Voting results show a ‘more promiscuous electorate’

YOU have a failed ideology, you have the most hopeless policy that I ever heard pursued by any nitwit.”

So former taoiseach Bertie Ahern told Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party in 2006. Last weekend, while Ahern’s St Luke’s machine could not get his brother elected to either the Dáil or Dublin City Council, Joe Higgins was successful in both the local and European elections. Aside from Higgins, the Socialist Party had three other candidates elected, the People Before Profit Alliance has five councillors, while the Workers’ Party won a seat in Cork for the first time in 30 years. There was also a wide array of left-leaning independents elected, not to mention the 54 seats won by Sinn Féin and 132 for Labour. Does this represent a “red dawn” in Irish politics?

Let’s consider the facts. The combined vote for all left-wing parties and some independents in Friday’s local elections was approximately 26%, barely more than the 25% won by a “decimated” Fianna Fáil. This vote for the left is also overly concentrated in urban areas. In more rural parts of the country — the eight county councils in Connaught-Ulster, for example Labour won only five out of 208 seats.

So, is the glass half-full or half-empty? To begin with, Ireland records the lowest vote for the left of any European country. At the four Dáil elections held since 1990, the left won 20% of the national vote, in contrast to an equivalent figure of more than 40% in the rest of western Europe.

One of the reasons cited for this weakness includes a conservative political culture, where a fear of the reds under the bed prevailed. What has been far more damaging for the left, however, is its preoccupation with ideological debate over organisational strength.

While those on the left behaved like the Covey — fixated over Jenersky’s Thesis on the Origin, Development, and Consolidation of the Evolutionary Idea of the Proletariat’ — in O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars, Fianna Fáil and (to a lesser extent) Fine Gael developed electoral machines to consolidate their dominance. Opinion poll data confirms consistently that voters primarily value someone who can look after the needs of the constituency. In other words, a candidate with a strong organisation. Left or right does not come into the equation.

Labour TD Willie Penrose is a perfect example of this. Living in a rural constituency with a small left-wing vote and no Labour TD since the 1920s, Penrose was first elected in Westmeath in 1992. He has comfortably held his seat since then. How? There was no revolution of the proletariat in the midlands. Rather, Labour’s success was a product of Penrose’s organisational abilities.

So, where to now for the left? Friday’s results indicate a more promiscuous electorate no longer tied loyally to civil war politics. Re-introducing monogamy to these new-found voters may prove difficult for left-wing parties; ideology is not a sufficient enticement.

What is needed is a demonstration of the left’s ability to work together. A key factor in the Spring Tide of 1992 was the successful portrayal of Dick Spring as an alternative taoiseach. By coalescing effectively on the Fingal, South Dublin and Dublin city councils (where they now have a majority), therefore, the left may be able to demonstrate its viability to the electorate as a genuine governing option. Otherwise, the tide may ebb out for them once again.

Dr Liam Weeks lectures in politics in the Department of Government, University College Cork