Paul Hosford: Labour has a new leader — now what?

Ivana Bacik has a lot of work to do in winning back former Labour voters, who abandoned the party for Sinn Féin and the Social Democrats

Ivana Bacik after being elected the 14th leader of the Labour Party at an event in Ringsend and Irishtown Community Centre in Dublin on Thursday.

So, the Labour Party has a new leader.

Now what?

Having disposed of Alan Kelly earlier this month, the party now looks to Ivana Bacik to lead it back to the top table of Irish electoral politics. On a sunny day in Dublin's Ringsend, the working-class heart of her Dublin Bay South constituency, Ivana Bacik was anointed the 14th leader of the party which she has served for decades, and only the second woman to hold the office. 

But rather than feeling like an automatic shot in the arm, Ms Bacik's appointment feels like a pivotal moment for the party.

With Mr Kelly, some in the party felt that he wasn't "Labour enough", that his politics or his manner weren't right, which had contributed to dismal opinion polling. With Ms Bacik, there are few whose bona fides are more Labour so if she cannot deliver electoral gains, who can?

To that end, Ms Bacik feels she has one major plus in her column — her election to the Dáil. At a time when Labour was polling at about 4% nationally, she stormed to a Dublin Bay South by-election victory with 30% of first preferences. That, it seems, is the template. But is it replicable?

Labour's problem is that it is playing in a crowded field on Ireland's left. Many voters who put faith in the party in 2011 have abandoned it — largely for Sinn Féin, which has positioned itself as the party of the working class — and a chunk of those who have stuck around have an alternative in the Social Democrats who don't come with the baggage of the 2011-2016 government. 

Mr Kelly's ties to that government — particularly water charges — had been used as a stick to beat him with as leader, but Ms Bacik was a senator for that period and her voting record in the upper house matches her predecessor's.

Erasing the collective memory is not an option, so Ms Bacik has worked to contextualise, if not defend, that government, saying it inherited a country which was on its knees and returned it to financial stability. And while that argument may be reasonable to many, it is not a popular one among the very voters which Labour is seeking to woo back.

Ms Bacik's speech in Ringsend on Thursday was broadly hopeful, with a focus on the future, but it was notable that of the 2,200 words, the word housing appears just once. The speech focused on big, progressive ideas — a new social contract, tackling inequality from birth and a "Donagh O'Malley moment in childcare", which would guarantee each child a preschool place — but had little that the average person could really become excited about.

Labour is on to its 14th leader in 110 years, but its fifth in a decade. That points to a deeper issue than just polling or brand strength. It points to a party that has been unable to broaden its appeal and is unsure how to account for its time in government.

Those issues will have to be broached, those nettles grasped, if Labour wants to increase its representation in the Oireachtas. But, as Ms Bacik said on Thursday, anything is possible.