Waiting game still going on for Labour despite Spring Tides and Gilmore Gales

Political World with Harry McGee

Eamon de Valera’s famous remark from the 1930s that ‘Labour Must Wait’ has remained part of the political vernacular to the present day – and the three words have been subjected to regular analysis over the years.

Dev is assumed to have meant that the conditions for socialism were not ripe in Ireland during the 1930s. But it is an altogether different proposition to say that the conditions would never exist for a government of the left in Ireland.

Still, some commentators have interpreted the comments on a wider canvas pointing to the lack of an industrial base, Ireland’s agrarian nature at the time – and, ergo, the lack of an identifiable socialist/capitalist divide in the country.

I’m not sure if Dev was soothsaying to that degree. How and ever, the question that the sentence begged was how long would Labour have to wait? In perpetuity? A century? Twenty years?

Well for some, the answer was about 80 years and the date on which that question was settled once and for all was February 2011 when Fianna Fáil got the order of the boot from the Irish electorate and Labour coasted to its best ever electoral performance.

That’s all very well, but the problem with such high tides is that they are often followed by a demoralising and inexorable ebb. More crucially, Labour’s 37 seats didn’t make it the leading party in Government but the foil to Fine Gael once again, albeit in a much stronger position than any previous smaller coalition party.

And besides, a little like Obama’s over-pitch to the American electorate in 2008, Labour was never going to live up to the vaunted rhetoric it pumped out in the run up to the election.

From the hubristic ‘Gilmore for Taoiseach’ to ‘Labour’s Way or Frankfurt’s Way’, there was an abundance of material to be disappointed about.

As a point of fact, after a very shaky start Labour has began to perform well in Government, given its comparative strength. Brendan Howlin has done very well to deliver the Haddington Road agreement (against considerable odds); Labour has been able to point to achievements on its social and equality agenda (the legislation to give effect to the X case) and it has managed to protect some services from considerable cuts that would Fine Gael would have imposed if it had been a single party government.

And indeed, even though none of its critics admit it, it hasn’t been all about Frankfurt’s way in the last year with Labour and Fine Gael some big concessions on Ireland’s banking and fiscal debt burden.

Besides, the unusual set-up of the Cabinet has equalised the respective strengths of both parties in Government.

The splitting of Finance into two as well as the Economic Management Council (the four-man star chamber of Enda Kenny, Eamon Gilmore, Howlin and Michael Noonan which runs the country) has given the party a say it never had before.

Sure, there’s something about it that dilutes and damages democracy – the concentration of so much power into the hands of so few in an atmosphere of secrecy.

We will dwell on that and go for a little diversion for a second because it’s important in the current debate on the Seanad.

Last week I said I saw little virtue in the Upper House’s retention. I still don’t.  But that’s not to say the quality of democracy will magically improve in its absence. It won’t.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.