As Fine Gael T.D. Derek Keating is starting to realise, your political allies can sometimes cause you more problems than your political foes.
It was a lesson I learned back in the 1980s courtesy of a story, probably apocryphal, of an incident in a block of flats (in Ringsend or Pearse Street, depending on the version) involving a canvasser for late Fianna Fáil TD Sean Moore.
The canvasser, who seemingly was a good friend of Sean’s rather than a party member, was out campaigning with two or three others when he encountered a gentleman who was less than enamoured with Deputy Moore. Not only was the man unprepared to offer Sean his number one (or two or three), he was quite adamant about it and told the canvasser in forthright terms precisely what he thought of Sean Moore and all belonging to him.
derekmooney.ie 