The Thing with a Win…

Is when you get one you recognise it and leave it at that. Dan Boyle this afternoon seems to have strayed past that line. Getting Brian Cowen to change his position from a willingness to ‘discuss with the Greens any concerns they have about the programme for Government’ to a commitment to sitting down and talking is the win you want.

You get to put on the cowboy hat, you get the win and you get your talks. Fianna Fail are in no position to hold out either, you have a very nice position. But the primary thing is to take your win and make it count. Now that he has come out and tried to push this line;

The Green party is putting pressure on its government partners Fianna Fail to reverse some of the education cutbacks implemented in the October budget.

Party Chairman Dan Boyle says policy errors were made at the time which need to be corrected.

Things change slightly, Boyle is trying to set up a possible win on education and best of luck to him, we would love to see cuts reinstated. But setting it up in this way only gets the FF backs up and they are far less likely to give in on that issue. Instead you get a different win but you have to play hardball to get it. FF are already miffed at the manner in which this was carried out – it has the hallmarks of a stratagem but one which put monumental pressure on Gormley and Ryan as ministers around the cabinet table.

The kind of pressure that doesn’t come when it is a loose cannon sounding off (like Gogarty) but the pressure that descends when its is plain as day that the party undertook a damage limitation strategy. Boyle might have gone this extra mile for his own electoral purposes but he took the initial step for the party. It was an embarrassing reverse for the major party in government but they do not want to add salt to the wound until you get something in writing.

Of course aside from the ‘insider baseball’ the issue that raises itself is that of the education cuts in the first place. Calling for there reversal with two sitting cabinet ministers is a little bit of having one’s cake and eating it too. One doesn’t get the benefit of playing both sides in this debate and it would probably suit the tactic better to keep out of policy specifics before the re-negotiation kicks off, that way people are less likely to (accurately) assert that you should have stopped them at source.