ALAN KELLY SAYS that he still wants to be Labour leader, but will work to rebuild the party.
Breaking his silence since Friday’s announcement that he had failed to get the backing of a single other TD to contest the party’s leadership contest with Brendan Howlin, Kelly was again unafraid to voice his ambitions.
Speaking to his local radio station Tipp FM, the former Minister for the Environment said that he did not attend Friday’s press conference so as to ensure Howlin got the headlines.
It was Brendan’s day. He was for me the most central person in turning this country around, he was the cement around which everything revolved.
“Obviously I was disappointed, but it was a great day for Brendan.
“(If I had have gone) the focus would have been on me.”
Kelly said that he wanted to contest a leadership election because “just three people made a decision for 4,000″ and rejected the idea that Labour had turned its back on its old self.
Brash
Kelly said that he had no plans to change his personality having lost the contest.
I am brash and upfront and opinionated, but if you’re in politics and not those things, you shouldn’t be there. But I am many other things… I must be the most psychoanalysed politician in the country.
“Tone (myself) down is not the right phrase. You are who you are.”
Saying it is “the greatest honour in my life to be elected by the people of my home county”, Kelly said he never once planned on quitting the party. He said he had been at his first party conference at the age of six and his parents had 100 years service to the party.
“I will play a massive role in rebuilding the party.
“It never entered my head to leave Labour and it will never enter my head.”
Referencing Friday’s now-infamous tweet, taken at a pub in his constituency, Kelly said it was simply a joke.
It was a bit of craic with my friends. It was just a bit of fun. My friends were rallying around me and all arrived at different times.
Restating his ambitions, Kelly said he did not regret his appearance on The Late Late Show.
“I want to be the leader of the Labour Party,” he said.
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