Think-ins left us wondering about what’s really going on

IT WAS the moment the Coalition finally delivered transformative change — but Leo Varadkar sarcastically singing The Red Flag while Labour lorded it in a luxury hotel favoured by the super rich may not exactly have been the sort of change people voted for.

The so-called “think-in” meetings of the governing parliamentary parties showed them both bathed in an ugly light.

The Blueshirts bayed with delight as thrusting Thatcherite Varadkar roared the socialist anthem during early hours revelry at their sumptuous Westport spa hotel.

The fact he needed to check the words on his Blackberry only added to the collective glee among Fine Gaelers that the moment symbolised their belief the Labour Party is just where they want them — prisoners of the Tory austerity agenda.

Not that Labour cared that much as they rejoiced in the footsteps of Real Madrid’s Ronaldo and took up residence at the seriously posh Carton House Hotel in Kildare.

“Nothing is too good for the working class,” one senior figure kept insisting to me. But I pointed out that very few of “the people’s party’s” TDs are in fact working class at all as most are teachers, accountants, academics, etc. Also, when I said a survey by the credit unions showed most real working class families have barely €100 a month to spare after paying their bills — which wouldn’t even get you a decent spa treatment at Carton House — they went strangely quiet.

Not that power has gone to Eamon Gilmore’s head or anything — though the 10 or so private security guards prowling the corridors in their black suits and earpieces did make him seem more Lady GaGa than Che Guevara.

After the unpleasantness in April when anti-household charge protestors were banging on the windows of the Labour conference in Galway, it was not surprising for the party to want somewhere more secure. But bling-tastic Carton House with its boating lake and 1100 acres of private parkland, really?

Mr Gilmore’s justification for the venue, sadly, tells you all you need to know about the current intellectual drive of the party.

“We got meeting rooms for €450 for two days. And it’s a sign of the times that deals of various kinds are now available in the hotel sector.”

So, roughly translated, if the price is right, the Labour Party will swallow any principle regardless of how appalling it looks to their supporters.

To underline the smack of sell-out, Carton House is not even on the trade unions’ own “fair hotel list” which promotes businesses deemed the most employee-friendly. Labour has since been in touch with unions to ensure their next gathering is at a “fair hotel” — but surely a party supposedly fighting for workers rights and equality might have bothered doing that before now?

Oscar Wilde’s oft repeated refrain about people knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing springs to mind.

And so does another of the great Irishman’s lesser known musings: “Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”

Labour and Fine Gael are both acting as if they no longer have to bother with the voters who elected them on such a wave of hope just 18 months ago.

They feel they can take the “ordinary” voter for granted, safe in the knowledge they have nowhere else to go.

The (Dis)United Left Alliance has imploded, Sinn Féin has stalled, and Fianna Fiasco are now prisoners of the past, not soldiers of destiny.

As another Labour figure put it to me: “Yeah, on current form we’ll probably lose half our seats, but Fine Gael will come in with around 70 next time, so they will still need us — unless Fianna Fáil are absolutely desperate — so it looks like we’re here for 10 years whatever happens, And know knows — by then people might actually like us again?”

It was the same show of arrogance and hubris with Fine Gael where Finance Minister Michael Noonan told the TDs in private sessions that they had to inflict the pain early and cross their fingers that the “economic and political cycles” would synch later on. In other words, stick the boot in now and pray for some form of upturn just in time for the next general election.

So, it is all about grimly clinging on until 2016 and cruising back to power on a wave of apathy against an untrusted opposition.

The much promised “New Politics” and “Change Agenda” are just hollow, empty sound-bites used to get across the line last time out.

Obviously, when you are the Toytown government of an economically failed state, like the Coalition is, control over the economic trajectory of the country is somewhat limited.

But health care was the one area where the Coalition’s sweeping promises of transformation could have been achieved.

So the news that one of its key planks, the provision of free GP care for 60,000 people with long term illnesses now looks like being delayed threatens to bring that whole area of reform to a shuddering halt.

Free universal health care starting in 2016 as promised by the programme for government? You’ve got more chance of Labour or Fine Gael “slumming it” in a vulgar chain hotel brand.

Enda Kenny does not even bother attempting to answer questions anymore. In press encounter after press encounter he ignores whatever point he is being quizzed on and just goes off on a pre-rehearsed statement of irrelevance. This only adds to the feeling of deep cynicism engulfing and corroding this Government.

It is now difficult not to avoid the conclusion that Mr Kenny would be the best president this country ever had — charming, personable, presentable, always ready with an amiable word — but as a Taoiseach with an agenda of transformative change he is about as believable as little Leo belting out his promise to keep the red flag flying here.