Inside Politics:It is difficult to argue with Paul Mackay's view that the Progressive Democrats have been drifting aimlessly and rudderless for the past eight months.
It is a sad state of affairs for a party that has been at the centre of Irish political life, either in government or opposition, for the past 22 years.
Given the catastrophic election result last May, it was always going to be doubtful whether the PDs could recover, but the trend of events since then has made it even more unlikely the party will be around as a significant political force into the future.
The question facing members now is whether there is any point limping along towards eventual extinction, growing ever more weak in the manner of Clann na Poblachta, or whether it would be better to call a halt and let people go in whatever political direction they favour in a dignified and ordered fashion.
Mackay's call to fight or die is a brave one, but there seems little prospect of the party being able to make a real fight of it. Look at the state of the parliamentary party. The leader, Mary Harney, has made it abundantly clear she does not want to remain on in that position and she is unlikely to contest the next election.
The sole remaining TD, Noel Grealish, has already opened discussions with Fianna Fáil about changing parties and it seems to be only a matter of time when he will move across. The senior of the party's two Senators, Fiona O'Malley, toyed with the idea of running for leadership only to pull back when the rules were changed to allow her to contest it.
The remaining Senator, Ciaran Cannon, has gamely offered to fill the gap, but his lack of national profile and political experience makes it very difficult for him, although he has acquitted himself creditably in media interviews in recent days.
So where did it all go wrong? One view in the party is that the slide down the slippery slope begin with the squabble over the leadership in the summer of 2006; another is that Michael McDowell's double wobble on the issue of the payments to Bertie Ahern marked the tipping point. The truth is that it was much more complex than either of those simple explanations. In any case, electoral disaster was an accident waiting to happen, given how close the PDs had come to it twice before.
With hindsight it is clear that the rot set in immediately after the PDs great triumph in 2002 when the party defied the pundits and came back to the Dáil with eight seats instead of the predicted two or three. Fianna Fáil won 81 seats in that election and could easily have governed on its own with the aid of a gaggle of friendly Independents.
There were some voices in the PDs who urged the parliamentary party to consider going into opposition rather than into another government with Fianna Fáil in which they would have no leverage. At that stage Fine Gael had suffered a trouncing and a vibrant PD party on the opposition benches could have seized the initiative and even mounted a reverse takeover of the demoralised main opposition party.
Instead the PDs opted for a second term under Bertie Ahern but had a very limited impact. The tax cutting and economic reform of the first Ahern coalition gave way to soaring public spending, in an economy increasingly reliant on a construction boom rather than competitive exports. The departure of Charlie McCreevy to Brussels removed a key ally from government and the decision of the PDs to forgo economic ministry in 2004 compounded the problem.
With the PDs growing complacent in office, Enda Kenny embarked on the long and laborious revival of Fine Gael. At one stage there were secret talks about a merger between the PDs and Fine Gael, but they ran into fierce opposition from McDowell, who only became aware of them late in the day. In the event, they were not pursued to a conclusion. Instead the PDs began to turn in on themselves and, faced with private constituency polls showing the likelihood of an election meltdown, McDowell replaced Harney as leader after a damaging internal spat. Almost immediately, the new leader was plunged into a political crisis following the first disclosure about the Taoiseach's finances.
The new PD leader wobbled but eventually offered conditional backing to Ahern and, in fairness, there was little else he could have done. The real disaster happened when the election was called last April and the issue of Ahern's finances came back to haunt the first half of the campaign. McDowell's instinct was to pull out of government, even at that late stage, and Harney agreed.
However, at a fateful meeting half way through the campaign, the non Dublin TDs, led by Tom Parlon, argued vehemently for staying in coalition and the two cabinet ministers backed down. It was a fateful decision that condemned the PDs to election disaster. The bottom line was that on a core issue for the party - standards in public office - the PDs compromised their principles for what appeared to be political expediency. With hindsight it became clear that taking a principled decision would have been more expedient, but it was too late.
The party is now confronted with the same issue but in a far weaker position. Senator Cannon made the argument yesterday that pulling out of coalition now would have no real impact and maybe he is right. It begs the question, though, about the point of being in office. If the PDs take the view that they have no choice but to turn a blind eye to low standards in high place, their raison d'etre will have disappeared.
Since taking office, the Greens have put forward the novel theory that they have no responsibility for their coalition partners' behaviour. The PDs have always argued the opposite and, in the past, were prepared to sacrifice power for that principle.
Whatever slim hope the party has of surviving requires the courage to return to first principles and damn the consequences.