Labour squeezed in the middleas Sinn Féin eats at its support

AS the Green Party’s former senator Dan Boyle launches his book detailing his party’s deeply troubled time in the previous government, many in the Labour Party should read it and worry whether the Green experience as the junior partner in a coalition government is instructive in predicting what will happen to it.

After all, the Greens are in near oblivion, without a single representative in either chamber of Leinster House, and its predecessor as the junior, the Progressive Democrats, doesn’t even exist. Is Labour sowing the seeds of its own demise?

Labour undoubtedly will console itself with a few facts: it has a much bigger electoral representation in the Dáil than either the PDs or Greens ever had, and has far larger cabinet representation too. It also has a far deeper and more sustainable heritage, turning 100 years old this. It retains strong links to the trade union movement, which provides both funding and apparently measurable support. It also has had the experience previously of being the junior partner in a coalition and has never gone out of business because of it.

However, Labour’s senior figures are not so foolish as to take much solace from all of that. Age is no guarantee of safety; it does help relevance. The trade union movement, because of its declining proportion of the workforce, is no longer nearly as important and, in any case, many remaining trade unionists are furious that Labour is following policies that are at odds with their described political objectives. Labour can argue all that it likes that it is protecting the more vulnerable — and that borrowing over €15bn a year actually isn’t austerity — but it is hard to do that when still endorsing payments to bank bondholders.

The bigger it is, the harder the fall will be. Labour won 37 seats in last year’s general election, with a 19.4% share of the vote, but lost Willie Penrose and Tommy Broughan from that number. Patrick Nulty, elected in the by-election following the death of Brian Lenihan, quickly went overboard.

The opinion polls are putting Labour support down into single digits. If there was to be an election tomorrow then Labour’s number of seats could conceivably fall into single figures too. It’s such a far way from Labour’s ambition two years ago to win a sufficient number of seats to be able to demand that Eamon Gilmore, rather than Enda Kenny, would be Taoiseach in a Labour-led coalition with Fine Gael. The party was misled by a June 2010 opinion poll which, for the first time in the history of the state, showed the Labour Party as the most popular of our political parties, with a 32% share of preferences among polled voters. This put it ahead of Fine Gael at 28% and Fianna Fáil at 17%. Gilmore’s approval ratings were also the highest of any Dáil leader, standing at 46%. There were some within the party who were intoxicated by the apparent possibilities, and at a senior level too, and who were encouraged to do so by a few sympathetic media cheerleaders. It all looks all so stupid now.

How humiliating (and infuriating) it must be for Labour that some recent polls have put its support at half the level enjoyed by Fianna Fáil, the party most responsible for the economic mess that we are in.

Labour will long suffer from one of the most unforgettable soundbites ever uttered by an Irish politician during an election campaign, Gilmore’s infamous and vainglorious promise that once in power it would be “Labour’s way, not Frankfurt’s way”.

Not only has Labour been unable to implement its own policies, but it is implementing the trioka’s to the letter. It may be true that it could do little else, especially when efforts failed to persuade our lenders as to merits and morals of our arguments that the bank debts should be at the very least partially written off. But, not surprisingly, that is not how the electorate sees it.

Sinn Féin, in particular, has been merciless in exposing Labour over this, and its popularity has risen in the polls accordingly. It is more clever in its pursuit of Labour than the members of the United Left Alliance, who appeal with their attacks on the Government’s economic policies, but then lose support when they propose their alternative visions.

Labour’s only consolation — in addition to its belief that it is serving the national interest at present even if at great cost to itself — can be that there may still be time in which the situation can be rescued. Labour, far more so than Fine Gael, is totally dependent for its survival on a major change in our economic circumstances. (Fine Gael’s core vote from the last election is holding, according to the polls, and even if that slips Fine Gael remains well-placed to lead the next Government). So a sea-change in our deal could change the public mood and perceptions dramatically.

Labour’s misfortune is that it has virtually no control over events and has no idea as to whether a deal on our national debts will ever be achieved, and if it is then on what terms? But even if it is able to end or reverse some of the austerity, the legacy of its first 15 months in power may be hard to dislodge. History shows that perceptions formed early in the lifetime of a government stick.

Even at this stage, it is possible to argue that Gilmore should not lead Labour into the next election, even if some deal is struck to make future budgets somewhat more palatable. His credibility in debates would be badly undermined by reference to his performance in the last general election campaign. If he is unselfish, or if others in the party decide to force his hand, then he would go. If Joan Burton can manage a transition in social welfare payments, in which she appears to have been as fair and caring as possible, she might find herself getting a shot at leading a traditionally male-dominated party (and then finding herself blamed by the men when the inevitable loss of seats happens).

It might be, though, that Labour decides at some stage over the next couple of years — well in advance of the next due election date of 2016 — that it should withdraw from government. That might its best way of saving itself from oblivion, although withdrawals from government on points of principle have not always saved parties from the wrath of the electorate.

BUT what should really worry Labour is that Fianna Fáil seems to have cauterised the haemorrhage in its support. It could end up with more seats than Labour in the next Dáil. Fine Gael would be faced then with a choice. Another coalition with Labour — when the previous government may have been ended prematurely by Labour, or when they are sick of the sight of each other — or an arrangement with Fianna Fáil.

Implausible? Not really. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are in many ways indistinguishable. Michael Martin rehabilitated himself with many voters with his performance during the recent referendum campaign, when he was one of the government’s most useful allies. Both parties will be desperate to stop the rise of Sinn Féin, particularly in the run-up to the celebrations during the centenary of the 1916 Rising. There’ll be plenty of posturing from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil that they don’t want to do business with each other — with the former arguing that further decontamination of the latter is required after their economic mismanagement — but once that it is very possible that the landmark event of 2016 could be the end of what’s known as post-civil war politics. What may become of Labour then is some form of link up with Sinn Féin or the United Left Alliance, if Labour still exists.

* The Last Word with Matt Cooper is broadcast on 100-102 Today FM, Monday to Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm.