Labour plays 'happy families' in bid to win back voters

Joan Burton with Eamon Gilmore

John Downing

Tolstoy would have found Joan Burton's "Labour family" interesting. "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," the Russian genius famously wrote.

So there were the Labour family in White's Hotel in Wexford yesterday. Pat Rabbitte sulking for Ireland, deputy leader Alan Kelly trying not to look too smug on the right-hand side, but some distance away from the leader. Earlier Ms Burton had been asked if relations between herself and her abrasive deputy leader were "tetchy"?