Wit, gravitas, Rabbitte had it all in speech
In truth, there are very few who have the knack of delivering witty, all-encompassing, and gripping leaders' speeches capable of stopping them in the aisles.
In Ireland, there is really only one. Pat Rabbitte's address to the Labour Party conference this weekend wasn't perfect towards the end it began to taper off a bit but it wasn't far off it. His powerful half-hour performance showcased all of the Labour leader's speech-making talents and strengths of fluency and delivery.
He leavened the profound with biting and populist humour. He hard-knuckled the Government's record and then pumped down the volume and tone to spell out his party's own alternative visions and aspirations to a wider audience. There was the effective 'the Taoiseach can't remember' theme that peppered the first half of the speech along with a classic take on chit-chat meetings: "You give us the chit and we'll give you the chat", he said in an unscripted off-the-cuff line.
We are coming to the end of party conference season Fine Gael's convention next weekend will be the last. The days of internal debate on policy and disruptive divisions (a feature of Labour conferences up to a decade ago) have long passed. Nowadays, they are carefully constructed and smoothly choreographed affairs, intended to maximise the party's image to a broader public.
This spring season the immediate focus has been the local and European elections. And like other parties Labour didn't miss a trick when it came to showcasing their candidates (over 30 got their moment on live TV in the morning session), or pushing messages and policies that will appeal to the electorate in June. But to use the GAA analogy, this summer's elections will be like the National League. It will be good to do well but of equal (or more) importance will be the blooding of new candidates for the Championship proper.
From a wider perspective, the conference gave a good indication of Labour's stock under Rabbitte. The party encompasses possibly a wider range of views and perspectives within than the two other traditional.
Its moves toward social democracy and towards fitting its outlook to the realpolitik of modern Ireland (the shorthand for that is that delegates are more often addressed as 'colleagues' nowadays rather than 'comrades') hasn't been sold on all its membership.
Rabbitte has indubitably been a unifying and rallying force for the party but the conference gave an indication of how tricky it will be to steer a middle course on some of the most contentious issues.
Interestingly, the three themes that he identified in his opening speech on Friday night the citizenship referendum; the call to republicans to end paramilitarism; the visit of President Bush dominated debates and speeches.
The stances he himself adopted on the referendum and on the Bush visit were nuanced. On the first, he directed his fire at the timing of the referendum and mocked the Government's motives. But at the same time he steered away from directly commenting on the substantive issue. On President Bush's visit, his 'Don't Count us In' campaign is one of profound disagreement and not quite one of full-out protest. But there seemed to be a groundswell on the floor (and from the contributions of Michael D Higgins and Proinsias de Rossa) in favour of a harder line on both issues. That, and the SDLP leader Mark Durkan's intervention on the Citizenship Referendum may have influenced his decision to broaden his party's opposition to include the substantive issue.
The other piece of significant long-view thinking that emerged from his speech was his announcement of the 'Democratic Alliance'.
"I want to see this Government replaced with an alternative that is genuinely committed to a fair society based on social democratic principles, equal rights, liberty and the rule of law. So, I shall work with other democratic parties in Dáil Eireann to build a movement let us call it a Democratic Alliance in pursuit of that alternative."
This is another step in an incremental process that began when Enda Kenny name-checked Rabbitte during his own party speech in November and that has continued with FG, Labour and the Greens co-operating on joint private members' motions in the Dáil.
Rabbitte's 'Democratic Alliance' signals what might be a new departure in Irish politics. Rather than cobbling together a possible alternative in the weeks and months before a General Election, we may now see the three parties assembling in the shadows an alternative Government that they will roll out before the 2007 contest really hots up.
