FG pact with Labour a ‘blunder’, warns McDowell

FINE Gael’s decision to form a pre-election pact with Labour will prove “a monumental political blunder”, Táinaiste and PD leader Michael McDowell has predicted.

In a speech attacking Labour’s economic policies, Mr McDowell said Fine Gael would come to regret the pact known as the “Mullingar Accord”.

He claimed Labour had a history of opposing the reduction of State spending to improve financial stability. Labour also disliked economic liberalisation, he said, and was traditionally uncomfortable with tax cuts.

Mr McDowell argued that the pact tied Fine Gael to Labour economic policy.

“Past experience shows that Pat Rabbitte’s recent claim that Labour would be ‘the driving force’ in any rainbow coalition is probably correct,” he said.

“The faint and fading hope for a rainbow coalition is really based on Labour being the political centre of gravity between Fine Gael on the one hand and the Greens and far-left Independents, who would be required to make up an alternative government.

“The Mullingar Accord will turn out over the next nine months to have been a monumental political blunder,” said Mr McDowell, at an economics conference in Kenmare, Co Kerry, on Saturday night.

A Fine Gael spokesman responded yesterday: “It’s vital that the electorate have an alternative, and Fine Gael and Labour will provide that alternative. The PDs should be more worried about their serious drop in support in Dublin ... which leaves virtually all their Dublin seats at risk.”