Now Labour eyes seats in North

THE Labour Party is considering running candidates in the North.

The revelation by its leader Brendan Howlin came at the weekend and follows on from Fianna Fáil’s pitch for seats across the border last month.

Mr Howlin said the party is considering running candidates in local elections in Northern Ireland.

He said he had written to SDLP leader Colum Eastwood last week seeking ‘clarification’ about a possible merger between Fianna Fáil and the SDLP.

Fianna Fáil, the main opposition party in the Republic, is engaging with the SDLP and is expected to run a number of candidates in next year’s elections.

Speaking at the culmination of Labour’s national conference, Mr Howlin said he’d like to hold discussions with the SDLP to see how it could be possible for people in the North with Labour values to ‘have the option of voting for Labour candidates’.

Mr Howlin said his party had worked with the SDLP ‘as comrades’ within the Party of European Socialists for decades. ‘I think there are an awful lot of people in the SDLP who remain very loyal to Labour values,’ he said.

In an RTÉ television interview earlier yesterday, he said that the SDLP had a proud Labour and social democratic background, going back to the days of party leaders John Hume and Mark Durkan and that the Irish Labour Party had a lot in common with that tradition.

In a bizarre set of events in late October, Fianna Fáil had to insist it had not selected any candidates to stand despite a member of the party’s ruling executive insisting that Tyrone councillor Sorcha McAnespy had been chosen as a candidate to run in next year’s local government poll.

In a speech to Labour party delegates in Dublin on Saturday night, Mr Howlin said his party would step in to ensure a ‘pluralist option’ was available to voters in North if the merger between the SDLP and Fianna Fáil goes ahead.

FOR generations of Dubliners and visitors alike, Jurys Hotel was one of the capital’s bestknown landmarks. It became a byword for the excesses of the Celtic Tiger in more recent years, of course, after builder Seán Dunne bought the 6.8-acre site for an eye-watering €380million. Dunne boasted of developing the ‘new Knightsbridge’ and said he would create a ‘Manhattan-like lifestyle’.

Few will need reminding that his plans for a €1.5billion development have long since fallen by the wayside. But people of a certain age will remember the days when Jurys – now rebranded simply as the Ballsbridge Hotel – was best known for its Irish Cabaret.

The show was first put on in 1963 and ran for more than four decades. At the height of its popularity, it was staged six nights a week for six months of the year.

Though I never actually saw the cabaret myself, everyone knew it by reputation. The cast of performers essentially went through something akin to a stage version of The Quiet Man for audiences largely made up of misty-eyed Irish-American holidaymakers. After being part of the show for 26 years, the late Hal Roach even made it into the Guinness Book of Records under the category of longest-running engagement for a comedian in the same venue.

I was reminded of all this while walking through Ballsbridge last Thursday afternoon. There was a large placard at the front of the hotel not unlike the one that used to advertise Jurys Irish Cabaret. The difference was that the sign announced the 70th national conference of the Labour Party, which took place inside over the weekend.

Still, it wasn’t all different. Because it sounds as if events at the conference had about as much relevance to modern-day Ireland as the cabaret did all those years ago.

Granted, there were 1,000 or so of the party faithful in attendance and almost 100 motions were debated. But let’s not forget that it would almost be possible for the Labour front bench to assemble in a phone booth at this point.

NOT that you’d guess that, though, from listening to leader Brendan Howlin. Pardon the pun, but he is clearly labouring under the illusion that his party carries any type of clout on the political landscape these days.

At one point, he was talking about the next general election and began a sentence with the immortal words: ‘If there is a constituency where we cannot have Labour [elected]…’. The way things are going, he will be lucky if there is a single constituency where they do win a seat.

Meanwhile, Mr Howlin called on his supporters to also back nonLabour candidates. ‘To maximise the progressive vote at the next election,’ he solemnly declared, ‘I will call on all Labour voters to give their next preferences to progressive candidates, from the Green Party and the Social Democrats, and to progressive Independents’.

I actually had to read that bit twice, just to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood it. If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be hilarious. It clearly hasn’t dawned on Mr Howlin that the reason his party has so little support is because they’ve been outmanoeuvred by the likes of Sinn Féin and various factions on the hard left.

This column has pointed out the reasons for this on previous occasions. Not only did Labour betray its core support base during the last coalition government, it also shamelessly reneged on a number of key promises.

At least I got a bit of a laugh when Mr Howlin appeared on the podium wearing one of those ridiculous earpiece microphones. One of his advisers must have told him that it’d make him look like a Silicon Valley hotshot, but he reminded me more of someone who worked in a call centre.

But the funniest bit of all was when he spoke of making ‘red line’ demands before agreeing to enter another coalition. I hate to break the bad news, but there’s more chance of me scoring the winning goal in the FA Cup Final than there is of Labour being in government next time around.

That bit also reminded me of Jurys’ Irish Cabaret. Some readers may recall that Hal Roach had a particular catchphrase that he used after delivering yet another staggeringly unamusing gag.

Write it down, it’s a good one.