Gilmore can win the hearts and minds of the nation — but it won’t be easy

THAT was a powerful speech Eamonn Gilmore gave on Saturday night.

Brilliantly written, and delivered with both passion and conviction, it was one of the best of its kind I’ve ever heard.

I wasn’t at the party conference in Galway, but it had all the look of a party that was brimming with confidence, led by a man whose time may rapidly be approaching.

I have no doubt whatever that the “Gilmore for Taoiseach” posters will get up a few noses. You’re going to hear the usual sniffy commentary suggesting that Labour is getting ideas above its station. It’s all very well for Labour to be plotting and planning to get into government, these commentators will imply. But they need to know their place. Labour’s role is to support someone else, not to aspire to real leadership themselves. Ever since the 1960s, it has been an article of faith in Irish political commentary that only really uppity Labour people want real power, as opposed to the token kind.

But the point Gilmore was making was that Labour has to lead. Alone among the mainstream political parties, Labour has no ties to the builders and the bankers who have broken the country. Labour opposed the ideology of “light touch regulation” and cavalier enterprise that was the helium that made the bubble so big and so fragile. Labour opposed the blanket bank guarantee that never stopped to ask what condition Anglo-Irish Bank was in.

The party’s was right in its opposition. And it was right in its development, again first, of universal health insurance. As Gilmore said on Saturday night, the others opposed universal health insurance because they argued it was too bureaucratic — and then they invented the HSE instead. Now, of course, everyone is claiming that universal health insurance was their idea in the first place. And everyone (of course) is disowning all responsibility for the poor old HSE.

But it isn’t enough to be right in your opposition. If a political party is to have the courage of its conviction, it has to demand the chance to put things right. And the only way a political party can do that — when all the ideas and the policies and the values are right — is to put them into practice in a position of real leadership. And you can’t ever do that if you believe you can’t. If you’re always prepared to settle for second place, then second place is all you deserve. If you really believe you have the capacity to lead, you’ve got to be bold about it. That’s what Gilmore really was on Saturday night. He was bold. Not arrogant, or conceited, or self-centred.

He made a simple, bold statement, motivated by, as he described it, the fact that Ireland lies wounded, and needs a new champion. I think the reason Gilmore doesn’t deserve to be accused of conceit could well be found in the couple of paragraphs of Irish he used. I hadn’t realised how natural and unforced his use of Irish is, and he didn’t repeat what he had said in English. But it came at the end of a passage where he talked about the need to earn trust, and about the collective and individual experiences that go into preparing people for the really tough challenges.

My own cúpla focal are pretty poor, but this, I think, is a rough translation of some of what he had to say: “I think of my own life. Growing up here in Galway. The difficulties we had. The hardship and cold associated with poverty. But the freedom that education gave us. The confidence I felt from my family and my teachers. The experience I gained from working side by side with young people, and from the pursuit of rights for working people. The love and hope that comes from raising a family myself. The honour and satisfaction of pursuing the people’s work.”

It’s a simple, modest declaration. Gilmore is, I think, a simple enough man, with no great interest in the comforts of wealth or the trappings of office. But he has strong and passionate values, and he’s not afraid to articulate them. That combination of simplicity and passion is something the other political parties ought to fear as the next election draws near. Gilmore is a conviction politician, and people like that aren’t easily bought.

He’s right too about the injustice of the way plans are already being drawn up in RTÉ to marginalise Labour in the next election. There’s no malign motivation behind this — they’re just going to run the election coverage the way they always have.

And that means it doesn’t matter how Labour are performing in opinion polls as the election draws near.

Even if their numbers are higher than anyone else’s, they are still going to be treated as the third party by RTÉ.

RTÉ will offer the first two parties a debate between their leaders, and they will push Labour to the edges of the coverage. Perhaps this time, for the first time ever, Labour might have a trump card.

What has happened in the British election shows clearly that not only is there a democratic case for including the three main party leaders in the election debates, but there is also a public hunger for the change.

Both of the other party leaders — especially, perhaps, Enda Kenny, have a vested interested in seeing him there. I for one won’t be too surprised if neither Fianna Fáil not Fine Gael raise no objection to his participation in the leaders’ debates.

And that will be their mistake.

In the end of the day though, there’s only one thing that will turn a Labour Leader into a Taoiseach. Eamonn Gilmore has made the right start, by setting out his stall, by demonstrating the level of conviction of which he is capable.

But it was his immediate predecessor, Pat Rabbitte, who identified the not-so-magic ingredient that is most necessary now — shoe leather.

From now till polling day, whenever it comes, if Eamonn Gilmore is serious about being Taoiseach, as I believe he is, and if he is committed to restoring the One Ireland that he talks about, as I believe he is too, he has to go and sell it. Door by door, voter by voter. He may have two years, or he may not.

But whatever length of time there is between now and the general election, he has to take his ideas to the people.

His speech on Saturday night may have been one of the best ever. It needs to be accompanied from this moment on by the longest election campaign ever.

Ireland needs and wants fundamental change, and desperately wants to see the back of the present government.

But there has been a real doubt about the alternative in people’s minds, and trust is at a low ebb.

So Eamonn Gilmore has to hit the road, and start his campaign now. He showed on Saturday night that he can inspire trust and confidence, but every single vote from now on will involve a battle of hearts and minds.

He can win — but he’s going to have to do it the hard way.