DEBATE ON ELECTORAL STRATEGY TO BE WELCOMED
Speaking at the Labour Party Wexford Constituency Victory Party in the Riverbank House Hotel
Friday 20th. July 2007.
I welcome the debate that is beginning now on the future of our party and of our performance at the recent election. Both the Party Leader and the Party President made thoughtful contributions to this debate at the Tom Johnson Summer School at the weekend. No doubt the debate will continue both at and through our Party conference which is thankfully returning to Wexford in November.
In his address the Party Leader makes two essential points. The first is that he accepts that the electoral strategy adopted by the party benefited Fine Gael exclusively while disputing that an independent strategy would have fared any better, the second is that he considers that we have a fundamental problem with our ‘brand’.
For my part I believe those two issues are related.
Firstly let me say that Pat’s willingness to start a debate on the electoral strategy is particularly welcome. In some quarters, and perhaps for understandable reasons, it has been said that debating the strategy issue can be long fingered until it presents itself again in a few years time. That in my view would be a mistake. The problem with a non-independent strategy is too fundamental for that.
I think some of the problems caused by the strategy were identified in advance at the Tralee Conference.
It did polarise the electoral contest to being one between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael to the detriment not just of ourselves but of others too.
It did marginalise Labour particularly in the last days of the campaign
It gave us little flexibility to deal with the result of the election as determined by the people.
In the party leader’s words we flatlined in electoral circumstances which I believe offered more potential for the party than had pertained five years earlier.
As I have always argued, I believe that we would have fared better with an independent strategy . Central to my belief is that it might well have afforded us the opportunity in Government to build the fairer society set out in our manifesto commitments.
Of more significance in terms of our electorate is that the dynamic and logic of the strategy – to oppose the Government at all costs – forced us into a campaigning mode that was predominantly negative. We did of course present positive policies to the electorate yet we were forced to define ourselves as being against the Government rather than in favour of those policies.
We must examine how that strategy played out. It has been interesting to see since the election a number of reports, including from the ESRI, on the level of social progress that the Celtic Tiger years have seen. The bottom line is that people are coping and capable of putting their own experiences in a context. The times are better. Even people in their mid thirties are old enough to remember the bad days. Yet our strategy and positioning compelled us to deny this fundamental fact.
And in doing so we make a fundamental error of disassociating ourselves from our own successes. This is a broader problem with the Left – our ambition to make faster progress sometimes leads us to forget our achievements. We as much as any other party made the Celtic Tiger ,yet however much we made that point, and we did, our perceived negativity served to undermine it. We can come across as whingers.
I don’t believe therefore that we have a fundamental problem with the brand. Our values are clear and well known. The point has been made that we succeeded in attracting a greater share of the youth vote. It is an important point. It does not suggest a crisis of values. Does it make sense for example that there would be a problem with the brand ‘Labour’ for example yet no problem with esoteric names like Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. It does not in my view. Who we are and how we are perceived, in short our brand, is a function of what we say and what we do.
Rather our problem may be that the public don’t believe that we are realistic about the pursual of our values. They may even like our brand and our values but doubt our capacity to deliver on them.
In their day to day lives people are making do, getting up, going to work, looking after their children, coming home again and doing the same again the following day. And when the cynicism about politics is put to one side, they expect us to do the same. They deliver, we should too!
You don’t need to have a PhD in politics to understand what it is about. The people understand that politics is about attaining and exercising power in pursuit of policy goals. Yet our internal machinations about who we will or won’t serve with in office, regardless of policy issues, seems to suggest that we don’t understand that point or that we are not confident enough to deliver on it.
Instead of obsessing with those who say, as they did in 2002, that we are having an each way bet, I suspect the public say ‘why wouldn’t they play one larger party off against another if they are able to?’ We tie ourselves in knots about ‘who is in and who is out’, as if it was within our power to determine all that.We project political power as a responsibility so onerous, to be endured only in certain limited circumstances, that it is hardly surprising that the public are slow to offer it to us!
One of the interesting things that emerged from the negotiations between Fianna Fail and the Green Party is the realisation by the Greens that their 6 seats don’t carry the clout of 78. And while I admire the way in which the Greens have gone about their business since the election, the unfortunate fact is that the relativity in numbers is reflected in the programme for Government. Could we have done better – of course we could.
At the summer school last weekend Michael D issued a challenge to us all and one which has not been picked up to the extent that it might. He said and I quote:
“We however, must learn from our recent experience. Forming a Government, to implement our policies can be a greater responsibility than providing an electoral choice.”
He’s right about that and he is right to put the question in terms of responsibility. In fact it is a moral and ideological question. Our voters want us to shape our society, not just to influence the national debate from the margins.
There is a price to be paid for this. Our failure to positively proactively engage in the business of Government formation in the last ten years has allowed people like the Progressive Democrats to exercise undue power and influence in our society. Much of what is wrong with this country stems from that.
We owe ourselves and the Irish people more than this. And most importantly we owe the people the respect to accept the election result they determine and seek to best exercise the mandate the give us.
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