Calling time after the budget

The budget last week has been rightly called the worst austerity budget yet. There are so many odious measures in the proposals that have either not been considered properly from an equality and anti-poverty perspective or the alternative, which is even worse, is that conscious choices were made by Fine Gael and Labour to further punish those on low incomes. I would like to believe the Bonaparte statement applies in this case: "never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" but my fears are that this budget is very much the result of planing by Government.

Top of my list of awful measures is the cut to the carers respite grant. Of all the people society should be supporting, those who look after the sick, disabled and terminally ill are amongst the most important. The measure of a civilized society is in how it looks after the most vulnerable, and if we don't properly support those who care for the most vulnerable with suitable breaks and respite, then we are effectively punishing the recipients of this care. For an overall saving of around €25M this measure can only be seen as cruel and miserly.

Next on my hitlist is the removal of the PRSI allowance. Any measure which impacts identically on people who earn €20k and €200k is not fair by any measure. Lower income earners feel the loss of €5 per week a lot more than higher earners. It can be the difference between putting on the heat in the morning and sending the kids to school from a cold house. For better off people (me included) it is the choice of not having an extra pint on a Friday night in the pub.

The introduction of a property tax is to be welcomed but yet again the government have made the wrong choice in the matter. Instead of a site-value tax which encourages efficient use of zoned land, they have gone for a property-value tax. Now when a homeowner invests in double-glazing, an extension or an attic conversion for their home, the have the dubious benefit of increasing their tax liability for all eternity. The property-value tax also has no impact on zoned but unused land. A site-value tax would encourage this land to be developed or rezoned back to non-development status. Instead we still have massive land bank, zoned for residential use, that sit idle waiting for the next boom. I guess most of those are in the ownership of FG voters.

Other measures that are wrong in my view are the cut to child benefit (should be taxed instead), further increases in DIRT (shouldn't we be encouraging saving?), increase in the student charge at 3rd level (the funding of the whole sector needs to be reviewed) and the reduction in the time period in which jobseekers benefit is given.

I'm no economist, but even I can see that the net effect of this budget is further hardship for those at the bottom with those nearer the top getting away pretty lightly. I'm part of a pretty well paid, double-income, single kid, negative equity household and we could definitely afford to have been squeezed a good bit more. Over the course of the recession our lifestyle has changed (fewer pub nights) and our expenses have increased (child care) but we still have enough to get by on quite comfortably. It is not true to say that everyone is feeling the pain equally. Those at the bottom, whose voices tend not to get heard are being punished the most.

This is something that Labour should not be tolerating, let alone being complicit in. Our leadership has failed the membership and those who voted for them. It is time now for the party to take a long hard look at our continued participation in this government. It is clear that our views and policies are being ignored by Fine Gael and it might be best for everyone if they were let run the place as they see fit. Yes, an election in February/March would destroy the parliamentary party and probably see an FG minority govt propped up by Fianna Fail, but it is about the only honest way forward for a Labour Party that has betrayed so many people.

In the future, voting no to coalition in the O'Reilly Hall will be like having been in the GPO on Easter Monday. Everyone will claim to have been part of that faction. Well I was one and at the time I accepted the will of the majority (85%) of the delegates and adopted a wait and see attitude. Now it is clear that our greatest fears have come to pass and no amount of "It would be worse if we weren't there" can make that better. This has been a massively blue budget, just like the PfG was a blue document. We in Labour should stop deluding ourselves to think we can curb the excesses of FG and actually implement any sort of progressive platform with our coalition "partners".

May you live in interesting times

So as one might imagine, the last week has been one of those glued to the coverage week as various storylines were picked up again after the long summer break in the political soap opera that is Ireland.

Health

The major plot twist is of course the resignation of Roisin Shortall from her role as junior minister in the Dept of Health. The truth of the matter is that the wrong minister has been forced out in this instance. James Reilly's shenanigans at getting some extra resources allocated to his constituency is exactly the sort of stuff we used to give out about with Fianna Fail and the Healy-Rae clan. What is even worse is his attempts to cover it up with bluster about Shortall's manipulation of the criteria for selection when the paperwork shows that this is patently false.
But the real failing here is with the leadership of the Labour party. Gilmore and his handlers should have marched down to Hawkins House and gone though Reilly. They had the high moral ground here, had public support (except maybe in Dublin North), and most importantly they would have been in the right. Enda Kenny should have been given an ultimatum of Reilly or no coalition and given 12 hours to mull it over. And then they should have had the backbone to follow through. Instead, the wise heads in Ely Place decided to shaft one of our most able politicians for the sake of not upsetting Fine Gael.
I would advise anyone who hasn't heard it yet to listen back to Shortall on the Marian Finucane show from this morning. She certainly doesn't hold back. Now we have Alex White promoted to the open slot in Health. While I am sure he'll do fine, he was actually a very good chair of the Finance Committee and will most likely have to give up leading the Labour delegation on the constitutional convention. We might have been best served leaving him where he was.

Phil Hogan

I don't even know where to begin on this one. Hogan has been a disaster since the day he took office. Between septic tanks, the household charge and the planning enquiries he has been an inverse Midas, where everything he has touched turned to shit. Now the story comes out that he wrote a pretty offensive letter about a family of travellers to some local constituents promising that they wouldn't be housed by the local authority. Whatever about the problem of the Minister interfering in the activities of local government that reports back to his Department, the contents and tone of the letter and representations are a disgrace. He's another one who should no longer be holding office, but instead his loyalty to Enda during the 2010 heave is still being paid back

March for Choice

The one bright light of the last week was today's successful pro-choice march through the streets of Dublin. Despite some well known commentators saying there were less than 30(!) people there, I estimated about 2000 or so marchers, with the organizers claiming 5000. Hopefully this can be the start of a real campaign to get legislation passed on X and ABC before moving on to a more liberal abortion regime not wrapped up in false claims around mother's health. Congratulations are due to Sinead Redmond and the rest of the pro-choice activists. The ball is now firmly in Ivana Bacik's court once the expert report is released some time in the very near future.

Confucius never had it so right - it is a curse to live in interesting times.

What a difference a night makes

There was a little girl who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good, she was very, very good,
And when she was bad, she was horrid.

While Vincent Browne is neither a girl (fully grown man) nor has a little curl (lots of curls), this little ditty could easily have been penned about his late night show on TV3. Since the show started I have been quite the fan, but of late I have become less enamoured of my late night political gossip. Too many shows end up with the same old faces making the same old points and so since the start of the Presidential Election campaign I have actually given up watching except for odd occasions.

However, the last few weeks have seen my schedule become more regimented and I find myself sitting on the couch waiting for 1AM to roll around so I can give Ailbhe her final feed and then go to bed. This has led to my getting back into the swing of JML ads, snippets of Family Guy on BBC3 and relentless frustration from Vincent with all of his guests. And like the poem, some of the shows have been amazing and some awful.

Take for example the day that Sinn Féin produced their budget proposal (16th November). Joining Vincent were Pearse Doherty from SF and Simon Coveney from FG who spent the entire show tearing strips off each other. Coveney was shown to be either completely clueless, completely unbriefed or else told to fall on his sword to avoid letting any pre-budget strategy be revealed. It also helped that Marie Sherlock from SIPTU was on the panel and she made some particularly insightful contributions attacking both the SF and FG positions as required.

On the other hand the following evening Aodhán Ó'Ríordáin was part of the panel discussing the number of election promises that had been broken by the government since taking office in March. This was the most mind numblingly boring episode I'd seen in a long time. There was no real debate between the panelists and despite his best efforts, Vincent couldn't get the deputy to admit to any broken promises at all.

Last night was another doozy, where Constantin Gurdgiev destroyed Damien English on the potential collapse of the Euro. While I don't think the doomsday scenario outlined by Gurdgiev, he had the figures and the expertise to back up his position. English didn't want to even engage in a what-if scenario and could only repeat the mantra claiming the ECB would do the right thing this time. Again, maybe he was badly briefed, but English came out of the show very badly. One wonders why FG continue to send out people like him and Paschal Donohue rather than some of the heavy hitters like Shatter, Bruton, Noonan or Reilly. I guess it's the same reason Conor Lenihan was such a regular on #vinb before the election - plausible deniability for the government.

I'll keep on watching and hope for more fireworks in the next few weeks as the budget appears and the Eurozone continues to flounder from crisis to crisis.

PS - there's a really good piece written by Stephen Kinsella posted on Irish Economy. Definitely worth a read.

Thoughts on Roscommon Hospital

Much has been made in recent days about James Reilly's plans to close down the A&E service in Roscommon Hospital. He claims that the unit is unsafe and that patients are at more risk by being treated there than by traveling to Galway, Longford or Castlebar. This resulted in FG TD Denis Naughten losing the whip after voting against the government on the issue.

In my mind there are two major issues at play here. Firstly there is the conflict between the rationalization of services to provide economies of scale and the requirement for geographical spread of services to ensure no patient is too far from acute services. Secondly there is the political issue of promising rainbows and unicorns before an election and then not being able to deliver.

There are studies that show quite clearly that the further away from an A&E a patient becomes ill, the more likely the outcome will be bad. Therefore it makes sense to try and dot hospitals around the country in strategic locations so that people are not too far from help. In the current situation, closing Roscommon may lead to people driving to Galway for assistance. Having driven that road only a few months ago in some pretty heavy rain I can assure you that it is not something that you would like to do with a sick child or heart attack victim in the back seat. Double that length of time if you have to call out an ambulance and you can suddenly see why the people of Roscommon are up in arms about keeping the hospital open.

However, the flip side is that an A&E that doesn't see many patients will not have the experience and practice at dealing with serious problems. The figures speak for themselves in the Roscommon case where mortality rate was over three times higher in Roscommon than in Galway. In an ideal world, every city and town would have top class health (and education and transport and ...) infrastructure and services. But it doesn't work that way. There is a finite pot of resources and it can only make sense to invest heavily in areas that will provide the maximum return - ie where the population catchment area is sufficiently large.

People have to live with the choices they make. If you choose to live in a lightly populated area you can't expect the same level of services as those who live nearer each other. Density is king, and when you compare Dublin at nearly 1400 people per km^2 and Roscommon at 25 per km^2 you may begin to see where the problem comes from. I've been called on my urban bias before and accused of not understanding the rural way of life. And yes, maybe it's true. But you make choices in life and one of those choices is where you live. Living in Dublin 5, I can't have an expectation of waking to mooing cows and fields of corn outside my window. Likewise, if I lived in a rural area I couldn't have an expectation of rapid public transport, high-tech hospitals and third level education on my doorstep.

Politically it is also true - people have to live with the TDs they elect. The TD also has to live with the electorate and should stand by positions held in the run up to the election. That is why I have some grudging respect for Denis Naughten. It will be interesting to see ho long he remains outside the whip and if he will vote against the government on any other issues. It is not good enough for TDs to say the people have spoken and elected them to the Dáil if the premise on which they were elected is false. In any other sphere that would be a breach of contract and render the whole relationship void. Pity our politicians can't be held to account in that way.

Taking a break

I've decided to take a bit of a break from blogging. The last 6 months have been fairly hectic what with the general election and then my own shenanigans with the Seanad election. I've partially burned out on politics and so need to charge up the batteries again. Luckily I'm off on holidays for a few weeks soon which should get me back in the zone. We'll pick up at some point during the silly season.

Just a few minor thoughts on recent topics before I go.

David Norris

The current smear campaign being waged against David Norris is disgusting. When people like John Waters and David Quinn come out supporting the attacks it only makes me more sure that it is a load of dirty tricks. While I will be voting for Michael D Higgins in the Presidential election I am now more certain than ever that Norris will be getting my number 2.

We the Citizens

I went to the We the Citizens event on Wednesday night in Tallaght. While skeptical about anything of great import coming from the events it was good to have a round table discussion with a group of strangers. The event was well organized with a facilitator at each table to keep the conversation on track and make sure it wasn't dominated by a few loud voices.

One thing I think has worked in their favour is the timing. Initially they had hoped to report before the general election in early 2012 but obviously that didn't come to pass. However, with the election there was a sense of the air being cleared and we didn't spend hours giving out about Cowen, Lenihan and the banks. A lot more positive and constructive than it might have been on the original timetable.

Tweet Up

The politics twonks also held a tweetup last Thursday night. As usual, great fun was had debating the ills of the country. It was a bit weird not being on the offensive against the government. Was also nice to meet a few new people as well as the old regulars and there are plans to hold another session towards the end of the summer.

Ignite

On Wednesday this week I'll be giving a talk at the Ignite Dublin session being held in the Science Gallery. These talks are on any topic, last for 5 minutes and have 20 slides that advance every 15 seconds. Considering my lecture overheads normally proceed at the rate of one every 5-8 minutes this is quite a challenge. I have about 10 of the slides done but amn't sure what else to cover. If all else fails I can always repeat! Oh, and the title of my talk is something like "How to (un)successfully run a Seanad election campaign on no money and even less planning" so it is somewhat politically focused.

Water Charges

Phil Hogan has put water charges firmly back on the agenda. As usual Nama Wine Lake were well ahead of the curve with their fairytale. But it is true that water charges, like most consumption and flat taxes, are regressive and in this case particularly expensive to gear up for. Another sop to the building industry?

JLCs

The other major bit of right-wing kite flying being done by the blue side of the coalition is the carry-on by Richard Bruton with the JLCs. Again the work has been done Michael Taft and others on the figures but attacking, yet again, those on extremely low levels of pay is daft. All it does is further reduce domestic demand which has a knock on effect of laying off even more people who's jobs are on the minimum wage or a rate agreed in a JLC. People at the bottom spend to survive - reducing their disposable income just continues the cycle of depression and cuts.


Think that's about it. See you all in a little while. I'll still be hanging out on Twitter if you need to find me.

Enda vs Chuck

One of my guilty pleasures is watching the TV show Chuck. In the show, the main protagonist Chuck, a mild mannered tech support minion, becomes a prized NSA/CIA asset who fights international terrorism while still being home in time to play Halo and eat pizza with his best buddy Morgan. But the thing of interest to us is that every episode is called "Chuck vs the Something". I want to take a look at Enda Kenny and the things he is trying to tackle and see how they stack up.

Enda vs the EU/IMF

Election promises from both government parties were all about making bondholders pay, renegotiating the bailout interest rate and the infamous "Frankfort's way or Labour's way" statement from Eamon Gilmore. Since taking the reins, Enda has had a couple of meetings with the various EU and IMF representative but it looks like nothing has changed. The draft MOU that was published a few weeks ago is pretty much identical to the one that would have been expected from FF had they stayed in power. We're still tied to the high rates and the bondmarket is still well north of 10%.

Enda vs the Seanad

Another of the major election promises was political reform, spearheaded by the abolition of the Seanad. Now I've written at length about this topic so no need to rehash the arguments here. Now it looks as though it will be at least another year or two before any referendum is brought before the people to abolish the Seanad. I guess it has turned out to be a bit more complicated than Enda originally thought. He has also taken full advantage of is nominating powers to put some interesting people into the Seanad including Eamon Coughlan and Aideen Hayden, but really, did he have to stick Marie Louise O'Donnell in there? Maybe she's going to fill the Eoghan Harris role in the new Seanad line-up.

Enda vs the Separation of Powers

Speaking of nominations to the Seanad another interesting one is Martin McAleese, husband of the President. While I am sure that he will be a fine contributor to the Seanad, it does see to fly in the face of the concept of separation of powers. Surely the Presidency should be completely independent of the Oireachtas? The other odd decision of this type was the decision to merge the Departments of Defence and Justice under the one person. Again, while it is unlikely that there will be an armed coup any time soon in Ireland, I think that the principle of separating control of the two security forces of the state is not one that should be thrown away lightly.

Enda vs the Speech Writers

Finally there's The Speech. While watching Obama's introduction on Monday evening, it struck me that the turn of phrase in Enda's speech was quite good, even if it was delivered in a bit of an All Ireland winning captain's speech style. "Tá an athás orm an Obama seo a glacadh ar son foireann na hÉireann." Only when I noticed Obama busting himself laughing behind Enda that I twigged where the lines were coming from. I have to say I thought it was a great idea to recycle the victory night speech into an introduction and I don't believe for one minute that Enda didn't know what he, or his writer, had done. Good man for having the balls to follow through with it.

I may come back to this list a some point in the future. I kinda like the format!

Campaign Diary Day 12 - Constitution Day

As regular readers will know I am all in favour of changing our current political structures. They have been shown to be not fit for purpose. However, you will also know that I'm not a fan of tinkering around the edges of the constitution. The primary document of the state is forever, not just for Christmas, and so modifications should be well thought out before being put to the people.

So Fine Gael's plan to put a series of amendments to the people within a year of taking power (possibly on the same day as the Presidential election in November) has set off some alarm bells. I'm going to look at each of the proposals in turn.

Cutting the number of politicians by 35%. This includes abolishing the Seanad and reducing the number of TDs by 20

I have already outlined my objections to getting rid of the Seanad. Similarly I don't think getting rid of 20 TDs is really going to solve any of the problems in the Oireachtas. There needs to be a major overhaul of the operation of the houses of the Oireachtas but cutting the numbers is just a stunt that has to be followed through on, following Enda Kenny's solo run about 18 months ago.

Giving Dáil Committees full powers of investigation

Where does the line between the judiciary and the legislature lie? What sort of investigations will the committees undertake? Would need to see a lot of detail on this before being happy. However, there have been times when compelling witnesses to attend committee meetings would be helpful and enabling this would be a good move.

Reducing the President’s term from seven to five years

The only reason I can think of this is to run the Presidential election at the same time as the local and European elections. No reason to do this at all except to allow more people have a go at being President.

Providing the Oireachtas with the power to cut judges’ pay

Like item two this is a very slippery slope. The entire point of this provision in the Constitution is to stop the Dáil from threatening Judges with pay cuts in order to keep their decisions in line with the Dáil's point of view. Again it impinges strongly on the separation of powers. With the legislature already completely dominated by the executive removing the current provision would just strengthen further the government's powers. Even if the power was never exercised it would always be left hanging over the judiciary. Not good.

Putting the Ombudsman on a constitutional footing

This is the most sensible of the suggestions. The Ombudsman's Office is a key part of open and accountable democracy and so I have no problem in formalizing its existence in the constitution.

Of course the proposals don't address any of the fundamental problems in our state. Nothing on equality, nothing on separation of church and state, nothing on freedom of information, nothing on term limits for politicians, nothing on making the executive more accountable to the legislature. This is pretty much a pointless exercise with one exception. I certainly know which way I'll be voting on these proposals if they are put before the people.

Campaign Diary Day 11 - Single Party Government

As usual the results of the Sunday Business Post poll have been leaked a few hours early. Today's figures, which were collected Tuesday-Thursday, show FG on a monstrous 38% with Labour leading the rest on 20% followed by FF 15%, SF 10%, Green 3% and Independents on 14%. The other main figure to note is that undecideds have dropped from 20% to 17% so the public are making their minds up.

The result that these polls indicate is Fine Gael forming a single party government, either through a small overall majority or else with the support of some of the right leaning independents such as Ross, Lowry and Lord Healy-Rae II. Back in 1982 FG won 39% of the vote and got 42% of the seats. But that was with the backdrop of FF winning 45% of the vote. With the nearest competition almost 20 points behind, FG will get a huge seat bonus with most of the last seats falling to them.

So where do the other parties go from here? Attacking Enda for being weak has failed, ignoring Enda has failed, attacking each other has failed. It seems to me that FG have taken a long hard look at the New Labour strategy from 1997 and it is working for them. Just stick to the message and ignore everything else going on around you. The big problem for FF, Lab and SF is the sharp focus of their campaigns on their respective leaders. FG have been smart in letting Bruton, Varadkar, Reilly and others take the lead showing it as a team effort.

There are still two weeks to go and in Irish politics, where there are 43 local elections happening around the country, anything could happen. But at present it is looking good for FG but they may be wondering have they peaked to soon or are they still building momentum.

Crossing the Floor

In most modern parliaments there are examples of members crossing the floor to join a rival party on some point of principle. In Ireland, due to strict party discipline, this is a rare occurance. In fact apart from the political wanderings of Conor Cruise O'Brien and Michael O'Leary bailing from Labour to Fine Gael, I can't think of any other changes that didn't involve whole parties splitting, forming or merging.

So it was with some shock that I read some of Chris Andrews' tweets from last night

• FG are not getting the traction in the polls because people see little difference between FF and FG. A merger makes sense to me
  
• If people were serious it shouldn't take long. I believe there is as much difference within FF as there is between FF and FG
  
• It's all pretty much speculation because it's unlikely to happen. Maybe after next election is would be considered.It's a big leap
  

Here is an elected FF politician finally admitting something that we have all known for a long time - that there is no fundamental difference between the two centre-right, Civil War parties. Sure, the personnel in FG might be a bit more straight edged and FF a bit more rough around the edges, but from a policy and ethos point of view they're not that far apart. Of course Chris, as a Dublin South East TD, is facing a tough battle to retain his seat whenever the next election comes around. As I posted over a year ago DSE is going to be tough for the government parties. Based on the most recent poll with FF on 18% nationally, they must be somewhere near 10% and transfer toxic in DSE. At the moment I'm going to stick with my prediction of 2Lab, 1FG and 1FF but that is now extremely shaky - could be a second FG.

If Chris does cross the floor it will make for an interesting FG selection convention. With Lucinda Creighton as a sitting deputy, Eoghan Murphy pushing hard with seemingly endless resources behind him and the specter of Michael McDowell's return to electoral politics looming over them, this four way battle would put the Labour DSE in-fighting of earlier in the year in the ha'penny place. I'm sure Phoenix magazine would have a field day.

Reilly ups the ante

In Friday's paper, Mary Minihan reports that Fine Gael are aiming for at least 70 seats in the next general election, with 20 of those in Dublin. With the party already on 51 seats, that means finding an additional 19 seats throughout the county with a doubling of their Dublin representation from the 2007 election. To my mind the first part is plausible but the second is ludicrous.

With a target of only 9 seats outside Dublin, it seems to me that Fine Gael have already capitulated to a Fianna Fáil recovery of sorts in the rest of the country. There are 31 constituencies beyond the Pale most of which have two FF TDs at present. FG should be drawing up a list of 15-20 of these 2nd FFers and targeting them. With Labour's world renowned poor organisation outside of Dublin, FG should be sweeping all before them in its traditional heartland.

In Dublin the position is the opposite. At the moment, Lab is polling way ahead of FG and have the members on the ground to take advantage of the anti-FF swing. In 2007, FG got about 20% of the vote and about 21% of the seats. However, in most constituencies they only ran a single candidate and so in order to win a second seat, additional candidates will need to be added. After the local elections, FG now have a smattering of new faces such as Eoghan Murphy in Dublin South East, but you can be sure that sitting TDs who relied on transfers to get elected in 2007 will be fighting tooth and nail against a strong running mate.

In terms of gains in Dublin, currently FG have no seat in Dublin Central, Dublin Mid West and Dublin North West. Paschal O'Donohue and Frances Fitzgerald should pick up seats in the next election but Bill Tormey will find it hard in Dublin North West. In the locals he polled close to 13% but was outgunned by SF and Lab. It is hard to see both FFs losing their seats so seeing FG gain at the expense of SF or a 2nd Lab seat. Reilly will not bring in a running mate in Dublin North as Lab will retake the seat and Sargent will hold on despite a tough challenge from the Socialists. North Central and North East as two small 3 seaters do not have enough FG votes to win a second. Although Dublin West gains an extra seat it will be taken by Joe Higgins.

On the southside of the city things don't look much better. Had George Lee hung around, Dublin South could have returned three FG seats, but with his departure that now looks unlikely. Dun Laoghaoire going to 4, facing two ministers, another party leader and a strong PBP candidate is not going to work either. South Central will comfortably return Catherine Byrne with the votes from the leafy Terenure end of the constituency but will otherwise be hostile territory with Lab, SF and PBP all looking to mop up the working class vote in Crumlin, Ballyfermot and Drimnagh. It is impossible to see 2 quotas or anything close in South West and as I previously posted I don't see FG winning a 2nd in South East either.

That gives a grand total of 2 gains. Lets be generous and say that they grab another 3 that I have ruled out (say DS, DSE and DNW). That is still only half the target Reilly set which must be seen as either a failure of his deputy leadership or else that an impossible target was set for him by the party strategists. Either way I'd rather not be in his shoes on the day after the count, having failed to deliver the required seats in the capital to allow Enda sweep to power.

New Political Party

I guess it is symptomatic of the silly season, but over the last few weeks, blogs and twitter have been abuzz about the idea of a new political party being formed or a massive revamp of Fianna Fáil from within. Following various articles from left leaning commentators (VinB and FOT) about the possibility of a Labour led government, it comes as no surprise that a letter proposing a new liberal party was published in today's Irish Times.

what is needed is a truly liberal party which would provide a real alternative to the social democratic Labour Party and the centre-right conservatism of both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, now indistinguishable from each other?

Sounds great in principle, a third way, free from historical baggage of the civil war, purely focusing on the liberal agenda and with a strong libertarian streak. In fact, in a way, it is the type of political party that this country has been crying out for. With almost 90 years of uninterrupted, centre-right, conservative rule, politics in Ireland could benefit from a conservative/liberal/socialist split with a smattering of smaller parties like you have in most modern democracies.

The problem is that any new party will struggle, as has most recently been shown by the PDs. Their relatively brief existence certainly shook up the political system for a while, but they never made the major breakthrough and eventually faded to irrelevance for several reasons: their agenda was absorbed by FF and FG, internal fighting between Cox, Harney and McDowell, punishment for acting as the FF mudguard.

A new party has two ways to form, either a disgruntled section of an existing party jump ship or else a grassroots movement eventually evolves into a fully formed party. The former is where the PDs came from, the latter the source of the Greens. There is no great groundswell of support from the general public to a new movement, therefore the only realistic route is through a splinter group from an existing party. Currently it is conceivable that some of the anti-Enda section of FG could bail and be joined by some of the disgruntled FF backbenchers. There are several problems with this scenario though

1. Neither FG nor FF or its members would be particularly aligned to the liberal movement. Sure FF sit with them in the European Parliament, but that is just to avoid having to sit with the nutjob right group they were in before.
   
2. The most likely FF to jump are the likes of Mattie McGrath and John McGuinness, neither of whom have a particularly strong national profile. From the FG benches you might get some of the heavers of last week but probably not Bruton, Varadkar or Kieran O'Donnell. Having no heavy hitter to lead the party would be a problem.
   
3. Were even a couple of FF deputies jump ship an election would quickly follow. Running a general election campaign takes between €10k and €30k per candidate. Were the party to contest every constituency they would need around €1 million. No fundraising that is within the SIPO rules could come close to that in the timescale required.
   
4. In an election any FF jumpers are still likely to be punished by the electorate for the financial meltdown of the last few years. A wolf in sheep's clothing is still a wolf.
   

It seems unlikely that we are on the verge of seeing a new political force appear. A long summer recess for FG to heal its wounds, for FF to pray for some economic recovery and for Labour to recharge the batteries for another year of increasing support levels across the country.

The old heave ho

All the talk of the last few days has been about the results of Friday's opinion poll in the Irish Times that put Labour as the most supported party in the state. Even allowing for IPSOS/MRBI's probably flawed method of allocating undecideds, the core vote for each party still puts Labour top of the heap by a point. But the most interesting outcome has been the inevitable talk of replacing the leaders of both FF and FG.

Enda Kenny, for all his organisational skills, has not sold himself to the floating voter. In a time period where FF's vote has collapsed to less than half their election result only two years ago, FG have not made the required inroads and a lot of that is down to Kenny's performance. He gets a lot of credit for bringing FG back from the brink in 2002 but his time is up. The difficulties come up when you try to figure out who should take over at the helm.

The obvious candidate is Richard Bruton. As deputy leader and finance spokesman has been a good performer in the Dáil, jointly attacking Brian Lenihan with Labour's Joan Burton on all things economic. As a Dublin based candidate he might also help revive the party in the capital and push them back up towards Labour's level of support. The downside is that a Dublin leader will not attract the rural vote, but his name and his brother John's farming background might reduce that effect. Were Bruton to take the top job, FG's biggest problem is who to put into the finance role - it is unclear that there is an obvious candidate for that position.

After that it is hard to come up with potential candidates. The right-wing section of the party would love to put Leo Varadkar in charge but that would alienate large swathes of the voters. The rural section would be very against a Dublin leader and so might look to someone like Simon Coveney or Phil Hogan. Of the Dublin TDs, Alan Shatter has been very vocal on the Children's Rights issues and Brian Hayes has built up good support in a traditionally FG unfriendly area in Tallaght but neither of them at the moment have a national profile that would be required to lead FG into a general election.

So really it all points to Bruton. The next week will be interesting. If the motion of no confidence in Cowen passes then Kenny becomes Taoiseach after an election and the heave never happens. If the motion is defeated, and it probably will be, then Enda Kenny will have to fight hard for his political career.

Where do we go from here?

As the world an its mother knows by this stage, George Lee has packed in the job of TD for Dublin South and left FG. There have been reasons given, accusations made, hours of talk radio and miles of column inches covering the story since it broke just before lunchtime yesterday. I'm not going to add anything here on the specifics of George Lee since I don't really have anything insightful to add.

On the other hand, I can totally speculate on the political fallout from his departure. It leaves Frank Flannery and the FG backroom boys with a lot of egg on their face. After all the hype about George's candidacy and subsequent election, they have badly let down the party. The handlers should have known that something wasn't right and tried to sort it out.

So the first question is, will there be a push against Enda Kenny? From the wagon circling that has been going on in FG in the last 24 hours that seems unlikely. Richard Bruton is the obvious candidate for the top job, but that leaves them without a strong voice on Finance - I just couldn't see Kieran O'Donnell or Leo Varadkar going toe to toe with Lenihan and Burton. Beyond that you're looking at either Simon Coveney or Brian Hayes but again it is hard to see either of them leading the heave to oust Kenny.

So assuming Kenny is safe, there will still be some flak and fallout from George's departure in FG. Would it be in Cowen's interest, with his recent bump in the polls to dash up to the Áras and cut his losses. After January's tax receipts, the Boston Scientific and Halifax job cuts announced recently and the impending report from the Tribunal, things are only going to start looking down again from the FF side of the house. We could be looking at an election on 5th or 12th March (or the days before if they want to exclude students from the electorate again). According to my back of the envelope calculation a snap general election would return about the following spread of TDs

• FF - 57
  
• FG - 68
  
• Lab - 29
  
• SF - 4
  
• Green - 1
  
• Other - 7
  

which wouldn't be too disastrous from an FF point of view. Labour seats won't break 30 due to lack of local organizations in some parts. This will give a comfortable majority to FG/Lab but will keep the relationship honest as Labour could always threaten to invite FF back into power at any stage. An election in 2012 would give a much different result with Lab and FG both increasing further and FF falling. The post election horse trading then is going to be very interesting.

However, I don't think that Cowen will bail in which case we're looking at two byelections, Donegal South West and Dublin South. Both of which will probably be held in late May or early June and neither will be won by the Government side of the house. I'll write about my predictions for these byelections in the near future.