Analysis: Is the Labour Party ready to face up to the past?

For years, the Labour Party has floundered in the polls and faced persistent questions around whether it is has a future in the Irish political sphere.

Above all else, the resounding feedback from the public has been that the party is very much not forgiven for mistakes made after it went into coalition with Fine Gael in 2011.

Some members of the party, even quite senior members, would prefer not to acknowledge this. In recent years many well-known TDs have — rightly in many instances — pointed towards Labour’s positive contribution, particularly in relation to major social changes.

There is a not insignificant contingent within the party who wish that the criticism of Labour post-2011 would simply disappear.

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Labour’s huge success in 2011 was portrayed as “historical”. Then in 2016, the party lost 30 of its 37 seats.

Labour is now jealously eyeing the success of the Social Democrats under new leader Holly Cairns.

Last week’s Irish Times/Ipsos poll showed a jump for the Social Democrats of three points to 5 per cent. Labour is on 4 per cent.

Against this backdrop, a three-pronged review of the Labour Party’s performance in government has surfaced.

It seems the party is ready to face the “missteps” made in the last decade. The review was initiated by the Labour executive between the leaderships of both Brendan Howlin and Alan Kelly.

So is the party finally ready to come clean and face the critics head on?

It seems the answer is: maybe.

In summary, the review says that the party failed to maintain public trust, mishandled key policy decisions, ran badly judged publicity stunts and agreed to legislation that was damaging to democracy.

There will be understandable questions around the timing of its circulation among senior personnel in the party, given it has been in gestation since around 2020.

A few things got in the way of its release, notably Covid-19, the ousting of Kelly and the subsequent election of Ivana Bacik as leader.

Her most strident supporters in the party did not want to see this sometimes-damning report used as a stick with which to beat the new leader. But soon it will be common knowledge among the wider membership and so the decision was made to grasp the nettle.

There are three parts to the report: an analysis of the context in which Labour took the reins of power (in part) in 2011, an overview asking key members what went wrong, and recommendations arising from those.

The middle part - where former cabinet members and staffers were interviewed - is proving highly contentious and is the subject of ongoing legal advice.

While it may be heartening for some voters to see the party face up to its failings, there is a fair amount of bullishness in there too.

For example, the report talks about a “misallocation of blame”.

“Many of the policies for which Labour has been blamed, such as water charges, property tax, higher pension ages and student fees were either introduced by the Fianna Fáil/Green Party government or were committed by them as part of the initial IMF/EU Memorandum of Understanding,” the report says.

Even further, it finds that there is “no doubt that Fine Gael – the larger coalition party by 2 to 1 – pursued a lot of policies that Labour would have not have chosen”.

But interestingly, it says that Labour “never developed a narrative to convey the enormous consequences that would have ensued for working people, those who depend most on public services and society generally, if Ireland had failed to regain economic independence by the end of the troika memorandum period”.

“Moreover, it did not successfully promote its rear-guard role in the battle to regain that economic independence while simultaneously preventing any cuts to the basic rates of social welfare or wholesale sell-off of state assets or the erosion of employment protection legislation as occurred in the other economically stressed countries of Europe.”

“Nor was the public ever provided with any insight into the endless, day-to-day battles fought by Labour ministers in this regard. Perhaps this was due to a concern to preserve the cohesion of the government and the confidence of international investors, however it undermined the trust of many of Labour’s former supporters.”

[ Ivana Bacik is turning Labour into an electoral force again ]

”Instead, the public was left with the impression of a singular ‘government narrative’ that hid the daily contestation about policy that went on behind closed doors in government buildings. This gave the false impression that Labour agreed with austerity, whereas in reality Labour fought to mitigate the harm of the IMF-EU troika agreement at every opportunity.”

What will be interesting to see is how the leadership of Labour responds to the leak of this report: with a continued or more compelling apology, or with that bullish sense of a party forced to perform a duty in the interests of the country.