Niall still all smiles despite Soc Dems’ disappearing act

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

The Social Democrats is a political party with less support than a wet paper bag. According to the latest opinion polls, the fledgling party enjoys zero percent support of the electorate.

It’s pathetic, really, considering the Workers Party – remember them? – had 3% support in the same poll. While the Greens (2%) and even Renua (1%) were more popular.

The Social Democrats are a new party, and the recent departure of one of their three leaders, Stephen Donnelly, certainly hasn’t improved their standing among voters.

The three-leaders idea is amateurish beyond belief. They couldn’t decide on one, so in a decision lacking any leadership, they made all of their TDs ‘leaders’. It’s like the rotating Taoiseach idea floated a while back – pure nonsense.

The Donnelly departure reflects poorly on him (is he eyeing up a power-grabbing move to Fianna Fáil that would get his bum on a ministerial seat?); and it reflects poorly on the other two leaders, Róisín Shortall and Katherine Murphy (the implication of his leaving is they are difficult to work with).

But all the turmoil hasn’t deterred the local organisation.

The Galway West Social Democrats – fronted by smiley Niall Ó Tuathaill, the party’s General Election candidate – held an AGM in the city recently, and there was a healthy turnout.

About 30 activists were pictured at the get-together, and Niall was all smiles despite the brutal poll showing. The Bushypark man remains convinced that someday he will become Minister for Health. Deluded? Probably but time will tell.

The turnout at the AGM may not sound a lot, but the likes of the Labour Party would certainly be glad of half of that at a local organisational meeting.

Indeed, it’s got so bad for Labour in its former stronghold of Galway West that we hear they didn’t even have a stand at NUIG’s day for societies and clubs this year. The party that was built on student politics at NUIG now apparently doesn’t even have a presence on campus anymore. The Soc Dems are trying to capitalise, but so far with zero impact on national opinion polls.

Meanwhile, it didn’t take Niall long to airbrush Donnelly out of his life. They may be bosom buddies; and the city man may have worked on Donnelly’s successful General Election campaign in 2011; but, as our photos show, within hours of him jumping ship, Ó Tuathaill also made the Wicklow man mysteriously disappear from his Facebook page.

To read Bradley Bytes in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.