The great depression is fuelling ‘Get Gilmore’ campaign

IT’S official: Labour TDs are depressed — giving them insight into the misery of their voters.

One of the party’s backbenchers said on RTÉ’s The Late Debate radio show that he was depressed because I had failed to credit Labour for its glorious achievements, such as the national children’s hospital, the same hospital that we have been promised for the past 13 years and which will now be built at St James’ in a few more years’ time — maybe.

As with any Government that has lost control of the political agenda, we found this out via a leak to RTÉ — six months after disaster-prone Health Minister James Reilly had promised to tell us, and following a chaotic period of counter-briefing to competing hospitals that they were to get the nod — oh, and there is no money to build the thing anyway.

So, yes, great job all round lads.

But there is a deeper strain of depression within the Labour psyche, and this has ramped-up demands for an electric-shock therapy known as the ‘Get Gilmore’ option, with talk of toppling the leader again being whispered in sighs of despair along the corridors of Leinster House.

Tanaiste and Minister For Invisibility Eamon Gilmore made a sudden return to the national airwaves, the week before last, with a not too subtle swipe at Reilly over the children’s hospital issue.

But this was done for three reasons: Gilmore had to put on a pretend show of public contrition for the way he hung Roisín Shortall out to dry: Gilmore knows Reilly is the only minister more unpopular than himself and so the only figure he can attack: and, most importantly, Labour knew Red C were doing their polling field work on the days Gilmore looked all leader-like again.

Gilmore has form for rising from the seemingly political dead and pronouncing grandly on ‘core’ Labour issues, such as gay marriage equality, when a poll is in the air, in a crude attempt to influence its outcome and stave off further internal pressure for his removal.

But the ruse fell flat as Labour collapsed to 13% in the survey and, in a far more gloomy finding for TDs who are jittery about losing their seats, 59% of its remaining voters said the country was going in the wrong direction — indicating they would be going in another direction at the ballot box.

Who can blame them, as another depressing reason the Tanaiste and Taoiseach had to get involved in the children’s hospital selection is that Dr Reilly simply cannot be trusted.

We are still no closer to being told how two primary-care centres — which just happen to be in Reilly’s own constituency — suddenly shot up the list to make the final cut for construction — so Shortall’s damning allegation of “stroke” politics remains firmly engrained in the public mind.

The only surprise about the children’s hospital is that Reilly did not try to get it built at the other side of his garden fence.

This is the same minister who has the clearest conflict of interest imaginable — he has investments in private-care beds, while making decisions to shut down public-care beds.

Those same investments led him to be named-and-shamed as a debtor who has failed to comply with a High Court order.

How can this Cabinet have any moral authority when it is taking people to court for non-payment of the offensively unfair flat-rate household tax and one of its most senior ministers — and deputy leader of the dominant Government party — has a financial and judicial record like that?

But Gilmore has bigger things to worry about than mere political morality — he’s got Joan Burton.

Her supporters are putting it about that she is now content to let Gilmore engineer his own downfall rather than soil her elegantly manicured nails in the process.

While the Tanaiste takes the heat for disappearing from view and failing to carve-out a clear Labour narrative within this Tory Coalition of Misery, Joan grows ever more popular in the polls, as she turns the poison chalice of the welfare department, which Eamon handed her, into a loving cup of national approval — she is slapping down the rich with one hand while reforming the poor with the other — all music to the squeezed middle, where Labour’s future should lie.

Gilmore’s worries are intensified, because even if Labour could repeat its 19.4% share in the next election (which it can’t), it would still lose a swathe of seats due to the transformed political topography it will be stumbling over.

Labour has traditionally swiped the last seat in many constituencies, usually when the Shinner or the Green has been eliminated and their transfers redistributed to push Labour over the line.

This will not happen next time, because, with Sinn Féin polling 17-20%, their candidates will be in a much stronger position and thus will not be eliminated early, and the Green vote will be almost irrelevant.

Also, Fianna Fáil will run just one candidate in all but a handful of seats, in order to maximise their Dáil potential, which was greatly reduced in 2011 by allowing competing egos to split the vote and allow in Labour.

The only party running multiple candidates will be Fine Gael, and although its vote is likely to hold-up well, it is doubtful its candidates will have meaningful surpluses to transfer to Labour.

Ms Burton is being increasingly viewed as the only leader who could make significant upward traction in Labour’s pitiful poll ratings, and some within the party are also obsessing that Gerry Adams is to stand down as Sinn Féin leader in the first half of next year.

This fuels the ‘Get Gilmore’ movement as they fear Sinn Féin’s likely next leader, Mary Lou McDonald, will present a more mainstream face for the party.

Ms McDonald’s big selling point is that she is a ‘clean skin’ without ‘something of the North’ about her.

But whichever way you cut it, Sinn Féin is still the party that mouthed weasel words in the defence of the murderers of gardaí and Irish soldiers, not so long ago — slain servants of the State in which Sinn Féin seek power.

Sinn Féin has never apologised for that stance — and who would take such an apology at face value?

Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil is still led by Michael Martin, a man who, as health minister, failed to deliver the national children’s hospital, but, as foreign minister, helped surrender the country’s national sovereignty.

And the DisUnited Left Alliance lack credibility and a believable budget-balancing agenda.

So, yes, my Labour friend was right, it is all a bit depressing, really — welcome to Irish politics.