There was no make-believe about him, and he was never one who liked discussion for discussion's sake.
Profoundly conservative, he had no welcome for novel points of view.

I cannot put it more strongly than by saying that he was more apparently aware of the qualities which made T.M.Kettle difficult to handle in his team than of those which made that brilliant personality an ornament and a force in our party.

A more serious aspect of this conservatism was the separation which it produced between him and the newer Ireland.

He welcomed the Gaelic League and disliked Sinn Fein, but undervalued both as forces: he was never really in touch with either of them.

Ideally speaking, he ought to have seen to it that his party, which represented mainly the standpoint of Parnell's day, was kept in sympathy with the new Young Ireland.
But from the point of view of those who shared his outlook--and they were the vast majority, in Ireland and in the party--Redmond's essential limitation, as a leader, was that he lacked the magnetic qualities which produce idolatry and blind allegiance.