Can a new leader of our oldest political party reinvigorate Labour? Stephen Collinsexamines the challenge facing Pat Rabbitte's successor
Pat Rabbitte's resignation as leader of the Labour Party has triggered renewed debate about the party's role in Irish politics and the strategy it should adopt to get into power after the next election.
It is worth pointing out, for a start, that while the failure to gain seats or get into power under Rabbitte's leadership was disappointing, the party put in a very respectable performance in historical terms.
In the 27 general elections since the foundation of the State, Labour only won more than 20 seats on four occasions before May 2007, so the recent election was actually at the upper end of the range in terms of seats. The previous occasions it breached the 20-seat barrier were in 1927, 1965, 1992 and 2002.
In terms of the percentage share of the vote, the performance was not as good.
The 10.1 per cent achieved in May was in the middle range of party performances, which have varied from a low of 5.7 per cent in 1933 to 19.3 per cent in 1992, and have averaged at around 11 per cent.
There has been a lot of talk over the past two days about how Labour can project itself in the new prosperous Ireland but it should not be forgotten that back in the grim economic days of the 1980s the party won an even smaller share of the vote and considerably fewer seats than it achieved this year.
The message is twofold. There is no easy answer to Labour's problem, but there is no need for despair either.
In historical terms, the party is in a reasonably good position, and it has survived far worse periods. The big question is whether the oldest party in the State is capable of breaking out of its historic range and winning considerably more than 20 seats on a consistent basis.
On the one occasion when the party achieved this, in 1992, it came about through a combination of good luck and good judgment. That election campaign was a disaster for Fianna Fáil and little better for Fine Gael. Labour was able to capitalise on the weakness of both through a charismatic leader, Dick Spring.
It may be of some comfort for party members to recall that in 1987, just five short years earlier, Dick Spring led Labour to its second worst performance in terms of vote share. The party got just 6.4 per cent of the popular vote, trailing home in fourth place behind the Progressive Democrats and not far ahead of the Workers' Party.
In its planning for the future the party needs to look back and examine how Spring managed to transform both his own image and that of his party in just a few years.
Of course, the problems he faced were different. For a start, he had to deal with internal dissent on a large scale and stamp his own authority on the party. That has not been a problem for either Rabbitte or Ruairí Quinn.
Where Spring really scored between 1989 and 1992 was in projecting himself as the most effective opposition leader in the Dáil and, more importantly, by representing the modernising spirit of the age.
In the early 1980s he showed courage by representing a widely-unpopular liberal agenda, but as society changed, and that agenda moved into the mid-stream of political life, he was able to appeal to a whole new constituency.
There is still a big debate as to whether Spring blew it by going into power with Fianna Fáil in 1992 or by pulling out of government with them in 1994.
One way or another, all the gains were wiped out by the experience, and the party reverted to its traditional share of the vote and its tally of Dáil seats in the 1997 election.
One of the great failures of the Spring era was that while the party was a modernising force on liberal issues it remained rooted in traditional Labour economics.
It watched as Tony Blair shifted the British Labour Party away from its traditional support for trade unions and state enterprise but did not follow suit in this country. Blair actually learned some lessons from the way Spring expelled the Militant Tendency, instilled discipline and projected a modern image for his party but he went much further and reaped the rewards as a result.
By contrast, Labour in Ireland remained wedded to support for those employed by State enterprise rather than representing the customers who use State services.
The various tax cuts introduced by the Fianna Fáil-PD governments were opposed vehemently, the privatisation of State companies opposed vigorously, until the unions jumped aboard the PD bandwagon. Popular government law and order initiatives were also resisted until they were suddenly embraced during the election campaign.
It was not until Rabbitte proposed cutting the low rate of tax to 18 per cent shortly before the general election that Labour gave the impression of accepting the huge changes in taxation which have given workers control of far more of their own income than in the past.
The conversion was too late and too easily dismissed as a gimmick by the party's opponents for it to have real resonance.
The task facing Labour now is to go out and develop policies that appeal to the needs of voters. That is not simply a matter of branding, as some have claimed.
As Rabbitte pointed out, Labour's philosophy is based on fundamental values of equality and fraternity that make it different from other parties. The question is how those values can be translated into a message that can be understood by voters, particularly younger ones.
Contenders for the leadership have been talking about developing the party in a way that can tap into the widespread desire for a more caring and inclusive society. PD economics have certainly transformed the country over the past two decades, but Labour now has a real opportunity to develop a vision of a fairer society that can appeal to a significant segment of the electorate.
A silver lining in the election result was that Labour saw off the challenge of Sinn Féin and also, to a large extent, of the Greens. There is now an opportunity for Labour to make serious inroads into the support base of both of these parties.
One of the positive findings of the comprehensive exit poll carried out by Lansdowne Market Research on the day of the election was that Labour did well among first-time voters, coming in ahead of Sinn Féin and the Greens and reversing a long-time trend in the opposite direction. That is something to build on.
One critical weakness identified in the poll was that the party attracted more middle-class than working-class support, and that is something that needs to be worked on.
Irish politics may be very different by the time of the next election. Already three of the six party leaders involved in the 2007 campaign, Michael McDowell, Trevor Sargent and now Rabbitte, have stepped down. Bertie Ahern is expected to follow suit some time in advance of the next election, and Gerry Adams may not be around for it either.
With rockier times ahead for the economy, there is no knowing what the atmosphere is going to be like next time around. The next leader may even stumble across the most valuable commodity of all, luck.