Can the Canadian experience help to ease Labour’s pains?

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

There was a reader’s letter on the Canadian election in The Irish Times last week and it noted how the Liberal Party – in third position coming into the vote – ended up taking all the spoils.

The letter writer was Pat Carroll, a name that would have washed over most people – except those working around politics or involved with the Labour Party it was instantly familiar.

Carroll just happens to be the husband of Tánaiste Joan Burton, equally known for his political skills and his aversion to publicity.

The political point he was making was as plain as a pikestaff, as the late editor of this newspaper John Cunningham was wont to say.

His message was – write off Labour at your peril. The party may be lagging behind at this moment of time.

But between now and the end of February we can buck the trend and do a kind of Irish version of what Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party did in Canada.

The great Theodore Roosevelt once said that “comparison is the thief of joy”. And Carroll’s sentiments are particularly apt for Galway West where we have a Derek Nolan conundrum. Is it just wishful thinking or is Labour’s goose well and truly cooked this time around?

I think there was a lot of wishful thinking on the party of Carroll. The Liberals were in opposition, not in government, and the Canadian system is the winner-take-all one of first past the post.

Thus the party on 34 per cent can take an overall majority while the party on 31 per cent can take a drubbing.

One thing is sure about Galway West – it’s a difficult constituency to predict. There’s a big field of candidates in this five seater and there’s also a massive sleám of South Mayo including Cong, the Neale and Ballinrobe now in play.

There are only two certainties here. The first is that Éamon Ó Cuív will take a seat and top the poll. Even with Fianna Fáil in meltdown in 2011 he came within a few dozen votes of poll topper Nolan.

Now with all the extra Mayo votes coming in around his own turf of Corrnamona, you can expect that he will get around the 17.5 per cent he got in 2007.

The second certainty is that Fine Gael will take a seat. The identity of that person is hard to predict. The party is strongest in the city, particularly on its eastern side. There’s was a lot of uncertainty around Brian Walsh and whether or not he would be standing this time around. He scotched rumours that he would be standing down in The Connacht Tribune a few weeks ago but they have still persisted – with a lot of ‘will-he, won’t he’ stuff doing the rounds.

In the normal run of events he would be expected to be his party’s top poller. But that and the arrival of John O’Mahony, an outgoing Deputy for Mayo, has complicated matters a bit.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.