Jack Horgan-Jones

Like what is the strategy that an alternate leader might credibly propose to its membership?

And that is very neatly expressed in the Dublin Central and Galway West by-elections, where you would think that as the largest party of opposition in by-elections, where government candidates effectively never win, you would think Sinn Féin is going to be best positioned to take one or both of those seats.

But in Dublin Central, they are vulnerable, I think, most particularly to the kind of soft left opposition.

The Social Democrats candidate, their councillor, Daniel Ennis, is seen as building up a reasonable head of steam.

And if he can kind of stay in touch, then other parties of the centre-left, particularly the Greens and Labour, if they don't get into contention themselves, would transfer it to him.

So that's the kind of threat on the party's left flank.

But the squeeze, and again, this is in Jen Bray's piece in the Sunday Times, the squeeze is also coming on from the right.

So if you look in Galway West...

The former Fianna Fáil candidate or councillor down there, Noel Thomas, now with Independent Ireland, he looks to be polling quite strongly.

And he will draw from a large base of potentially disaffected Fianna Fáil votes as well.

He will also do well, you would imagine, amongst that kind of rural conservative vote.

There is an independent councillor.

candidate down there who is aligned with the kind of Noel Grealish machine.

But if he doesn't get into contention, then you'd imagine some of his vote might drift towards Noel Thomas as well.

So that illustrates that the Sinn Féin candidate down there may be struggling to stay ahead of a threat on the party's right flank.

And so those two contests that we're going to see now within a month kind of express neatly the difference.

It does.

Yeah, there's no two ways about it.

Like Mary Lou McDonald is probably the most talented campaigning politician of her generation.

And I think that we've seen that.