Ciaran Cannon and Fiona O’Malley to Contest Progressive Democrat Leadership

If there is any element of good news out there for a party down to its vamps, it is that there will at least be a contest for the leadership. After it appeared that senior party figures were united in their desire not to lead the party, both Senators announced after the meeting today that they are interested in leading the Progressive Democrats. The rule change means that the party leader can be any Progressive Democrat TD, Senator, Councillor or party member with support of 20 other members.

There may well be another entrant in the race, however that there will be at least two is a boost. The last thing the PDs needed was a limp affair where coronation ensued without giving the new leader any of the media coverage which comes with a contest. Often times a party on the backfoot will frown on excessive media attention but this period of transition, the weeks leading up to a leadership vote are essential for putting together a clear and coherent vision of the future of the party. There was a time when the question “what are the PDs for?” would have been met with a derisory glance. Their purpose, in the hey dey of the Celtic Tiger as the good times rolled on, was to promote the interests of economic liberalism and business. They did this with no apology nor any underhandedness. Yet in the recent past there has been a slow erosion of their image.

Perhaps a little ironically, the demise of the PDs as the party of the celtic tiger, low taxes and business began with a deliberate attempt to expand their appeal or image. The decision of Mary Harney to move into the Department of Health while soulmate Charlie McCreevy was sent of to Brussels to satiate voters demands for blood and bogeymen-coupled with Cullen and Brennan’s conversions to the causes of welfare and self-preservation saw the PD heart ripped from economic ministries. Not alone were the personas of the PD ethos removed from their natural economic turf, the message became blurred as the party attempted to focus on Justice and Health through the paradigm of PD liberalism-social and economic. The once incredibly coherent and succinct PD message, not necessarily shared by the majority but shared by enough people to give a foothold in the Dail and government from inception, began to splinter. Social issues proved tricky, vested interested proved resiliant foes, politicians proved implacably uncooperative and above all else, leadership seemed to evaporate.

When Michael McDowell succeeded in commandeering the leadership of the party, he got more than he bargained for. His will-I-won’t-I leave government moment summed up, in retrospect, what was taking hold in the party; a sense of divergence, division and no little loss of direction. The fallout from that trend, which emerged somewhere during this government’s second term, has taken a high toll. Leaders have lost seats, potential replacments have moved on to the private sector. Thus the vital importance in a leadership race.

I believe that Labour would have benefited far more if a leadership contest was held after the election rather than a coronation. True the party was hurting but the time for hard talking and meaningful planning is during the early days of the Dail and there is no better place to begin to test those plans and ideas than in a contest. Once ensconced in power, critical engagement within the party is not cast in the same light as during a leadership contest.

So what should come out of this contest? As was remarked here during the run up to the election, the old PD mantra of “radical or redundant” may no longer be the way forward. Radical for its own sake sounds more like those ideological shibboleths that the PDs sought to defeat than a plan for success in 2009 or 2012. There are a number of elements that strike me as apt if the green shoots are to emerge from the PDs and they are to stave off extinction.

The first is to openly address the relationship with Fianna Fail. Since the election the elephant in the PD living room has been their relation to the party from which they emerged. Party treasurer Paul McKay has weighed in already to suggest that the party may benefit from some distance from Fianna Fail. They have spend a long time in government since their formation and spent a lot of time with Fianna Fail at the cabinet table. They did so with Charlie Haughey and Bertie Ahern and all that those names have come to be associated with yet all the time were seen as some sort of moral guardian or at least moral conscience of Irish politics. Before the election they almost jumped at the leaked Bertie-gate documents but decided to hold course. The worry must be that they have evolved into a Fianna Fail adjunct, one of the more damning out comes for a party of Progressive Democrat’s genealogy.

The candidates need to clearly address whether the party’s future lies within government or alongside Fine Gael in opposition but not for its own “radical” sake. The argument needs to be grounded in good political sense with a clear positive outcome at the end of 2012 or so. If the Progressive Democrats would benefit from opposition, then how would they benefit? I am not 100% sure that the two TDs they have would be effective at all in opposition, unless they join Sinn Fein and the Independents they would have no speaking rights, they would have no say over policy, they would be even more irrelevant to the political process. Which would mean that if they did not have a media profile which exaggerated their status and policies which were unbelievably good they would fade into obscurity. Those TDs can stay in government and the party can retain some independence by looking across the cabinet table.

The Greens have been able to keep two Ministers on the government line while giving some space for Senators and other TDs to give constructive criticism and distance to proceedings, although that has stopped recently. The PD leader in the Seanad by virtue of that House’s detachment from the Dail and relative unimportance, would have plenty of scope for having ‘one foot in and one foot out’. Yet surely other arguments can be made, in this process they need to be if the party is to have a coherent body of ideas around which to coalesce. They also need to pay attention to this in order to prevent further movement of local councillors to other parties.

The second major element is policy. The problem with being in government for so long is that PD policy is government policy and vice versa. This relates fundamentally to the point above and the degree to which candidates and the party feel the need to bring forward policies which might not be in the ‘Programme for Government’ but around which they can mobilise voters, activists and perhaps a mandate. The nonsense distinction between radicalism or redundancy risks becoming lazy ideological thinking-something anathema to the PD’s basic instinct of “what works?”. The contest would benefit from some clear blue water between Cannon and O Malley on some, not all, policy issues as the party seeks to position itself once again within the party system.

Economically, the PDs should make hay out of what remains of their perceived strength in competence. Economic conditions have grown and look likely to deteriorate somewhat on their watch, their policies should be looking at renewing their core ideas of commitment to FDI and strategys for keeping Ireland ahead of the game, or they could benefit from taking the lead on domestic business generating sustainable solutions to economic soft spots. The difficulty comes about in terms of social policy. The party threw itself into the gamble of taking on health but where does it go from here? I have no idea but for the PDs it is essential that O Malley and Cannon have a vision on social policy. The vision thing can come on a bit strong, I know, but my point is not that they should debate in public and internally every single position on every single area of policy. Rather that it is essential that the leader emerges from a process that interrogates two+ candidate’s broad visions of the PD party.

The third, and final element for this post, is media ability. The new party leader will not sit at cabinet, though it is not outside of the realms of possibility for them to do so at some point, Article 29 gives scope for Senators to be ministers. However it is not set in stone that any new PD leader will be elevated to cabinet straight away. Bearing in mind that neither will they be in the Dail, they will need to prove themselves to be savvy media operators. The new leader will be charged with organising and marshalling PD members and activists above of 2009 but they will also have to prime voters ahead of these elections. Voters will need to be aware that the leader is not the PD Minister at cabinet but the Senator.

To overcome this dissonance, the new leader will need to be capable, convincing and coherent when dealing with the media. This will be the main means of communicating to voters and will need to do well at communicating any new or refined PD message. Any signs that the new leader cannot convert media appearances into confidence and, ultimately, support will return the party to its current nadir. For a leader to sit outside the Dail requires them to project as in control, in command, coherent among other qualities, when the early interviews do come. That leader needs to become the PD that the media turn to, rather than being steered toward him. Mary Harney has shown no desire to overshadow the new leader but the party needs to be sure that it elects someone capable of moving the party out of her shadow and prepare for her inevitable departure.