Labour bets on ‘queen of political correctness’
IT’S hard to keep track of the number of leadership changes in the Labour Party in recent years, none of which brought it any closer to recapturing the glory days of the 2011 general election when it won a record 37 seats. The central case against Alan Kelly, who has just got the heave-ho, is that he hasn’t widened the party’s appeal since his anointment as leader two years ago.
Perhaps justifiably, he blames the pandemic for his failure to hit his stride.
Kelly and his heiress-apparent Ivana Bacik are chalk and cheese. Kelly is abrasive, driven, a bit rough around the edges. He is likely to snap his fingers at you if he wants you to do his bidding – an impertinence that the older generation might tolerate in a young man in a hurry, but won’t have exactly endeared him to his peers.
Ivana is quietly spoken, genteel and wears her ambition lightly. Her Wikipedia page says she’s ‘Labour’s queen of political correctness’.
Kelly is proud of how he worked in an abattoir as a youngster, lugging carcasses onto lorries and manning the offal room to put himself through college.
Ivana boarded at Alexandra College, a top-notch school for girls. She cut her campaigning teeth at Trinity College, as student union leader and champion of abortion rights, fearlessly facing the might of The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) in the courts.
DURING one of his leadership campaigns, Kelly said he wanted hardworking families to have enough money at the end of the week for a pizza, to change their car and pay back-to-school bills without having to worry. His priorities chime perfectly with the top concern of voters today, namely the cost-of-living crisis.
Ivana is not blind to poverty, but her empathy is for those who suffer marginalisation because of disability, gender or race. Her name is synonymous with the equality agenda which, along with her intellectual acumen, may explain why she had to fight several elections before she was elected TD.
When it comes to relatability, Kelly has the upper hand.
In giving Ivana a shot at the top job, in rushed circumstances with all
the hallmarks of desperation, Labour might be steering away from its roots in class politics which Sinn Féin so effectively dominates, to the style of identity politics that have had such a profound impact in recent referenda and are so beloved of the young and metropolitan elite.
The party might figure that the equality agenda might lend it a sharp identity, as the Greens have with the environment. The question, however, is how far more that agenda has to go before it runs out of road or there is a voter backlash.
With Bacik in charge, Labour might also want to offer a female rival for Mary Lou McDonald, of equal if not superior debating prowess with a
lifelong – rather than overnight – commitment to social justice and women’s rights. Perhaps the architects of Kelly’s downfall believe that a few ding-dongs in the Dáil between Ivana and Mary Lou will allow Labour’s light to shine again.
ANEWLY energised party might encourage into its ranks the modern-day versions of Jim Kemmy and Justin Keating, charismatic luminaries on which Labour traditionally depend for its power but who now prefer the Social Democrats. The worst outcome is that Ivana hastens the party’s sink into irrelevancy via a perception of champagne socialism that no longer cuts the mustard for a more educated and cosmopolitan electorate.
Labour is not the only political party forced to figure out what it stands for in an era of populism and political extremism. But by selecting a new leader so radically different from their predecessor, it might be the only party whose fortunes hang on the roll of a dice.