LABOUR PARTY:The Labour Party has a very good chance of exceeding the 1992 Spring tide, when it won 33 seats, writes HARRY McGEE,Political Staff
ON THE day he became Labour leader in 2007, Eamon Gilmore made what seemed like an audacious prediction. He said there was no reason why the party could not win 30 seats.
Labour had just come out of a very disappointing general election, returning 20 TDs to the 30th Dáil, the same number as it had in the 29th Dáil.
The party’s share of the vote had even fallen from 10.8 per cent to 10.1 per cent.
Only three of the TDs were newly elected. Many of the rest were veterans, and a good proportion had come in 15 years earlier on the 1992 Spring tide.
The party had also consolidated its image as a Dublin-centric entity – it enjoyed 15 per cent support in the capital compared with a paltry 3.3 per cent in Connacht-Ulster.
Now, only 3½ years later, if the party were to win only 30 seats, it would be considered a major disappointment.
The surge in Labour support since then has been impressive, although the spectacular gains of last autumn – where the party support levels were higher than Fine Gael’s and Fianna Fáil’s – have receded somewhat.
That said, the party is now within a hair’s breadth of enjoying its most successful election in its history – certainly exceeding the Spring tide of 1992. Gilmore as leader must take a lot of credit for the resurgence. He has been an organised, energetic, articulate and at times ruthless leader.
The average age of its 20 TDs was in the high 50s, yet Gilmore succeeded in projecting a fresh and more youthful image.
Its choice of Seanad candidates, all identified as potential future TDs, reflected this.
As leader, Gilmore was prepared to do what Enda Kenny had done in the early days of his leadership of Fine Gael: that was to travel around the country to boost membership, revive dormant branches, establish a Labour presence where there was none.
Labour has not been shy in constant promotion of Gilmore as a presidential figure and he has been more successful than Enda Kenny at harnessing public anger.
One striking aspect about Labour is that its electoral support more often than not fails to match its opinion poll ratings.
The party’s support of 14.9 per cent in the local elections in 2009 was more modest than polls had suggested. In Dublin, though, the gains were spectacular – 30 per cent in Dublin City Council and 25.4 per cent in Fingal. In the wake of the election, the party was also clinical in selecting young councillors as Dáil candidates.
On the basis of that performance and subsequent gains, Labour will win two seats in many Dublin constituencies.
At the high point of public support last autumn, the party came under renewed scrutiny from other parties and the media. It was criticised for populism and charged with a lack of policies or real solutions. Gilmore pointed to some 46 policy documents, though some were sketchy on detail.
The party has embarked on two strategies, each of which bears electoral risk. The first is its agreement to the €15 billion GDP reduction by 2014 (or 2015). Parties to the right of it attacked it for making the right sounds but not putting its money where its mouth was. That seemed to be reinforced by a Gilmore interview in which he said he opposed cuts in welfare and increases in taxes for middle earners.
Suddenly Labour found itself struggling to counter criticism that it was offering hollow anger but little else.
But parties to the left accused it of selling out to the establishment.
The other risky strategy was its decision to graft Independent candidates and organisations in the west and northwest on to the party banner. During the autumn, Gilmore was confidently predicting a seat in every constituency. But the experience of the Donegal South West byelection, where Frank McBrearty performed poorly, has led to revision of that strategy. There are now doubts that the Gilmore gale will blow so fiercely west of the Shannon.
Gilmore still talks expansively about 50 seats plus and about a Labour-led government. However, 40 seats-plus is a more realistic expectation.
HOW THEY FARED IN 2007
VOTE PERCENTAGE:10.1%
SEATS:20
