Politics is a cruel trade, and the people, fickle. There’s no such thing as gratitude for “doing the right thing”. In truth, of the multiplicity of reasons for Labour’s rout in the general election, the personal qualities of Joan Burton’s leadership were certainly not decisive.
It might be said that the election had already been lost when she assumed the mantle from Eamon Gilmore two years ago. That it was lost when Labour, for right or wrong, "in the national interest", decided to support a Fine Gael government and the austerity programme.
But there was no way, after such a rout, that she could remain leader. The unwritten laws of politics would simply not allow it. Her supporters, and she, indeed, will feel hard done by, may talk of unfulfilled promise, have a sense of what could have been ...
Yet Ms Burton’s achievements have been significant, more often than not swimming against the tide of gender and class politics, and they deserve acknowledgment.
A working-class woman who won a scholarship to UCD, she studied commerce and was able to bring eventually to her frontbench role in Labour an economic literacy and competence that made her stand out in the old boys club that is politics.
Elected to represent Dublin West on the "Spring Tide" of 1992 at the age of 43, she has had to battle left and right ever since, not always successfully, in one of the most competitive constituencies in the country to hold on her seat.
It was a gruelling, hard graft, a political career that took her to senior ministerial office – though not the Finance job she coveted – and eventually leadership of Labour as its first woman leader and to the role of tánaiste.
She is acknowledged to have been a dogged fighter for Labour’s vision and her Social Protection brief, albeit sometimes faulted for a wordiness and personal abrasiveness that both certainly owed much to the hard knocks in her climb to the top. She had ambition, but probably no more than would remain uncommented-on in a male politician.
Labour, which can ill-afford it at this time, loses a leader who can, and has held her own against the best of them.