Rabbitte signals post-election party probe

Labour leader Pat Rabbitte tonight signalled a major internal probe and soul-searching into where the party is going and what it stands for after what he admitted was a disappointing election.

Speaking in Galway he said: “We must embark on a root and branch examination of the role and function of the Labour Party in modern Ireland.”

He said many reasons for their failure to capitalise at the polls could be put forward including electoral boundaries, lack of funding compared with other main parties and the electorate not wanting to risk a change.

All of those concerns led the party to look at others rather than themselves, he said adding: “It is with ourselves that the problem most definitely lies. With ourselves and how we are seen by modern Irish society.”

He added: “In marketing parlance there is a problem with the Labour ’brand’. It means that the Labour Party does not conjure up in people’s minds , much less inspire, a definite sense of what the party stands for and how it relates to their day to day lives.”

The party’s traditional base had been eroded and changed, he said. “Affluence has changed the way people think about themselves.

“If we ever did, we do not reflect the aspirations of most of the new middle class – people in working class occupations trying to live middle class lives. People whose parents in some cases voted Labour, but who themselves do not vortex Labour.”

The party had not persuaded them it would improve their lives, and certainly not that they were worth the risk of changing horses mid-stream, he said.

Mr Rabbitte said he did not seek to deny the economic boom of recent years had improved the living standards of many people living in disadvantaged communities.

But he said the idea that Ireland had somehow achieved a social and economic Nirvana was nonsense.

“The reality is that Ireland entered the Celtic Tiger era as one of the most unequal countries in the developed world, and today Ireland remains a very unequal society,” he added.

Delivering the Jim Kemmy Lecture at the Tom Johnson Summer School organised by Labour Youth, said the party needed not just policies but a project – something which would make people realise that Labour did not just exist but was out to change the face of Irish society.

“If Labour is to win, the people must know that Labour has a project. A project to build an Ireland founded on those values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, which are as relevant to the new Ireland as they ever were.”