ANALYSIS:THESE ARE bad times for the economy but good times for the Labour Party. The largely unfettered free market model has failed. The international financial system is in crisis and voters are looking for alternatives, writes DEAGLÁN de BRÉADÚN
It is a perfect opportunity for a moderate left-wing party which promises to restrain and monitor the operation of the market and the shady doings of certain financiers more effectively than their right-of-centre opponents, whom they accuse of presiding over two decades of “crony capitalism”.
Inside the Dáil things are also going Labour’s way. In a manner reminiscent of Dick Spring, party leader Eamon Gilmore has outshone his Fine Gael counterpart in the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate.
It would be unwise to underestimate
Enda Kenny, particularly once an election is under way, but at present Gilmore is seen by many as the de facto leader of the Opposition. He and his party are riding high in the polls and a Gilmore equivalent of the
“Spring Tide” appears to be on the cards.
It is a position other party leaders, Brian Cowen in particular, must envy as delegates assemble for Labour’s 64th national conference in Mullingar this weekend. Gilmore addresses the troops briefly tonight and gives his formal, televised leader’s speech tomorrow evening.
No doubt there will be considerable applause from a party that having survived a long trek through the valley of defeat and despondency has finally ascended to the sunny uplands of hope and opportunity.
Political opponents complain grumpily that Labour has not been cross-examined with sufficient rigour by the media over its response to the current crisis, and that we still don’t know what austerity measures Labour would implement if it got into power. But the hard questions have indeed been asked.
In a TV3 interview on March 4th, for example, broadcaster Vincent Browne made a valiant and sustained effort to grill the party’s finance spokeswoman and deputy leader Joan Burton, but she was adamant that no detailed proposals could be outlined in the absence of fuller information from the Government.
Others would suggest that if Labour were to put its cards on the table in this respect,
the party would only lose votes and forgo potential gains in the local, European and ultimately general elections.
The motions on the agenda for the Mullingar conference are not very informative as to what hard and unpopular decisions Labour would take and how it would show leadership in government, even if the poll ratings suddenly plummeted. The socialist equivalent of motherhood and apple pie come to mind.
Most of the pre-conference interest has centred on proposals for organisational change contained in the report of the
party’s 21st Century Commission.
This seeks to “recast”, as Eamon Gilmore puts it, Labour’s relationship with the trade unions. It is redolent of an agenda that has been overtaken by events, reflecting an attempt to create an Irish counterpart of “New Labour” by reducing union influence and thereby making the party more attractive to middle-class voters.
The influence of the unions over the
Irish Labour Party historically has been quite modest in comparison with the union role in British Labour. Likewise the financial contribution of the unions in Britain greatly outstrips the funding provided by their Irish brothers and sisters.
It is fair to say also that the unions in this State have had a level of interaction and dialogue with Fianna Fáil in government that would be unthinkable between the unions and the Conservative Party across the Irish Sea.
Efforts to streamline Irish Labour and achieve greater organisational efficiency will do no harm but the party is now buoyed up by a tide that has nothing to do with administrative changes but reflects the quest of ordinary people for alternatives to a set of financial and economic arrangements that may be plunging us into chaos.
More than any of the other leaders, Gilmore has realised the importance of
RTÉ’s Nine O’Clock News clip from the Dáil in forming public perceptions of their politicians. Poll results suggest he is the one viewers have come to see as fighting their corner. Cowen’s famously testy responses in the Dáil are at odds with his generally-affable and comparatively mild demeanour but it is the more aggressive version that comes across on TV. Some would say that Labour “took a walk on the wild side” when it opposed the bank guarantee scheme brought in by the Government last October. Fine Gael and
even Sinn Féin backed the scheme whereas Labour stood alone. It was a high-risk strategy for Labour and the question might be asked:
if the scheme had not been brought in, where would we be?
Alternatively, if fuller information had
been available at the time about Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide, Labour might not have been alone among the parties opposing the legislation.
For the first time in 12 years, Labour looks like having a real chance of getting into government. That should make for a largely peaceful conference with little in the way of dissent. We know that Labour can “talk
the talk” but only a return to office will show
if it can also “walk the walk”.
Deaglán de Bréadún is a Political Correspondent with The Irish Times