Article Category: Last Refuge

LABOUR’S ‘NEW GENERATION’

October 3, 2019

‘GENERATIONAL CHANGE’ is how the party has pitched the withdrawal of Labour’s Wicklow general election candidate, Jack O’Connor, with Cllr Paul O’Brien replacing... Read more »

COVETOUS COVENEY LURKS STILL

September 5, 2019

LAST WEEKEND Sunday Independent columnist Eoghan Harris tipped Simon ‘Covetous’ Coveney to take out Leo Varadkar as leader if Fine Gael loses the... Read more »

LEFT-RIGHT FIANNA FÁIL SPLIT

September 5, 2019

EVERY YEAR since the 2016 general election, Willie O’Dea has led a charge to bolster Fianna Fáil’s working-class base, with the parliamentary party... Read more »

POST DEASY CIVIL WAR

September 5, 2019

FRESH FROM feeding off the political carcass of local TD John Deasy, Waterford Blueshirts are now divided into three new factions behind the... Read more »

ISRAELI IRISH OFFENSIVE

August 22, 2019

THE ONSLAUGHT against alleged anti-semitism in Britain is driven by efforts to undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership, while in Ireland the claim that... Read more »

BITCHIN’ BLUESHIRT BARRY

August 22, 2019

WITH ONE Young Fine Gael (YFG) leader, Killian Foley-Walsh, in a spot of bother about his attendance at a right-wing youth conference in... Read more »

LABOUR AND BIG TOBACCO

August 22, 2019

WHAT IS it about the Labour Party and Big Tobacco? Several leading Labour players down the years have been involved in lobbying and... Read more »

TIMMY DOOLEY’S DEMISE

August 8, 2019

TIMMY DOOLEY’S public dressing down by his boss, Micheál Martin, for his unpatriotic remarks on the Taoiseach as he confronted the old foe,... Read more »

JOAN BURTON’S LAST STAND

August 8, 2019

THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT was kind to former Labour leader, Joan Burton, in its recent front page splash about tens of thousands of pensioners... Read more »

JOSEPHA, SHANE, SHAY AND NEALE

August 8, 2019

SHAY BRENNAN’S win at the Fianna Fáil Dublin Rathdown convention last week is but a small step in the party’s seemingly hopeless quest... Read more »

MICHELLE’S MAYO MADNESS

July 25, 2019

FINE GAEL farming members, a mainstay of the party for generations, are not enamoured of their Galway West TD, the fragrant Hildegarde Naughton,... Read more »

CHOPPING MARIA BAILEY

July 25, 2019

FOLLOWING recent adverse developments, Maria Bailey has lost her role as chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Housing, but the axe could fall... Read more »

GENDER IMBALANCE IN CORK FG

July 25, 2019

LEO VARADKAR and Fine Gael general secretary Tom Curran have a serious gender problem in Cork City and County with not a single... Read more »

MARY LOU RESHUFFLES SF DÁIL TEAM

July 11, 2019

SINN FÉIN’S post-election revamp will see the restructure of various layers of the party, but already Mary Lou McDonald’s Dáil reshuffle involves a... Read more »

BLUESHIRTS BATTLE FOR TOP JOBS

July 11, 2019

THE BACK-room machinations by EU states’ leaders in the divvy up of EU top jobs last week were naïve child’s play compared to... Read more »

FINE GAEL BULLIES?

July 11, 2019

REPORTS OF bullying, racist remarks and persecution of female members in Meath East Fine Gael have led to an inquiry by the party’s... Read more »

VARADKAR TO BAIL OUT BAILEY?

June 27, 2019

LEO VARADKAR is again exhibiting a recently observed trait of indecision and prevarication, this time in the Maria Bailey ‘compo’ controversy. This characteristic... Read more »

BRENDAN AND RÓISÍN

June 27, 2019

STRATEGIC ARGUMENTS inside both the Labour Party and the Labour Party Mark II (aka the Social Democrats) concern not only whether to enter... Read more »

SOC DEMS TARGET EIGHT DÁIL SEATS

June 27, 2019

THE MEDIA’s new political love objects are the Greens, but the Soc Dems are also feeling some love, as illustrated by a recent... Read more »

Ó RÍORDÁIN’S DOUBLE STRIKE

June 12, 2019

AODHÁN Ó RÍORDÁIN recently made a most paradoxical call for Labour leader Brendan Howlin to lead the party into the next general election... Read more »

DRUMCONDRA MAFIA RIP

June 12, 2019

FIANNA FÁIL’S local election success in north Dublin was not replicated by voters in the rare auld North Inner City (NIC) area, where... Read more »

RATHDOWN: BRENNAN OR BUCKLEY FOR FF?

June 12, 2019

THE FAILURE of former Fianna Fáil press officer Olivia Buckley to take a council seat in Dundrum has not deterred party HQ from... Read more »

DUBLIN — FIANNA FÁIL AT THE GATE

June 12, 2019

SUDDENLY DUBLIN, for long a desert for the party, has become Fianna Fáil’s oyster. While the local election swing from FF to Fine... Read more »

MARIA BAILEY: NOT THE REAL TARGET

May 29, 2019

THE FURORE created by Michael McDowell’s attack on Dún Laoghaire TD Maria Bailey and her compo case over that fall from a hotel... Read more »

MARIA WALSH’S MILITARISM

May 29, 2019

IT WAS a close-run thing in the end for Fine Gael EU candidate Maria Walsh in Midlands North West and her gung-ho military-style... Read more »

THE NEXT GOVERNMENT

May 29, 2019

NOW FOR the real election. Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil (along with desperate pleas from Labour leader Brendan Howlin) posit the prospects... Read more »