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A chara, – Jack O'Connor's impassioned defence of the Labour Party (November 10th) is unfortunately a triumph of wishful thinking over stark reality.
While a week is always a long time in politics and things can change quite quickly, the fact remains that Labour is consistently doing worse in the opinion polls than it did even in the last general election.
In February 2016 it scored 6.6 per cent of the national vote, but in 39 published polls since then it has averaged a support level of 5.2 per cent. For all the slate of new candidates that Mr O’Connor refers to, for all the supposed confident determination he mentions, the fact is that Labour is going backwards.
Mr O’Connor likes to believe that things would have been worse if Fine Gael had been allowed to govern on their own. But the opposite is the truth. Fine Gael was able to impose the worst of its policies because Labour gave them cover.
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Until the Labour Party acknowledges that it betrayed its voters by imposing austerity instead of fighting it (because the rich could have been made to bear the burden instead) it will never regain credibility among working-class voters, no matter how many blood-curdling statements Labour now sees fit to publish.– Is mise,
EOIN Ó MURCHÚ,
Baile Átha Cliath 22.