Gilmore has the skills and qualities to put Labour back on track

THERE was a palpable air of disappointment among the media commentators I spoke and listened to over the weekend. Labour wasn’t going to beat itself up over a leadership election.

You could almost hear the unspoken reaction. “What? But Labour always has a right good row in these situations. There’s always blood on the floor, always arguments to write about. And this time they’re going to pick a leader without any sort of row at all? It’s just not fair.”

I’m exaggerating slightly, of course. I come from an era when Labour was perfectly capable of tearing itself apart in search of its own soul. As a former party employee, I can remember weekend conferences at which I found myself wondering whether I’d have an organisation to work for by Sunday night.

So when political commentators log for the days when “healthy debate” was what characterised Labour I instinctively recall times when I longed for a little less debate and a lot more healthy action instead.

Mind you, Labour has come a long way from the days when Frank Cluskey speculated about which of his 14 party colleagues could be the next Labour leader.

“The trouble with us,” he said, “is that each of us has a proposer, but none of us can get a seconder”.”

We now know that even if another candidate does get a seconder by Thursday to challenge Eamon Gilmore, the election is essentially over.

And what that means is that Gilmore has won an unprecedented mandate from the members of his party. Pat Rabbitte was the first leader to be elected by all the membership, but Gilmore is almost certainly going to be the first in the history of the party to be selected by acclamation. In that sense, he will be following in the footsteps of British prime minister Gordon Brown.

But Gilmore has a radically different job to do. Brown followed a charismatic and flawed leader in Tony Blair, but he inherited a party in government, with all the resources that brings. Brown also has enough experience to know where all the levers of power are and how they can be used most effectively.

Gilmore follows a succession of leaders of high national reputation. He has inherited a party that longs to be in government but has been blocked in that ambition in election after election by a variety of circumstances. While he has relatively little experience of governmental power, he has a very considerable range of qualities and skills essential to any building project.

I suspect the reason he has been chosen unopposed by his Labour colleagues is because it’s a building project they want undertaken, and they believe him to be the only one around with the necessary skills and qualities to do it.

Gilmore has set out his stall early, and in very clear terms. It is noteworthy that the single overriding objective he has set for Labour is not about entering government, or assessing the merits of different coalition parties. It is about winning seats. The party’s task, under his leadership, will be to win 30 seats. Period.

Sounds mundane, doesn’t it? But Gilmore knows that if Labour wins that number of seats then it will be almost impossible to form a government in Ireland without the party’s participation. And he knows that if he can lead the party to those 30 seats, he will be able to negotiate a programme for government from a position of very considerable strength.

In setting such a simple and clear objective, he is also making it clear that he is interested in government — on his own terms.

Of course, setting a goal isn’t the same as achieving it. And setting such a simple one so early in his leadership, constitutes a pretty large hostage to fortune. The mandate given to Gilmore stems not just from his commitment to a target, but also because his party wants him to deliver. And delivering on that objective will require not just organisational ability, but leadership, too.

The five great skills of leadership are all intermingled: the ability to articulate a vision, the ability to listen, the ability to communicate (which is different to listening), the ability to learn from mistakes, and stamina. Greatness in politics is achieved by the man or woman who has some measure of them all.

You can’t get to know Eamon Gilmore, I reckon, without coming to the conclusion that he has those skills to a considerable degree. The various roles he has occupied in the past have perhaps given him limited opportunity to demonstrate them all, but he will have plenty of scope now.

But skills aren’t enough. Leadership also requires qualities such as integrity, loyalty and character. Gilmore will find that those qualities — vital in government and in stressful situations — are every bit as essential in the hard grind of opposition politics and in building up his organisation.

I remember some years ago listening to former New York City mayor, Rudi Giuliani talking about leadership, and though I disagreed with much of what he said, I agreed with one of the characteristics of leadership he outlined. You must, said Giuliani, be an optimist — someone who is always looking for solutions and refuses to be overwhelmed by problems. And he placed a huge emphasis on teamwork, springing from mutual trust.

I think most people who know Eamon Gilmore would perhaps describe him not so much as an optimist, than as a can-do sort of guy. He is definitely more interested in solutions than he is in problems, and has the sort of positive outlook on life that can inspire trust and confidence.

He is a can-do leader, and we are becoming — aren’t we? — a can-do country.

AT THE dinner in Cork where Giuliani was speaking, he was introduced by a brave Cork man who was clearly an admirer. John Clifford had lost relatives in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and he described Giuliani’s characteristics surprisingly eloquently because his description was so simple. Giuliani, he said, was the right man in the right place at the right time.

Gilmore, meanwhile, in one of his recent speeches, quoted an Italian Social Democrat on the difference between left and right in politics: “Often, when I have to explain to someone, especially young people, what the left is and what the difference is between left and right, I employ three little phrases. The first is, not only me but others, too; the second is, not only here but elsewhere, too; and the third is, not only today but tomorrow, too.”

If Gilmore can get that difference across over the next few years, he will clearly be seen as the right man in the right place at the right time.