MARY MINIHAN

If Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil or Sinn Féin leadership contenders were currently battling for the soul of their respective parties, political skin and hair would surely be flying.

No such vulgarity in the Labour Party, it seems, where Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton and Minister of State for primary care Alex White are engaging in what the former this morning called "friendly rivalry".

As one backbencher put it succinctly this afternoon: “We’re a polite party. That’s part of our problem”.

Ms Burton told Pat Kenny on Newstalk today she and Mr White had said “quite complimentary things about each other”.

Earlier this month Mr White has insisted: “I’m not running against Joan Burton, I’m running for leadership of the party, and so is she.”

The mask of mutual admiration slipped just once in the course of the campaign, when Mr White (55) said the party could not afford to delay generational change by choosing Ms Burton (65), the “last woman standing” from the rainbow coalition, as its new leader.

The tut-tutting that followed from Minister of State for public transport Alan Kelly and others appear to have prevented Mr White from repeating the pointed remark.

He began the campaign with a bold accusation that Taoiseach Enda Kenny had fired Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan and a warning that he will not stay in Coalition “at any cost”.

But by this morning he appeared reluctant to say specifically how he thought he would be better than his leadership opponent, or indeed current leader Eamon Gilmore.

The contest is a difficult one for party apparatchiks.

Used to adopting a robust approach to politics, in this contest they cannot be seen to take sides.

Spending four weeks engaged in an internal exercise over a quiet summer month if your party was in Opposition would be fine.

Doing it in June when your party is in a Coalition Government is madness.

Not only has the campaign failed to engage the public, it seems the party’s own members have not been excited by the contest.

Only paid-up party members are entitled to vote, and there was a window for members to pay arrears going back two years to get on the register. But there was not much of a flurry and the numbers coming forward with their €15 annual subscription fees were low.

The deadline was last Friday and the total electorate will now be just 3,265. That is substantially down on the last time the party held a contest for a position at the top of the party and it indicates a worrying lack of passion.

The reality for Labour is that what will come afterwards will be anything but polite.

Ms Burton has stressed that she does not want to assume she will win.

But if, as expected, she does win, she is expected to dispatch senior figures such as Ruairí Quinn and Pat Rabbitte post-haste.

They can hardly be expected to go without a fight and there is the risk that

life could be made quite difficult for Ms Burton by new arrivals on the backbenches.