Alan Kelly

The finishing touches to the plan to take down Alan Kelly were applied in the home of Labour Senator Marie Sherlock last Sunday. The party had recorded yet ...

There was, one said, a general feeling that Kelly had become “semi-detached” and that he “didn’t realise the extent” of the difficulties the party was facing, amid what members fretted was an inexorable slide towards irrelevance, and potentially to extinction. Taking down a leader of a small party based on poor polling, in the middle of an election cycle, before they’ve had a chance to fight a local, general or European election runs contrary to political wisdom – even more so when he has been limited by the pandemic. Wall and Smith have said they presented him on Tuesday with their analysis of polling and that he was tainted, and the reality was he had lost support. That momentum brought the PLP together on Sunday. It was decided that Smith, Wall and Cork East TD Seán Sherlock would go to Kelly. They were chosen because they were close to him – the Tipperary TD could be left in no doubt about the single-mindedness of his party. The backdrop of the Labour Party going to war with itself, while an actual war raged, was not lost on members. And that’s one of the things people are saying to me. A Labour spokesman said the party had a duty of confidentiality regarding career-sensitive information and would not comment on internal matters. Kelly would have to be presented with a fait accompli – that he would go, or face a motion of no confidence from all 10 other members of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). The purpose of the meeting was to copper-fasten an approach that had been emerging as concerns about the leadership reached a point of no return. It’s believed Billie Sparks, the party’s general secretary, last week indicated to members that she was uncomfortable with parts of the process, while Ged Nash, the Louth TD and finance spokesman, was said by colleagues to be particularly annoyed with aspects. The events of last week brought to a head concerns that had been forming over time. Labour members have stated that the reasons for Kelly’s defenestration lie in the polling numbers, and a fear that he was too strongly associated with the Labour-Fine Gael government of 2011-2016.

Kelly had been "detached" for some time and the loss of key advisors left him isolated in his role.

"We were asking him to genuinely reflect, one of us easily could've leaked it and forced him to go, but we didn't." People were in some way shocked by his response, but it stiffened a building resolve that the party needed to move on.” “The collective room was lost, and he knew he had no authority,” one source said. “It's a very sad day for us,” he said. "This was going to happen, there was always going to be something he was going to do or say, or he would rub someone up the wrong way, and that would be used." Reflecting since his announcement, sources have said that Kelly's departure was "inevitable" and that he "has not been himself" for a number of months as the polling quagmire kept the party from getting any bounce from his leadership. A senior source said that Mr Kelly had been "detached" for some time and the loss of key advisors left him isolated in his role. "At that meeting, we knew that we all wanted to move on, not all for the same reasons," said a source. Driven by Sean Sherlock and Duncan Smith, who had nominated Kelly for the leadership, it was agreed to convene a meeting of the party on Sunday, behind Kelly's back, to decide his fate. The tone and tenor of Mr Kelly's defiant response to his colleagues spelt the end of his leadership. There were concerns about his personal leadership style and the culture within the party emanating from his office, sources have told us, saying: "Everybody was very honest with him, and absolutely none of the concerns were about polling." The political assassination of Alan Kelly by his own party on Wednesday was the result of months of internal strife, fuelled by an irrevocable disconnect between the leader and his troops.

Party members in Westmeath had supported Deputy Kelly in his leadership contest against Aodhán Ó Riordáin in 2020 and Cllr Leonard says that he and the other ...

He also noted that Deputy Kelly had approved the funding for Westmeath's two greenways when he was Minister for Transport and had a genuine interest in rural issues. The ordinary worker who is struggling most to pay their taxes but who also want to contribute their fair share and want a fairer society. The Labour rank and file in Westmeath were shocked by Alan Kelly's resignation as leader of Labour, a local councillor says.