You won't have the Progressive Democrats to kick around anymore. They have been voted out of the House. In deference to the modes of reality TV, this column has taken it upon itself to highlight the PDs' "best bits" while they were in situ. Best in this instance refers to that which best defined the spirit of the party, as opposed to what they themselves might have considered the highlights.

The party was formed in December 1985 after Des O'Malley was kicked out of Fianna Fáil. The previous February, when in opposition, he had absented himself from a government vote on a contraceptive bill rather than vote with his party. The myth was created that he had voted for the bill.

The reality was that O'Malley had never before shown himself to be at odds with mainstream conservative Ireland. The bill provided a handy platform on which to force the hand of his bugbear, Charlie Haughey, who duly obliged by getting O'Malley turfed out. The myth was created that one of the founding platforms of the PDs was a burning desire for a liberal social policy.

The next best bit was the shafting of Brian Lenihan when he was running for president in 1990. By then, the party had forgotten their aversion to Haughey and had gone into government with him. In the national interest, of course.

Lenihan was in a jam. He had given an interview to a student in which he mentioned that he had rung the Áras in 1982, when a Fine Gael-led government was about to collapse, in an attempt to influence the president, Paddy Hillery.

The Irish Times produced the interview. In Lenihan's defence, the man had serious health difficulties around the time he obliged the student and presented a hostage to fortune.

The PDs insisted Haughey fire him as Tánaiste, or else. Haughey fired his friend of 30 years on the flimsiest basis. The PDs had a scalp and had demonstrated their commitment to ethical politics. Some just saw the whole thing as Lenihan being fodder for their self-righteous zeal. Sticking one to Haughey in the process was a bonus.

The general election of 1997 was a best bit. Mary Harney showed the party's true colours. Single mothers would have to stop bleeding the state dry. Slappers were a drain on public money, which in turn was affecting the possibilities of reducing income tax rates to zero.

The Gama workers scandal in 2005 was another best bit. Turkish construction workers were being paid €2.50 an hour by an employer who was skimming the rest of their wages into a Dutch bank.

It turned out that during Harney's time at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, only a dozen labour inspectors were policing a workforce of two million. There were more inspectors employed to look after dogs than workers. Harney had actually turned down funding to increase the number of inspectors. This is what is known as deploying a light regulatory touch, a key element of the PDs so-called pro-business policy.

Michael McDowell was a best bit all by himself. His "we must be radical or redundant" speech was a triumph of rhetoric. After the election in 2002, the party decided to be redundant, going back into government with a Fianna Fáil party that didn't need them to make up the numbers. The radical decision would have been to merge with a weak Fine Gael and provide the electorate with a genuine choice. But by then, McDowell had his shoes under the minister for justice's desk. There would be no shifting him, even in the national interest.

Bertie's money woes was one of the PDs' really best bits. In September 2006, they had the chance to live up to the rhetoric of ethical politics. From the outset, Bertiegate had a smell off it from the same sewer that the great Satan wallowed in two decades previously.

Times change. On this occasion, McDowell regarded all that ethics stuff as something to be explained away rather than invoked. "We survived that," he whispered to Bertie at the press conference to announce all was well between them.

A reprise of the saga in the following year's general election was another best bit. Mac marched his soldiers all the way up the hill to the ridge of the high moral ground, and marched them back down again without ever taking it. The party was found out at that election, which maybe wasn't a best bit at all.

What made them different? Nothing, apart from a religious zeal to keep cutting income tax for the better off, thus leaving the exchequer to place greater emphasis on taxes like VAT, which hit the poor hardest. Their belief was that all good in society flowed from this narrow approach.

The other stuff, the integrity, the new brand of politics, the patriotic rhetoric, all of it was cant which at times lurched into cynicism. They were just your average pols with a large dollop of self righteousness thrown in.

You won't have them to kick around anymore. Some people think that's the best bit of all.

mclifford@tribune.ie