Plotting the Future for the Progressive Democrats and Labour

There are two small but interesting pieces in the Irish Times today concerning Labour and the PDs. The PDs are meeting in Galway today in a meeting organised by Noel Grealish to discuss future direction. Though the meeting is due to be “councillor-driven” and Mary Harney won’t be present it is interesting and symptomatic of the party at present that in the same article Grealish casts doubt on his own future. It may be glib but the fate of Grealish will be central to what happens to the PDs. He refused to take on the mantle of leadership but were the party to go to one TD in Mary Harney the viability of the PDs as a grouping would be dead.

Thus Grealish’s comments that he will not be making a decision on his future seems to be symptomatic of the party as a whole. They are organising a meeting to attempt to blow some life back into the organisation, or at least look at whether to do that or disband, and at the same time one of the largest figures in the piece admits he has met with Fianna Fail and is not deciding anything for some time. At each turn the party has taken since the election in its efforts to claw back momentum, people, organisation and a base events have conspired to undo good work. So it happens again that the attempt to steady the ship (the first meeting of its kind since the election), falls under the dark cloud of futility should Grealish decide to depart the party. No one wants to be responsible for winding up a party and I am sure Grealish is conflicted on this but for the time being at least, while organising meetings to discuss the party, one should be presenting solid commitment to the course.

The other interesting tid-bit was the leaked memo from Eamon Gilmore to Labour’s Executive concerning party deficiencies at holding seats. The analysis suggests “that in many constituencies the minimum level of political and canvassing activity was not being carried out”. The organisation has not been successful at holding seats at all, partly due to organisational problems but also due to the fact that a large number of TDs are there on personal votes alone. The Labour party had three TDs retiring at election time, Seamus Pattison, Joe Sherlock and Sean Ryan. Of these only one seat was held by Sean Sherlock in Cork East. Failure to hold seats is going to be a huge dilemma for a party with so many TDs on the cusp of retirement. Gilmore wants to look at delivering succession and well he needs to because the party is still not where it wants to be in the polls. The result during the week really signalled that it was not just a change of leader that the party needs since the ‘bounce’ factor did not last that long.

No doubt Michael will be pleased to see mention given to forthcoming economic policies but Labour have been here before, talking a good game at the outset-striking the chords that need to be struck,yet the end result has been similar in almost all cases. The policy needs to be good but the party needs to get a strategy together for renewal, progress and development. Electorally they need to target their core voters, or perhaps even more basically decide who those core voters are and how to increase that pool. Irish electoral politics is primarily about hard graft on the ground and Gilmore is correct in his analysis but, unfortunately for the party, that is the easy part.