It’s a long way from Mullingar to somewhere over the Rainbow

ENDA KENNY and Pat Rabbitte travelled to Westmeath last Monday to launch an agreement reached between their respective party members on the local county council.

The parties are now dubbing this agreement the 'Mullingar Accord'. Seldom has something so insignificant been given such a grandiose name.

The parties, and some breathless journalists, were heralding the event as some kind of baby shower for the birth of an alternative government.

It was nothing of the sort. In reality it was no more that a fabricated photocall; a clever gimmick to divert a bit of attention away from the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party gathering in Inchydoney.

The document is a banal checklist of vague local government priorities about improving life in the county. Local councillors have very little real power and the 'Mullingar Accord' is just a bit of dressing on the usual shabby carve-up of the mayoralty, committee positions and the other spoils of local government.

This Westmeath deal is no different than the pacts of convenience negotiated between different political parties on local councils all over the country in the last six weeks.

In fact, since June's election Fine Gael and Labour have done similar pacts with Fianna Fáil on other councils nearly as often as they have done them with each other.

If Monday's photocall is the best that Fine Gael and Labour could come up with to emphasise their seriousness about putting an alternative offer to the electorate at the next Dáil election, then the electorate need not hold its breath.

These two parties have a long way to go before they will even be close to agreeing a framework for an alternative government and even longer before they manage to persuade the Green Party to sign up with them.

The scale of the policy gaps between the three parties is large and deep.

It is true that Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens managed to co-operate on private members' motions during the last Dáil term.

However, these co-ordinated positions were on non-contentious issues like the need for the recognition of the Irish language at European Union level, the entitlements of widows, increased spending on disability and opposition to e-voting.

When it came to more difficult issues the three parties found it impossible to agree.

Many media seemed to have missed the fact, for example, that in the last Dáil term a Fine Gael private members' motion calling for a change to Ireland's policy on neutrality was not even pushed to a vote because of the risk that both Labour and the Greens would have joined the Government parties in voting against it.

In the citizenship referendum the parties were on opposite sides with Fine Gael calling for a Yes vote for the Government's proposal, but Labour and the Greens campaigning against it.

On the last two Nice referenda, and probably on the next referendum on the European constitution, both Labour and Fine Gael have opposing positions to that advanced by the Green Party.

The reality is that these three parties are miles apart not only on issues as fundamental as citizenship, neutrality and our role in Europe, but also on taxation, agriculture and industrial policy.

Some have predicted that agreeing a policy platform between the three parties could take up to a year. However long it takes, it will be an entertaining process to watch.

Even if these three parties manage to patch together a common policy platform, they will still have to win a lot of new Dáil seats in the next election if a government is to be formed without Fianna Fáil.

The task facing Fine Gael and Labour and the Greens, if they are to form an alternative government, is that, combined, they must win close to 25 additional Dáil seats.

Fine Gael or Labour or the Greens winning Dáil seats from each other will not bring the alternative government any closer to power they must win those seats from Fianna Fáil, the Progressive Democrats, or the independents.

If they fall short of winning 25 additional seats combined, they will have to rely on a collection of left-wing independents and/or Michael Lowry to keep them in power.

In analysing the local and European election results I have been frank and realistic about the difficulties which Fianna Fáil currently has with the electorate and about how, if not addressed, they could cost Fianna Fáil many Dáil seats in the next general election.

However, the ability of Fianna Fáil to recognise and overcome these difficulties should not be underestimated.

Fine Gael had a good local election in June and a very good European elections. There has been a real and significant Fine Gael recovery and the party will win more Dáil seats in the next general election.

However, some of the seats which Fine Gael will target and win are currently held by the Labour party, the Greens or 'non-gene pool' independents.

LABOUR also had a good local election, but the pointers for its performance in the next general election are less clear-cut.

If Pat Rabbitte follows through on his commitment to put in place fresh candidates for winnable Dáil seats in the next general election, then Labour could gain perhaps a half a dozen new seats. However, again, some of these may be at the expense of Fine Gael, the Greens or 'non-gene pool' independents.

The Green party had a reasonable local election and a very bad European elections. On the basis of its performance in June it is hard to identify more than one constituency where the party has a realistic chance of winning a new Dáil seat.

On balance, the Greens are more likely to struggle to hold the seats they have rather than win any additional seats.

The other important pointer from the local elections is that even if Fianna Fáil was to lose a large number of Dáil seats next time (and that cannot be a foregone conclusion), then Sinn Féin would win at least a portion of any FF seat losses.

There is one other significant fact about the recent election results which will overhang any discussions Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens now enter into about an alternative government.

Fine Gael's resurgence has undermined Labour's claims to be the real opposition or to lead (or rotate the leadership of) the alternative government.

Speaking in Glenties in July, Fine Gael's director of elections, Frank Flannery, went out of his way to make the point that although over the last two years Labour has in opinion polls reached a vote share in the late teens, and even occasionally exceeded 20%, it achieved nothing like that when the actual election came.

For the foreseeable future Fine Gael is likely to remain significantly ahead of Labour in terms of both vote share and Dáil seats.

However, Labour does not necessarily accept this reality. Labour often suffers from a political ego beyond its vote share. Pat Rabbitte was at it again speaking to his councillors last Saturday when he talked of Labour being the "driving force" in the alternative government.

Labour will have an exaggerated sense of what they should be entitled to in any policy programme or in any divvy up of cabinet seats. It's that Labour ego which may actually prove the biggest hurdle to any agreed pact between them, Fine Gael and the Greens before the next election.