A few weeks ago Ben Scallan and I noticed something that jumped out at us from an Irish Times opinion poll, and he went on to write an article about it:
“There are few pains in life worse than unrequited love. And politics, unfortunately, has it in spades – as the Labour Party is discovering the hard way.
This week, an IPSOS poll commissioned by the Irish Times showed that the Irish Labour Party is polling at 0% among 18-24-year-olds, and just 2% among those aged 25-34.
This is not for lack of trying in attempting to appeal to this demographic – when it comes to adopting trendy policies, Labour has put in the work.”
Ben’s whole piece, if you missed it, is worth reading. And it is especially worth reading in the light of this week’s one-man rebellion against Ivana Bacik from her immediate predecessor, Alan Kelly TD, who made an extraordinary intervention in the Presidential election.
He will not, he says, vote for Catherine Connolly, despite Connolly being the choice of the Labour Party for the job. He did not only say that he would not vote for her – questioning in the process Connolly’s rather extreme and kooky views on foreign policy – but went further, questioning the wisdom of his own party in backing her:
He was particularly critical of the party’s decision in light of Ms Connolly’s criticisms of Labour’s time in government, after which she said the party had lost its soul.
“I think the party has to have some self-respect. Catherine Connolly has shown disdain for us since 2006,” he said.
He asked if the “shoe was on the other foot would it be reciprocated? I don’t think so.”
Another “fundamental” issue, he said, was Ms Connolly’s support for Gemma O’Doherty in her bid to run for the presidency in 2018, especially in light of views Ms O’Doherty expressed about vaccines at the time. At the time she felt Ms O’Doherty was a “better option” than Michael D Higgins, who has been an “exceptional” president, Mr Kelly said.
It is hard to mistake this for anything other than what it is: A full frontal assault on Deputy Bacik’s relatively limp leadership of the once-proud party of James Connolly.
Nor is it difficult to agree with Deputy Kelly.
To call the Labour Party under Deputy Bacik irrelevant would be an insult to many other things that are irrelevant, because some of those things are at least interesting. The Labour Party by contrast manages to be both irrelevant and boring, not having had anything to say that was either new or interesting for about a decade.
Part of this, of course, is the redundancy that comes with success. Ivana Bacik cut her teeth as a radical student campaigner on abortion, gay rights, and other such matters in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Her support base has always been middle class liberals for whom the great crusade of Irish politics was the removal from political influence of the Catholic Church, and the expurgation from public policy of catholic influence. The difficulty that the party has is that this fight has largely been won. It is now left fighting it at the margins.
That is why, for example, its concerns are those of 1990s era anti-catholic radicals. The party is at the forefront – more than any other party – of moves to remove primary and secondary schools from Catholic patronage. In some cases, even the Catholic Church appears to agree that the argument has limited merit – but in terms of sexiness and voter appeal, it is no abortion. It is no gay marriage.
It is not shocking that Labour had its high point in the early 2010s when Eamon Gilmore bafflingly announced that “gay marriage is the civil rights issue of our generation”. Baffling though it was, he caught the zeitgeist and led the party to the mid 30’s in opinion polling. But those battles have all been won.
What is left of Labour? It is now, it seems to me, the party of middle aged lycra clad cycling dads in South Dublin who are very bitter and resentful about Brexit, Donald Trump, and the Far Right, but don’t really have any changes left to suggest. The whole thing feels very tired, and very stale, and very out of new ideas.
And the nomination of Connolly? It fits the bill. Here’s a party of 1990s era liberals looking around to find their next Mary Robinson or their next Michael D. Higgins, and settling on a slightly kooky lady from Galway who, if you close your eyes just a little bit and tilt your head, can sometimes sound suitably Robinsonesque. The fact that she is a fringe radical who is much more at home in People before Profit is sort of incidental to the fact that she fits with the Labour aesthetic. She “feels” Labour, therefore she must be.
As for the actual voters? They have moved on. Left wing radicalism today is centered on new issues, like transgender rights (where the SocDems have the youth locked down) and climate (where the Greens lead the way) and Gaza (the realm of the Shinners and People before Profit and, eh, Simon Harris).
The Labour Party, by contrast, is the party of middle class liberal nostalgia for fights long won and radical status long lost. Beyond that, it has no sense of purpose. Alan Kelly is right. And Ivana Bacik, I suspect, will not lead Labour into the next general election.