The Labour Party meets for what promises to be a fraught think-in in Drogheda on Sunday against the background of Alan Kelly's – apparently – abortive leadership putsch.
Discussions between Kelly and his parliamentary colleagues on the leadership might well be entertaining, but are unlikely to be fruitful. Not a single one of them will back him against Brendan Howlin.
His colleagues harbour misgivings about Kelly’s temperament, which they believe render him unsuitable for the job of leader. Colloquially put, they think he’s a bit of a headbanger.
But he’s the only headbanger getting noticed at the moment. His direct, kinetic, rambunctious style of politics is about the only thing Labour has going for it right now. Howlin – calm, measured, experienced – is quintessentially a politician of government, an expert technician of the great machine; Kelly is one of opposition. Kelly elbows his way into things, and gets noticed. And Labour isn’t getting noticed much these days. It has drifted to the margins of Irish politics, and its prospects of returning to the centre are deeply uncertain.
There are, I think, two possible routes back to a position of power and influence for Labour.
The first is the approach that the party is currently following. It is the “keep buggering on” approach, as Churchill would have put it – just keep going, keep knocking on doors, keep hammering on local issues.
Ground game
The goal is to try to win back a few of the lost seats in places like Dublin Bay North (Aodhán O Ríordáin), Dublin Bay South (Kevin Humphreys) and Louth (Ged Nash). A handful of other places are also possibilities : the Kildares, Dublin Central, Dublin South Central, maybe. And there's always one or two surprises.
The “ground game” is everything here – Leinster House is completely secondary to the local stage. Ask them about Labour’s lack of penetration in national debate and they’ll eventually say so what? This may be unimaginative, but it is ruthlessly pragmatic.
Still, even the hardiest of optimists in Labour admit that the summit of their realistic ambitions is to return after the next election with 10 or 12 seats. And many others, including a succession of privately gloomy former grandees, reckon they’ll be doing well to maintain their current strength of seven seats. “Staying alive is the priority,” one tells me.
Even the hardiest of optimists in Labour admit the summit of their realistic ambitions is to return after the next election with 10 or 12 seat
If the party comes out of the next election as per the optimistic scenario above, it will then depend on the arithmetic of the next Dáil being friendly to a 10 or 12 seat party that’s in the coalition business. Entirely possible, you’d have to say. But that bit is entirely out of Labour’s hands.
The second scenario is one which several Labour people tell me is their preference, but which absolutely nobody is doing anything about because it’s much more difficult.
It is to seek to rebuild the party as a broad left alliance – including the Social Democrats, in alliance with the Greens and certainly including as many of the left-wing Independents as can be persuaded to come on board. The natural home for TDs like Tommy Broughan, Catherine Connolly, Katherine Zappone, Seamus Healy, Thomas Pringle and others is in a broad left-wing Labour Party, or left alliance, call it what you want.
Of course, it would be difficult, maybe impossible in some cases, to persuade people to come on board. There would be constituency complications, to put it mildly. There are technicolour personal antipathies, to say the least of it. Relations between Róisín Shortall and her former colleagues are not warm.
But the business of politics is cutting deals to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. The prize is a centre-left alliance of sufficient size and clout to muscle its way into government after the next election.
Constituency fiefdoms
Some left-wing TDs and parties may be more interested in protecting their own constituency fiefdoms, or in maintaining the purity of permanent opposition. But that is unlikely to be an alluring prospect for the growing progressive middle whose votes are up for grabs. Most voters want their politicians to do, not just to talk. So: does Labour want to lead this or not?
Most voters want their politicians to do, not just to talk
The party still has a functioning organisation and a solid bedrock. It has 50 councillors. If they could get elected in 2014, they must have something going for them. But the organisation won’t last forever. Without national success, it will wither.
Labour has also probably done enough agonising about its own flaying at the hands of the electorate in 2016. Even by the standards of semi-permanent introspection prevalent in the party, Labour has probably done quite enough of it. If the great Irish electorate can forgive Fianna Fáil, it can probably forgive Labour.
If the party is looking for a model for the sort of principled pragmatism on which it could sell this idea of a left-wing alliance seeking government, then it could look to the one figure all the left seems to adore: Michael D Higgins.
Dessie O’Malley famously said that Michael D would go mad in office. Instead, he turned into a canny Cabinet operator and a highly successful minister because he appreciated politics is the art of the possible. In his last speech to the Dáil in January 2011, Higgins observed: “That is what citizens in a republic want – they want more political power and want administrative power.”
The Labour Party, and the broader left it can anchor, need to decide for themselves if they are actually interested in the exercise of political power and administrative power to achieve their political goals or not. If they are, they will take steps to achieve it.