Labour are marking McDowell but it’s Bertie who has the ball

THE weeks since the election and the start of the silly season have seen some interesting exchanges between the Government and the opposition, and indeed within the Government, about political policy and positioning.

This is a good thing. Too often our politics is dominated by clashes of personalities or electoral contests.

This week the Labour party made a contribution to the debate with the publication of a “framework” economic policy document called The Fair Economy. It presents a social democratic vision for economic development and builds on some of the themes about a fair society which Pat Rabbitte set out in his first party conference address last year.

However, one weaknesses of Labour’s Fair Economy document is that it is obsessed with Michael McDowell. In fact in recent months Labour (and Rabbitte in particular) appears constantly fixated on Michael McDowell. In the last Dáil term the speeches of the Labour party front bench were nearly always laced with references to, or invective about, the president of the Progressive Democrats. Seldom has one politician, least of all a minister for justice from a minority government party, done so much to influence the way an opposition party argues its economic policy.

I’m not sure from where this fixation derives, but it may have something to do with the fact that some of Rabbitte’s chief advisers and speech-writers have been obsessed with McDowell for years.

This McDowell obsession may be one of the reasons, for example, why the Labour party got it so wrong on the citizenship referendum. Because Michael McDowell was the sponsoring minister, Labour assumed that the citizenship proposal must be flawed or would be unpopular with the public. The few posters they erected on the referendum focused on this angle.

However, the referendum achieved almost 80% approval and polls showed it even had the support of a majority of Labour party voters. Obsessed with playing the man, Labour took its eye off the ball.

Fine Gael proved a better reader of the public mood on that one.

The Fair Economy document was not published until Monday but I was among an audience treated to a preview of its contents from Pat Rabbitte at the Magill Summer School in Glenties, Donegal, on Friday night. The organisers of the school had invited a collection of leading spokespersons for the main political parties who were asked to outline their vision of “how Ireland should be governed in the 21st Century and by whom”.

Brian Lenihan did the honours for Fianna Fáil, providing a competent summary of social and economic policy with a particular emphasis on the value of social partnership - perhaps in the process doing his prospects of landing an economic ministry in the forthcoming reshuffle no harm at all.

Fine Gael put up their deputy leader and finance spokesperson Richard Bruton and he also gave an extensive address showing again why he is one of Fine Gael’s most interesting and original thinkers.

Pat Rabbitte was the Labour party speaker and he also delivered a lengthy speech - but the bulk of it was devoted not to a presentation of Labour’s vision but instead to an attack on Michael McDowell.

Five weeks ago, Michael McDowell was the guest speaker at the annual IBEC Dinner in Dublin. The IBEC Dinner is a gala night out for Ireland’s captains of industry. McDowell used the opportunity, in the context of the post-election tensions in the government, to set out the PD stall and, as politicians are wont to do, he argued that Progressive Democrat policies were responsible for Ireland’s recent economic success.

Among those gathered in their dress suits for the IBEC Dinner was Pat Rabbitte himself. It must have been an unhappy event for the Labour party leader - he must have spent the night choking behind his dickey bow on what McDowell had to say. If that is the case, then he stored this anger up and it poured out of him in Glenties on Friday night.

The hall in Glenties was packed. There were perhaps 600 people who had come to hear each of the parties present their case. But from Labour, all they got was a rebuttal of Michael McDowell’s case.

IN Glenties, Rabbitte promised that his economic vision would be set out in the Fair Economy document.

The document is 20 pages long but the first eight pages of it are again devoted to a refutation of the McDowell economic view. In fact, McDowell gets mentioned by name in the Labour policy document nine times. Charlie McCreevy comes next with six lashes. There are even one or two digs at the Tanaiste Mary Harney.

Interestingly, Bertie Ahern doesn’t get mentioned at all. Labour seems to need a polar opposite in order to be able to outline its policy position - there must be a bête noir - and for some reason, Rabbitte has decided McDowell will be it.

Another weakness in the Fair Economy document is that while it is strong in its analysis of some of this country’s problems, it offers no real answers as to the solutions.

Rabbitte, for example, accepts that improving public services cannot be achieved solely by throwing more money at them and that reform is also required. However, he gives no suggestions as to how reform of the public services is to be achieved. He talks only in vague terms like a need for “a stronger sense of priorities and focus.”

In media interviews Rabbitte argues that it is too early in the election cycle to be specific about spending commitments or tax changes. However, in circumstances where we are told that Labour it to set about putting together a common policy position with Fine Gael and the Greens in the coming months, surely we are entitled to know what Labour’s opening position is.

Another weakness is that the Fair Economy booklet fails to address the central question of whether public monies are to be spent on the universal provision of a range of public services to everybody irrespective of means or whether resources are to be targeted at those most in need.

There is confusion in the Labour party’s position on this point and this confusion was apparent at different sessions of the Magill summer school.

On Tuesday night the Labour deputy leader Liz McManus was trenchant in her criticism of the government’s extension of the medical card entitlement to all persons over 70 years of age irrespective of means. She argued that resources should be targeted instead at reducing the income threshold for the medical card generally.

However, the following night Brendan Howlin was equally trenchant in the defence of Labour’s abolition of third level fees even though this has dramatically favoured the children of the wealthiest instead of targeting resources at educational disadvantage.

The publication of a policy document by an opposition party outside of an election period is a rare event and Labour deserves credit for publishing this document. But in its content and presentation, Labour is making the mistake of getting the focus wrong. Frankly, nothing would suit Bertie Ahern and Fianna Fáil more than to have the focus of the Labour opposition for the next three years targeted at Michael McDowell and the Progressive Democrats.