Worried Losers

Brian Cowen, Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore will be more uncomfortable tonight than simply for losing an election. In their own ways they will each feel the pressure of having to face the fallout of a no vote. While it is easy to explain the no as a rejection of the entire establishment, that explanation does not really help the leaders of the three main political parties in the country.

Yesterday they lost the Lisbon referendum for a number of reasons, not least the inability of the yes campaign to parse their arguments in ways that resonated with voters. When all of the ‘plan a’ failed, it was a case of resort to namecalling/intimidation/scare-mongering. All of this was done with various degrees of media help in an environment where any political scientist would have said they could not lose. But, lost they did and today they all face unique problems as a result.

Cowen: As head of government he is paradoxically quite secure. His party will rally around him as they always do, out of a sense of loyalty. In Europe and at home he will be besieged. Pressure on him to deliver some fix, some workaround will be immense as well as him have to face the shame (should it really be shaming?) of going to a European Council meeting and explaining our ‘no’ vote. He does not have to face any leadership challegne for the spin will allow him to get on with things in the business of government.

Yet this should not fool us, he is in deep trouble. The electorate that voted were making a statement against some of the orthodoxy of current economic governance. They decided all parties were illegitimate brokers for their concerns - fishing, farming, labouring, manufacturing - and opted to support independent minded TDs and non-governmental bodies campaigning for a no vote. Cowen cannot afford to ignore such a trend in the FF heartland of rural Ireland.

The loss of fishing, farming and urban C2DE votes will harm him in the local elections. Not only does he have to face Europe and work something out to their satisfaction, he has to remain cognisant of what voters want and why they voted as they did. A balancing act in which I do not envy him.

Enda Kenny: I made a point of suggesting that Cowen is a safe leader because it now seems clear that Enda Kenny is not. He failed to carry his own Mayo constituency - as opposed to last May when 3 Fine Gael TDs were elected. Rumours have abounded since the last election of a possible move against Kenny, in the belief that he would be unable to move the party beyond their current position in 2012. The fact now exists that his attempt to direct a European campaign, aided by some big-name FG heads, was a failure. His decision to appoint Creighton as EU spokesperson did not pay off, his party could not convince its own voters to vote yes and he could not impose himself on the campaign.

Yes he is in opposition but Fine Gael has long been Ireland’s most European party, unflinchingly supportive of all EU measures. This is a rich electorate to tap for an opposition leader seeking to showcase his skills as a leader of men. It didnt happen and his party will look at next year’s local elections with some trepidation. Cowen and FF remain at 42% despite the Lisbon disaster yet Fine Gael are back to he bad old days of 23%. Knives will be sharpened and Kenny will have to fight for his life if he is to keep leadership, perhaps the injection of life is not a bad thing…..

Eamon Gilmore: Eamon Gilmore is in many ways a simple analysis but also a complicated one. First of all he is a leader of the third party, a social democratic party. He wanted a yes vote, on paper his core constituency of C2DE voters voted no. That break with the party ‘elite’ and its core vote is not isolated but is perhaps most worrying for Labour. If this was a mid-term kicking then they are alright but if those voters in urban Dublin see the Labour party as one they cannot identify with then trouble beckons. Lots of workigin class voters and constituencies voted no. Labour wanted yes. Therein lies the rub. That is the simple part.

The complicated part is Gilmore’s authority. After Ruairi Quinn’s solo run as IAE Chairperson there are issues about how Gilmore was leading his party. Who was the main Labour person on the campaign trail? Who was the one to whom we were listening for the Labour perspective? That division was not a clearcut handicap to Gilmore but it can easily be seen as such. If that is the case he also has a great deal of work to do to reassert his authority, link with his core electorate and prove Labour is in chime with these.