Alan Kelly interview: ‘All politicians say they don’t look at polls, but they’re telling lies’

The Labour leader is unfazed by his party’s current low support, and feels 2021 will belong to those who can seize the moment

Labour party leader Alan Kelly: ‘Once Covid-19 is over you’ll see a work level in the Labour Party which you haven’t seen in many many years. That will come from the leadership like me all the way through the parliamentary party and down and across.’ Picture: Fergal Phillips

Every evening, Alan Kelly phones his wife and two children from Leinster House, and his politics-mad daughter peppers him with questions about what he did that day. These updates are bookended by a more in-depth account once the Labour leader arrives at his home in Portroe in north Tipperary at the end of the week.

Such is her interest in her dad’s job that the ten-year-old has even adapted her father’s famous nickname of AK-47 ...