As a public relations ploy, Pat Rabbitte's commitment to reduce the standard tax rate from 20 per cent to 18 per cent was quite a stroke, writes Vincent Browne.
It doesn't amount to much for anybody, but in PR terms it is first rate. At a stroke, Pat Rabbitte has soothed middle-class concerns that Labour in government would increase taxes. At the same blow Michael McDowell's bluster about the "slump coalition" and "Labour's high-rise taxes" has been silenced. What a coup! Pity about the politics of it.
If it were the case that Labour cared a damn about the poorer sections of society, would they not prioritise the low-income people and instead of reducing the standard rate of tax for everyone (everyone benefits from the reduction in the standard tax rate), they could take the low-paid or more of the low-paid out of the tax net entirely?
Yes, they probably would do something along these lines anyway, but if they used the
€1 billion involved in reducing the standard rate by two percentage points to take even more people out of the tax net, then more of the poor would be far better off.
Or if they used this €1 billion to improve welfare payments, or put it into public housing or providing more medical cards or more teachers in disadvantaged schools, or put it into mental health facilities or providing halting sites for Travellers, wouldn't any of these measures do more for the less-well-off? That isn't the point, of course. The point is a public relations one, to soothe the anxieties of the middle class, who might like a change of government but are worried that a government that contained Labour would screw it up with higher tax rates.
The traffic theme in the conference speech was directed almost entirely at the middle classes. The "are you happy?" theme, now blazoned in a poster campaign, is primarily middle class.
The hundreds of thousands of people living in disadvantaged areas are not the kind to be too concerned about traffic, they are not the ones getting up at six in the morning, dropping their children off at creches and going to work.
Yes, all classes are likely to have been alarmed by the crime hype but, inevitably, it will be the underclass that will be disadvantaged by the consequences of that hype - the needless, excessive additional legislation that will impact on the poor primarily. Here the Irish Labour Party is not even engaging in the pretence of being tough on the causes of crime, just tough on crime and the wilful exaggeration of the incidence of crime.
And the reason for all this is to get Labour back in government, which Pat Rabbitte, his colleagues in Labour and most people in politics and the media think is what it is all about. But
No government was capable of dealing with the fiscal crisis of the late 1970s and 1980s (until 1987), a crisis which threatened to bankrupt the country, because the electorate had not been conditioned to face the hard decisions that were required.
In the absence of the electorate being so conditioned, politicians felt incapable of taking the necessary action. But by the time Fianna Fáil returned to power in 1987, that conditioning had happened. The electorate was prepared and Fianna Fáil back in office was emboldened to do the necessary.
Leave aside the manner in which the fiscal crisis was resolved through the vandalisation of the health and educational services; the point I am making here has to do with the empowerment of politicians by the conditioning of the electorate.
There is no point in Labour, or any left-wing or supposed left-wing party, being returned to office without electorate empowerment to do what is necessary to create a fair society, and that can come about only if people argue for a fair society, argue the case for a radical redistribution, for equality.
This is dismissed by some as a "Sixties' obsession" but what is exclusively "Sixties" about the huge inequalities that pertain here? Among the 26 developed countries in the world, Ireland is the fifth most unequal; of the EU pre-enlargement 15 countries, we are the second most unequal. I heard someone say on radio recently that inequality doesn't matter, it is consistent poverty that matters. But if society is hugely unequal, it is inevitable that a large segment will be excluded from full participation in it, there will be unequal healthcare, unequal education, unequal opportunity, unequal mortalities.
Power is not the same as office, even ministerial office. Ministers and government have a latitude only within the remit of their mandate - this is not just theoretical, it is practical.
Politicians are unable to act without the security that their initiatives will have electoral endorsement.
And it is because Labour has not sought to change the prevailing mindset by arguing for equality and for redistribution that it will be unable to do anything meaningful on these fronts if it gets into government again.
That is the pity of Labour and the pity of Ireland.