Lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas, goes the conventional wisdom.
As with many things though, the conventional wisdom is mistaken.
Lie down with dogs and, as the Progressive Democrats found to their cost, the dog will most likely eat you.
It’s easy to point to the last election as the moment when the PDs became irrelevant, but I think the election simply confirmed the verdict.
The shift in public perception had already happened, probably sometime between the moment when Mary Harney moved to Health and Michael McDowell took over as leader.
By election time, the party was doomed. Founded with the declared aim of fighting corruption in Fianna Fáil, McDowell huffed and puffed but ultimately wilted as the Mahon tribunal dissected Bertie Ahern’s accounts of ‘dig outs’ in the early 1990s.
After the election, the party was left with Harney and some guy from Galway.
Had you even heard of Noel Grealish before last week?
Noel wants to join Fianna Fáil. Sort of. Maybe.
So the party had a meeting this evening, which quickly turned into a wake.
The burial will take place at a conference next month, party leader Ciaran Cannon announced afterwards.
Ciaran who? Exactly.
