Labour warn of Tory-like FG majority

There was a confident and casual air among delegates at Labour’s party conference over the weekend.

There were far fewer suits, and more jeans and jumpers, than at the Fine Gael and Fianna Fail ard fheiseanna of the previous two weekends. The attendees chatted in the bar, lobby and halls of the Mullingar Park Hotel. Although Labour is predicted to haemorrage seats in the election, at grassroots level a buoyant, realistic, mood prevails.

Delegates accept there is no possibility of returning the historic 37 seats of the 2011 general election, but grassroots members believe they won’t be hit as hard as pundits are predicting and spin the line that a Fine Gael majority government would herald the introduction of painful Tory-style policies.

Bernard Doyle, from Saggart, in Dublin, said public opinion had shifted more in favour of Labour, since the low ebb of the 2014 local elections. Then, there was outright disdain and “hostility” for the party.

“I said to Pat Rabbitte, a few years ago: ‘I’m a member of the Labour Party and I worked for Bank of Ireland for 37 years and I’m not sure which is more hated’,” said the retired banker.

He is confident the party will return at least 15 TDs. “We have been kicked so many times, but we are very good at bouncing back up. It all depends on transfers. We have the best hope if both parties [Fine Gael and Labour] get in together. I think Fine Gael will do a lot better than people expect,” he said. He also said that Fine Gael, if returned to power on their own, would implement Tory-like cuts to services.

This view was backed up by Paddy Cosgrave, of Dublin mid-west: “Usually, what happens in the UK happens here two years later. No-one expected the Tory party to get an overall majority and they did,” he said, adding that Labour members would fight hard to stop this happening.

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Sally Corr was not as confident that Labour would do better than the polls were suggesting — the poll published in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post puts them at 10%.

“I am not confident that we will do well this time around. People are very angry, they are frustrated, but I think they don’t know how to vote. Last time, they voted for obscurity, but it didn’t work out. We got a load of independents who couldn’t form a government.” She expects many voters to turn away from Labour, but warns: “I don’t think people realise that by voting for other parties, it’s not doing them any favours. Fine Gael in government is the same as Fianna Fail, so having a majority government would not be a good thing.”

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