Labour mantra will be return to ‘core values’

W ITH THE already strained relations between the Government parties set to escalate to all-out confrontation after Labour elects a new leader, the next General election can’t be far off. When that happens, the people of Ireland will be faced with a conundrum: who to elect as stewards of the nation.

After the unmitigated hammering Labour got in the local elections the party’s deputies are in a state of panic. They all but sacked their party leader but they know that won’t be enough to assuage the angry mob. More tangible changes will have to be made and whether Joan Burton, Alex White or another dark horse is elected party leader, their mantra will be the same – the need to return to the party’s ‘core values’.

What these core values are is not clearly defined but we can expect to hear a lot from the Labour camp about reversing some of the cut to health, education and social welfare. It’s not that it matters much what these values are anyway, for the whole purpose of the exercise will be to save political skins.

There is no doubt that some deputies in Labour, as in the other parties, care a great deal about the hardship and suffering being visited on the people of Ireland by the austerity programme to which the Government is committed. But, in politics, saving the great unwashed generally takes second place to saving the highly polished members of one’s own club.

We should therefore take with a pinch of salt the rising crescendo of Labour statements about standing up for struggling welfare recipients, the sick who receive inadequate medical care and the squeezed middle classes. In the real politik of the Labour Party all those people are not so much the downtrodden to be lifted up but votes to be won back.

But, cynical exercise or not, Labour’s campaign to reconnect with its supporters is going to bring the party into direct conflict with Fine Gael.

The gauntlet has already been thrown down. The frontrunner in the Labour leadership race, Joan Burton, said at the weekend that we must “move away from the current economic narrative of pain and penitence”. Meanwhile her fellow candidate Alex White, was taking a different tack, probing the probity of the Taoiseach’s handling of the resignation of Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan.

The Labour assault is going to pose an impossible dilemma for Fine Gael. They also fared none too well in the local elections and need to appease their flagging supporters, but it would be damaging for the senior Government partner to be seen to bend to the demands of Labour for an easing of the austerity programme.

With the top ranks of Fine Gael warning there will be no concessions on the economy, it won’t be long before the confrontation between the parties comes to a head - possibly around the time of the next budget.

If at that point the Labour Party feels it has done enough to win back its own supporters and has a fighting chance in an election then it will pull the plug on the Government of austerity.

And where will that leave us? In the last General Election Fine Gael and Labour were elected to govern because they were the best of a bad lot. Next time around it will be a much more difficult choice.