Five days before Kelly quit, Ó Ríordaín told Bacik: ‘I’ll back you for Labour leader’
Party’s hopes of Left merger dashed as Social Democrats rule out a takeover
IVANA BACIK knew she would be the next leader of the Labour Party five days before Alan Kelly’s dramatic fall from grace this week, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
As the party turned decisively against its embattled leader, Ms Bacik’s most likely opponent, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, who ran against Mr Kelly in 2021, told her he would support her candidacy.
His support meant Ms Bacik was almost unbeatable even before the remaining candidates withdrew.
In contrast, it is understood that soundings within the party indicated Mr Ó Ríordáin would have struggled to win a contest.
One senior Labour source told the MoS: ‘It wasn’t so much that Aodhán had gone backwards, but rather that Ivana was so much more of a better option. Aodhán, especially for women and younger people, did not represent a decisive break from Alan and how all that had gone. Ivana had clean hands.’
Sources said the other potential candidate, the party’s Fingal TD Duncan Smith, was regarded as too inexperienced to take on the leadership.
One source said: ‘Duncan might be the Labour version of Simon Harris, but he is too young and untested. The party is bruised. Ivana was the safer option.’
However, the new Labour leader will not enjoy much of a political honeymoon. The sudden fall from power of Tipperary TD Mr Kelly has alarmed many of the party’s rural councillors who had no idea a heave was on the cards.
And hopes that Ms Bacik’s less abrasive style would secure a much-desired takeover of the Social Democrats have been knocked on the head by key figures in the rival left-leaning party.
Social Democrat TD Gary Gannon, regarded by some as a future leader of the Left, told the MoS: ‘I was working in community centres in 2012 and 2013 when the worst of Labour’s austerity policies were being inflicted on communities. I could never be persuaded to join the Labour Party.’
Another senior Social Democrat said: ‘An alliance with Labour? That would be the latter-day version of being tethered to a dead horse.’
Mr Gannon’s position was supported by the party’s Wicklow TD, Jennifer Whitmore, who said: ‘The concept of a merger has never entered our discourse.’
Within Labour, despite the relative cleanliness of Mr Kelly’s political execution, divisions are emerging between the parliamentary party and the grass roots. There is particular unease about the speed of the leader’s departure and the confining of decision-making to the parliamentary party.
One party source said of Mr Kelly’s press conference: ‘It was genuinely shocking. He was paraded out there like some captured prisoner of war to bless the new regime. He deserved better than that.’
And several party figures confronted the media in the Dáil corridors about the coverage of the power struggle that resulted in Mr Kelly walking the plank.
Although Mr Kelly had openly acquired the nickname of ‘Mr 4%’ in recent months, some party figures insisted his downfall was not influenced by poor opinion polls.
One source told the MoS: ‘Alan was just too much of a country fellow for the posh wing of the party. He liked greyhounds, rural pursuits, slapping people on the back.’
Another source said: ‘The truth is that the posh Dublin set never took to him. He was a little too working class for the party. He didn’t mix with their sort of people. He preferred
‘He was paraded out there like some prisoner of war’
‘This is the end of Labour as a rural party’
Country and Western and pints with the lads to the opera.’
When the usually combative Mr Kelly was asked at the press conference why he didn’t fight to keep his position, he replied: ‘These are my friends and I accept that.’
However, sources from Labour’s rural wing warned the new leader will face a big challenge trying to unite the party.
‘It is difficult to see Ivana going down well in places like the midlands and the west where we had seats. This is the end of Labour as a rural party,’ one source said.
Speaking at the No Woman Left Behind rally organised by the National Women’s Council in Dublin yesterday, Ms Bacik was introduced as ‘possibly the next woman leader of the Labour Party’.
But asked by the MoS about the leadership, she would only say she is ‘still consulting with party members’.
In her address, Ms Bacik said it is ‘appalling’ that just 23% of sitting TDs are women, and ‘unacceptable’ that she was only the 131st woman ever to be elected to the Dáil after winning the Dublin Bay South byelection last year.