Labour is the real loser in this election

It was not Fine Gael but the Labour Party that polled worst in Election 2002. It lost a larger percentage of its vote than Fine Gael did, but because of quirks in our electoral system that awful performance was masked by the seats it held on to.

In 1997 Labour and Democratic Left (the entities that now form the Labour Party) won 230,945 first-preference votes. Last Friday those merged entities got 200,138 votes, 30,807 votes less than in 1997. This marks a drop of 13.3 per cent - well over twice the percentage drop in the Fine Gael vote. Fine Gael lost only 5.4 per cent of its vote on Friday.

In an election when the other major opposition party was collapsing, and a campaign during which the main issue was health - an issue on which any credible left-wing party should clean up, politically speaking - Labour fared appallingly.

When you think of the scale of the dramatic fall in votes since 1992, Labour's position looks even more devastating. Since that year, Labour has lost nearly half of its vote. In 1992 Labour and Democratic Left together won 380,958 votes. The drop in 2002 from the 1992 level was 180,820 - 47.5 per cent. Fine Gael has suffered nothing like this loss, either in percentage terms (a loss of just 1 per cent) or numerically (a loss of a mere 4,453 votes). For that reason and another, Ruairí Quinn must be the next casualty of Election 2002. The other reason is his personal performance in Dublin South East.

We all know about Ruairí Quinn always having to suffer it out in Dublin South East, we know about the very competitive nature of the election there, but for the leader of the third major party to be clinging on desperately until the last count suggests an absence of stature even in his own backyard. He has got to go and should go now.

At least Fine Gael acknowledges the distress it is now in and Michael Noonan had the grace to resign on Saturday night when the scale of the slaughter of his colleagues became evident. In contrast, Labour is in deep denial. They actually think they didn't do so badly in the campaign. Eamon Gilmore spoke on Sunday of the party "holding its own". Holding its own what? Its seats? Is that all that matters? Votes are incidental? Is that the message? Labour deserved to fare badly in the election. While its manifesto was carefully drafted, it was so qualified and cautious it amounted to very little that was distinctive.

THE firm pledge not to increase income tax was the telling commitment. A left-wing party that rules out the most effective means of redistributing wealth - short of a wealth tax which for Labour of course is out of the question - ceases to be serious.

And, deservedly, it now faces even more trauma: real competition on its left from the Green Party and Sinn Féin. And, to coin a phrase, Sinn Féin is not going to go away, you know, like Democratic Left did. Well, not for a decade or two anyway.

And even worse news for Labour, it lost by far its best alternative leader, Dick Spring, in the election. Don't think Spring wasn't interested - he certainly was. He would have done nothing or very little to dislodge Quinn - he would have calculated that that would happen of its own accord. Then, once Quinn was dislodged by himself or by others or by events, Spring would have offered himself again. And would anyone have opposed him? It may be unkind to personalise it but Ruairí Quinn looks like a fat cat and speaks like a fat cat and is a fat cat to have any credibility as the champion of the disadvantaged.

But who, then? Brendan Howlin seems the most likely successor. But does Labour really need relentless indignation over everything? If everything causes indignation, after a while nothing causes indignation.

If trivia like Joe Burke's appointment to the Port Authority chairmanship, Liam Lawlor's soft-shoe shuffle through Dublin Airport, Hugh O'Flaherty's minor indiscretion (if that) in the Sheedy affair are all to be blown up into major scandals, where is the room for indignation over the appalling conditions in which thousands of people live in Dublin inner city?

Where is there room for indignation over the vast inequalities in health (not just waiting lists but, more crucially, mortality rates)? And over the squandering of resources on third-level education for an elite (Labour did that when it was last in power and is still proud of it) at the expense of squalor in much of the primary sector, the sector of relevance to the disadvantaged? Where is there room for outrage over the treatment of Travellers and the insidious, vicious piece of legislation rushed through the Dáil on trespassing last March?

Eamon Gilmore or Pat Rabbitte would seem the best options for Labour but they are tainted with the Democratic Left badge and the marriage has not settled down yet to equanimity.

Its best bet would be to opt for Rabbitte or Gilmore or maybe Jan O'Sullivan or Mary Upton, and then reach out to the other left parties and the left-wing Independents, Seamus Healy, Tony Gregory (he is still left wing, isn't he?), Finian McGrath and maybe the hospital Independents.

Even if there is to be an alliance only in opposition, the interests of those Labour professes to serve might be advanced in this era of McDowell and the Regressive Democrats.

You should have voted No.