#GE16 analysis - Labour lost sight of its core values

"STEP back from the campaign fray for just a moment and consider the enormity of what’s already occurred. It’s a rebellion against the establishment.

“Economic indicators may be up but they don’t reflect the economic insecurity most people still feel, nor the seeming arbitrariness and unfairness they experience. Nor do the major indicators show the linkages people see between wealth and power, crony capitalism, declining real wages, soaring executive pay, and a billionaire class turning our democracy into an oligarchy.

"Median family income is lower now than it was 16 years ago, adjusted for inflation. Most economic gains, meanwhile, have gone to the top.”

These two paragraphs are not my words. They’re the words of a leading American academic and former cabinet secretary, Robert Reich. His analysis of inequality and anger in the US is part of his explanation of the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders against the recognised establishment.

Change a word here or there and you could easily see the resonance of that analysis to Ireland. Although we have too many unnecessary inequalities in Ireland, we don’t have a regressive tax system and we don’t have the grossly unfair distribution of resources that America has. But we have all the same perceptions — and that in itself has been an egregious failure of political leadership.

So now we’ve had the rebellion — and the party I’ve always supported is at the receiving end of it. As I write this I don’t know whether Labour will even have the seven seats necessary for parliamentary relevance.

Even if it does, it has lost an entire generation of talented and committed young politicians who were its hope of the future, along with some who have given decades of public service. Many of them are people I’ve known and respected for a long time, and it’s not an overstatement to say that I mourn their loss to public life.

But the question the party has to face is why and how did it happen that a revolt against the establishment focused so spectacularly on the Labour Party? Or to put it another way, how did it become so intrinsic a part of the establishment?

There’s a temptation at a moment like this to blame the media, or the people, or anyone but ourselves.

The vast majority of loyal party members I think believe that the party has played a major part in rescuing the country from economic disaster, and that people will come to regret the punishment handed out.

But — and it gives me no pleasure to say it — in the end, Labour has only its own mistakes to blame. Mistakes made in the run-up to the 2011 election, mistakes made in the formation of the government, political mistakes and miscalculations throughout the life of the government, mistakes in policy decisions (the seeming attack on lone parents, which had no economic, social or financial justification one serious example), and mistakes in the proposals put forward in the most recent election. There’s a long litany.

But underlying all of them was a strong and growing sense of distance from the party in government from the people it sought to represent. The leadership of the party all too often relied on the loyalty of its parliamentary colleagues to support decisions that caused social divisions and hardship — and one really has to wonder now how many of them were actually necessary.

TDs would often say privately that only Brendan Howlin ever took the time and trouble to explain the rationale behind the decisions being taken. With others, there was a sense that they simply weren’t interested in listening.

The party’s leadership became like managers of the recovery, and lost all interest in being leaders. They rolled up their sleeves, and they worked incredibly hard, but all the edges became blurred.

There was no sense of bottom lines, no attempt to reconcile fundamental values with difficult choices, no work put into communicating any kind of vision, either within government or to the wider population.

There will be gloating now at the parlous state Labour is in — especially from some on the hard left who want nothing more than to see Labour destroyed, and whose commitment to protest and street politics will ensure that they never choose to play a constructive role in solving the problems that bedevil the lives of working people, especially poorer working people.

The gloaters can have their moment in the sun — they will be found out eventually. But there are thousands in Ireland who will, sooner or later, want to see Labour rebuilt. There is an important, perhaps even a central place, in Irish politics for a mass party that is informed by core values of democracy, community, equality and freedom. It has to be found again.

I believe, though, that the party has to be rebuilt from the ground up. I don’t believe a recovery can or should be led by those who led the party in cabinet. Knowing Joan Burton as I do, I assume that she is waiting for the right time to stand down as party leader. Her deputy, Alan Kelly, must go too. They tried, as hard as they could, and they failed.

Labour needs to take a little bit of time now to reflect, to acknowledge its mistakes, to assess the size of the challenge the party faces, and to start all over again, as we have done before. The party’s members know that whatever mandate it had, there is no mandate now. Right now, the people have said, Labour is not needed.

But sooner or later, Labour will be needed again. Next time, it must never lose sight of its core values. And it must never stop listening.