but dont forget Power suits him.

For that comment alone he should be consigned to the dustbins of history.

He is definitely very far from traditional Labour values. Seems like using them as a platform for personal goals.

The Kelly family are very powerful, make no mistake.

blackcard

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

They have joined FG, FF and SF to have such unlikable leaders...

What leaders would you like to see in each of the parties?

RandomViewer

blackcard wrote: »

What leaders would you like to see in each of the parties?

Pearce Doherty, John Mc Guinness and Twink

aw

Going against the grain here it seems, but with Kelly in charge Labour are now interesting to me, as an unaffiliated voter.

I used to actively despise Labour in the Gilmore days when he bluffed and blustered his way to a huge number of seats by telling many what they wanted to hear regardless of implication or cost, EXACTLY as Sinn Fein have done now.

The party did what they, and many others, saw as the right thing for the country during the downturn and I give them kudos for taking difficult decisions.

The party has suffered two poor leaders, one broadly unpopular and one bland and uninspiring.
Now they have a young leader, who is undoubtedly passionate and driven.

I wish him well.

Marhay70

I was a trade unionist all my working life and always voted Labour until 2011. The rot set in after the merger with Democratic Left in 1998. From that day Labour seemed to veer to the right and try to become a centre party rather than of the left. Then came the era of Gilmore and Rabbitte, Kelly reminds me a lot of Rabbitte, same sort of "I know all and you know fcuk all" attitude, I don't see Labour prospering under his leadership, in fact, if a government isn't formed and a second GE is called, I can see them being eclipsed completely.
If however, they decide to throw their lot in with FG again, which I reckon Kelly will do, then the same fate awaits them.

Fann Linn

I'm glad Kelly got it purely for the reason that he won't support FF/FG.

Richard Hillman

They didn't have much to chose from.

Whatever about Alan Kelly himself, the general public see him as Toxic and a major part of the Labour who were in government. Then you have O'Riordan who is apart of the middle class left movement who hate the very people they traditionally represent.

I have no idea what Kelly is trying to do but O'Riordan is trying to court a cohort that is loud but barely exists. Neither of them would be wooing white, straight, working class men. Of which there are a lot of.

RandomViewer

Richard Hillman wrote: »

They didn't have much to chose from.

Whatever about Alan Kelly himself, the general public see him as Toxic and a major part of the Labour who were in government. Then you have O'Riordan who is apart of the middle class left movement who hate the very people they traditionally represent.

I have no idea what Kelly is trying to do but O'Riordan is trying to court a cohort that is loud but barely exists. Neither of them would be wooing white, straight, working class men. Of which there are a lot of.

Labour HQ gave a sigh of relief when they heard Kelly won, trying to fit the 37 multiple gender toilets that O Snowflake wanted would have been nearly impossible.

jams100

Fann Linn wrote: »

I'm glad Kelly got it purely for the reason that he won't support FF/FG.

He was in Government with Fine Gael already though? So if he says he won't support them now he is a hypocrite no?
If he says he can no longer support them now then why didn't he walk out when he was in government with them?
I do get that Labour had to make hard decisions at the time but Alan just seemed so out of touch with the average voter, he just has such a big ego, it's all about him...sure he's been desperate for the leadership for some time. Couldn't even garner the support to challenge Howlin for the leadership, suggests how unpopular he is even within the Labour party.
I personally couldn't vote for any Labour candidate now he's leader, I couldn't even give them a transfer.

tayto lover

Boggles wrote: »

AK-47.

FG stitched him up badly when they dumped Irish Water on him and he unwisely decided the tactic to use would be bully the country.

Labour are done.

A bad day for Labour with their selection of Kelly.
He tried to bully people over the Water issues just like Phil Hogan did.
Labour will hopefully suffer even more as a result of picking him as leader.
He should be nowhere near the leadership. Bullies are detestable.

Fann Linn

jams100 wrote: »

He was in Government with Fine Gael already though? So if he says he won't support them now he is a hypocrite no?
If he says he can no longer support them now then why didn't he walk out when he was in government with them?
I do get that Labour had to make hard decisions at the time but Alan just seemed so out of touch with the average voter, he just has such a big ego, it's all about him...sure he's been desperate for the leadership for some time. Couldn't even garner the support to challenge Howlin for the leadership, suggests how unpopular he is even within the Labour party.
I personally couldn't vote for any Labour candidate now he's leader, I couldn't even give them a transfer.

Exactly that. They went into Govt with Gilmore and ditched every commitment they made to their electorate and since then have got justifiably punished IMO.
Time to now try and rebuild from bottom up. They have lots of ground to make up.

Marhay70

Fann Linn wrote: »

Exactly that. They went into Govt with Gilmore and ditched every commitment they made to their electorate and since then have got justifiably punished IMO.
Time to now try and rebuild from bottom up. They have lots of ground to make up.

Agreed but I don't see Kelly as the man to do that. Kelly is deeply unpopular among the constituency that Labour would hope to court and even if Labour's "reversion" to being a party of the left is genuine, I doubt if many people in that constituency would believe it with him as leader. I know I won't.
Labour shot themselves in the foot time after time in 2011-2016 and lost all credibility with the electorate, if they continue this excursion into the land of PC Liberalism as portrayed by the likes of Bacik and O'Riordáin then the chances of them being accepted again as a party of the working man are nil.

Edgware

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

They have joined FG, FF and SF to have such unlikable leaders...

They all cant have a personality like Coppinger or Rich Boy.

Stovepipe

Kelly is a local "machine" politician and Lowry shares the county with him, so you know what you are getting. He is a cunning,intelligent individual,though, and cannot be discounted as merely a "local" talent, a word I use loosely. He has enough European experience to know how to operate on that level and having supped at the trough,will do anything to keep his seat.

Liamo57

Nail in the cofin for Labour. Not a nice person, **** personality, a gob****e know it all. No likeability factor. Thinks he is important. A cute hoor plays the gan
me and claps everyones back and plys a ," sinc as a prostitutes kiss game".

tdf7187

Tv footage of this 'election' showed clear breaches of the social distancing guidelines. One rule for us, another for the so called leaders.

tdf7187

Liamo57 wrote: »

Nail in the cofin for Labour. Not a nice person, **** personality, a gob****e know it all. No likeability factor. Thinks he is important. A cute hoor plays the gan
me and claps everyones back and plys a ," sinc as a prostitutes kiss game".

He is an immoral unprincipled scumbag and accordingly perfectly suited to be leader of the Irish anti-labour party. He'll probably end up minister for finance in a Blueshirt government.

tdf7187

Fann Linn wrote: »

I'm glad Kelly got it purely for the reason that he won't support FF/FG.

Course he will. He has decided to hitch his anchor to the anti Zanu Fianna Gael wagon for the time being but he has no leftleaning credentials whatever. If anything he is to the right of most Zanu Fail politicians.

boombang

I know some of the detail about the CervicalCheck controversy. AK gets a lot of credit for his role in the aftermath. From what I see he was a blatant populist opportunist on that topic. I think he's going to be decisive for the party, but Labour seem to have been shooting themselves in the foot for quite some time now.

tdf7187

Richard Hillman wrote: »

They didn't have much to chose from.

Whatever about Alan Kelly himself, the general public see him as Toxic and a major part of the Labour who were in government. Then you have O'Riordan who is apart of the middle class left movement who hate the very people they traditionally represent.

I have no idea what Kelly is trying to do but O'Riordan is trying to court a cohort that is loud but barely exists. Neither of them would be wooing white, straight, working class men. Of which there are a lot of.

Indeed. The Irish Labour party is a party led by almost exclusively white Irish middle class males of a type who hate white Irish working class males. A very strange little cult masquerading as a political party. They probably have a few in the payroll in RTE but have no actual support among the general population except among the very deluded or very masochistic.

EndaHonesty

He is the worst kind of politician; an absolute narcissist who would say/do anything to further himself. (Phil Hogan is another) I would suggest he has sociopathic tendencies too.

I think the proof of that is his "power is a drug.... it suits me" interview, the constant arrogant statements he made during his time as minister, and the celebration after he won his seat in 2016. These were literally his mask slipping.

The way he has latched on the the cervical controversy is actually sickening, in particular his "friendship" with Vicky Phelan, which seems to have fooled so many people. Vicky most of all. It's such an obvious ploy to clean up his image. Disgusting.

I just hope he is found out, and before he gets another chance in government, but I think he will be closely managed this time and I fear the mask won't slip again until he gets grip of some more power...

Manach

To represent the working class there should be a modicum of respect for said class. Irish Labour look to have borrow from the playbooks of US Democrats and British Labour by embracing progressive causes to the hilt - social and in terms of migration ( see Strange death of Europe by Murray). Unfortunately so have all the other mainstream parties as well as the host of socialist spring-ups. Hence they are, to borrow a capital term, chasing a diminishing share of the market. Given the changes in the world post Corana ( based on similar historic upheavals ) then Mr. Kelly would need some means to distingush himself err Labour slide into irrevelancy.

Augme

Manach wrote: »

To represent the working class there should be a modicum of respect for said class. Irish Labour look to have borrow from the playbooks of US Democrats and British Labour by embracing progressive causes to the hilt - social and in terms of migration ( see Strange death of Europe by Murray). Unfortunately so have all the other mainstream parties as well as the host of socialist spring-ups. Hence they are, to borrow a capital term, chasing a diminishing share of the market. Given the changes in the world post Corana ( based on similar historic upheavals ) then Mr. Kelly would need some means to distingush himself err Labour slide into irrevelancy.

Who are the working class now a days though? The society the labour party was formed in was hugely different to the society now a days. Working class through the years would have been factory workers, miners(England specifically with this one,) dockers.etc. obviously there links to trade unions would be huge but even now a days trade unions have become a lot less.popular among workers.

They would be white males on low income. That then becomes the big question, how do you define working class?

If working class is defined by wages then then a lot of low income workers in ireland would now be immigrants and students. Traditional white Irish/ males would now earn what would be middle class due to their wages but would have grown up in a much more traditional working class environment.

Its a very difficult issue for labour to deal with and to try and capture votes from both groups of modern society. Sinn Fein have succeed, but that has strongly to do with the IRA/32 county appeal.

Labour would have lost a huge amount of support from a lot of public sector/civil service workers in the past. I expect them to make a big push to court them in the future as I struggle to see where else they will get their votes.

Fann Linn

Augme wrote: »

Who are the working class now a days though? The society the labour party was formed in was hugely different to the society now a days. Working class through the years would have been factory workers, miners(England specifically with this one,) dockers.etc. obviously there links to trade unions would be huge but even now a days trade unions have become a lot less.popular among workers.

They would be white males on low income. That then becomes the big question, how do you define working class?

If working class is defined by wages then then a lot of low income workers in ireland would now be immigrants and students. Traditional white Irish/ males would now earn what would be middle class due to their wages but would have grown up in a much more traditional working class environment.

Its a very difficult issue for labour to deal with and to try and capture votes from both groups of modern society. Sinn Fein have succeed, but that has strongly to do with the IRA/32 county appeal.

Labour would have lost a huge amount of support from a lot of public sector/civil service workers in the past. I expect them to make a big push to court them in the future as I struggle to see where else they will get their votes.

I don't really think the SF support has come on the back of IRA United Ireland aspirations.
I'm PS trade unionist myself. Up until 2011 when the LP went rogue they used to get the vote from me. The alternative is now FF/Fg or Indies hence SF got mine this time around.
Furthermore a lot of younger folk voted SF due to housing, health care, child care issues and failures of FG to address same adequately.
I'd hazard a guess that for a majority of people IRA/ 32 counties were low down the list and there are/were far more pressing issues.

Kivaro

tdf7187 wrote: »

Tv footage of this 'election' showed clear breaches of the social distancing guidelines. One rule for us, another for the so called leaders.

That's old footage.
From before the arrival "of our little fiend".

jimmyrustle

Ronan|Raven wrote: »

A fine mahoc to the new dear leader!

Mahoc! Mahoc!

jimmyrustle

Seamai wrote: »

the alternative of Ó Riordaín (far too "woke" for his own good),.

A while back O'Riordan put up a Twitter post informing us that he had recused himself from a radio panel appearance because it was too gender imbalanced for his liking.:pac::pac::pac:

Can anyone post back up the exact thing he posted?

oceanman

labour...a noting party that represents nobody. hopefully gone forever in a few years.

Calahonda52

EndaHonesty wrote: »

He is the worst kind of politician; an absolute narcissist who would say/do anything to further himself. (Phil Hogan is another) I would suggest he has sociopathic tendencies too.

I think the proof of that is his "power is a drug.... it suits me" interview, the constant arrogant statements he made during his time as minister, and the celebration after he won his seat in 2016. These were literally his mask slipping.

The way he has latched on the the cervical controversy is actually sickening, in particular his "friendship" with Vicky Phelan, which seems to have fooled so many people. Vicky most of all. It's such an obvious ploy to clean up his image. Disgusting.

I just hope he is found out, and before he gets another chance in government, but I think he will be closely managed this time and I fear the mask won't slip again until he gets grip of some more power...

I happened to attend his last election launch in the Scouts hall in Nenagh.
VP and IIRC a lady called Lorraine were there as cheerleaders.

In his few words at the end, he NEVER used the word Labour or Party, it was all about family parish and county.
The election banners, which were all trotskyite red, never mentioned Labour

boombang

EndaHonesty wrote: »

The way he has latched on the the cervical controversy is actually sickening, in particular his "friendship" with Vicky Phelan, which seems to have fooled so many people. Vicky most of all. It's such an obvious ploy to clean up his image. Disgusting.

I'm glad that others can see what a sick charade this is.

Seth Brundle

Phoebas wrote: »

As we emerge from the Covid health crisis and enter the Covid economic crisis we're going to need a party that can represent workers, and is willing to do that in government not just by soundbites from opposition.

The majority of the electorate are workers. How will Lab manage to represent them all? I am a worker but I don’t believe that the party represents me.
Or do you mean that they are simply linked to unions and the “socialism” they shout about?

Beechwoodspark

Good friend who is in Labour told me that

Over the past few months AK has been on best behaviour

Nothing is too much trouble and wants to work with everyone.

Great plans for the future. Touring the country to revitileze the party.

So, watch this space.

ChikiChiki

Beechwoodspark wrote: »

Good friend who is in Labour told me that

Over the past few months AK has been on best behaviour

Nothing is too much trouble and wants to work with everyone.

Great plans for the future. Touring the country to revitileze the party.

So, watch this space.

Some people are very gullible in that case.

A leopard doesn't change its spots. The man is power hungry.