It is important to note at the beginning of this piece that somebody like me is very unlikely ever to vote for the Labour Party, and that the Labour Party would probably be beyond horrified if I did. Labour, after all, in its current guise, does not exist to represent people like me. Indeed, you could make a very long list of people who Labour do not want to represent.
The list of people who the Labour Party do not like is very long. The list of people who they really do like is quite short: Feminists, Students, Academics, Rich Lawyers (so long as they have the right views), people who have season tickets to the Abbey Theatre, and people worried about climate change.
It is not a surprise that such a party would turn, in its hour of need, to Ivana Bacik. Having embraced, over the last two decades, Bacik-ism, it makes sense that the party would finally turn to the woman herself to be the face of what it has become.
The problem, of course, is that the Labour Party wants to represent change, but that it in fact represents everything that is already dominant in Irish society. Nobody has campaigned harder to make Ireland what it is today than Ivana Bacik: In fact, this is her main claim to fame. Every time she’s on the ballot, she emphasises it. And she should get the credit for it. There is almost no person who should receive more credit for the way official Ireland thinks on just about every issue than the incoming leader of the Labour Party.
Bacik will present herself to the public as a candidate of radical change. And indeed, she once was – in about 1990. Now, she’s the candidate of radical entrenchment. Almost every present characteristic of Irish public life is one she has helped bring about and would take further.
Indeed, much of the Irish establishment is much closer to Bacik on the issues than they are to the present Government. Our NGOs? From the National Women’s Council to the Centre for Civil Liberties to the Travellers Rights Groups to the endless housing charities, they’re all on Ivana’s wavelength. The media? I promise you, in the Irish Times and RTE, there are endless fans of Ivana Bacik. What about the corporate world? Facebook and Twitter and Google and Amazon? Companies steeped in the progressivism of Silicon Valley have no truer friend in Ireland than the incoming Labour leader.
This is the party’s core problem: It is the most establishment of parties, but it is in opposition. It cannot, really, run against the Government. And so, for most of the last five or six years, it has been running against the public, instead. This process will accelerate under Bacik.
Bacik-ism is, after all, at its heart, the idea that we should all be better people. We should cycle more, and abandon our cars. We should be “kinder”, which means we should not say mean things about some groups, and should be very mean indeed about others, like Boris Johnson or David Quinn. We should eat less meat. We should accept more refugees. We should permit euthanasia. We should teach men to stop killing women, or something.
The Labour Party of Ivana Bacik will, therefore, be the party of putting manners on those who offend the Labour Party’s superior taste. It will become the party of hate speech laws, and eradicating single sex schools, and establishing gender-neutral bathrooms, and carbon taxes, and bicycle subsidies, and legalising drugs, and saying “sex work is work”, and not, not even for one second, doing anything about reforming legal costs, the civil service, or the Universities.
Ultimately, the problem is this: They are a party that pretends to represent the working people, but actually represent the concerns of the ruling class, almost in their entirety. If you want to vote for change, and against the ruling class, Ivana Bacik is probably the last person you’d vote for.
And that, of course, is why she represents – and finally got elected in – the richest, most establishment, constituency in the country.
We will probably see Labour’s vote go up under Bacik, rather than down. But not because the party represents real change. Precisely, instead, because it does not. She will make Labour into an entirely safe choice for a relatively comfortably off voter who likes to think of themselves as progressive and educated and open minded, and would rather not vote for Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. She will lap up votes like that on the south side of Dublin City. If you voted for Kate O’Connell or Eoghan Murphy, then Ivana Bacik is a natural candidate for you.
But this choice also represents the final end of any pretence that the Labour Party is the party of working people. It is not, and it will not even pretend to be, any more. It is, and will now openly campaign as, the party for the people who are better than you, morally, and intellectually.