Labour seen as whingers, says Howlin

Labour would have performed better in the general election if it had embarked on an independent strategy instead of forming an alliance with Fine Gael, the party's justice spokesman Brendan Howlin said yesterday.

He also warned members of the party that they could come across as "whingers" because of their negative campaigning against the Government.

Mr Howlin delivered a frank assessment of the party's election performance at a "victory party" organised by the Labour Party in his Co Wexford constituency.

While he said he welcomed party leader Pat Rabbitte's decision to start a debate on electoral strategy, he was strongly critical of the decision to form an alliance in the run-up to the election.

The strategy had polarised the election into a battle between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, marginalised the Labour Party in the final days of the election and forced the party into a largely negative mode of campaigning, he said.

"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."

He said it was clear that times were better and people were coping, but the party's positioning compelled them to deny this fact.

"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," he said.

Mr Howlin rejected Mr Rabbitte's suggestion that there was a fundamental problem with the "brand" of Labour. Instead, he said the problem was the public did not believe that it was realistic about pursuing these values.

"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!" he said.

Ultimately, he said, the price the party had paid was that it had failed to positively engage in the business of government formation in the last 10 years.

"It 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 they give us."