Labour Party in a bind as it launches election manifesto

The Labour Party, which launches its general election manifesto today, is in one hell of a bind. On the one hand, it is essential that the party continues to differentiate itself from Fine Gael during the campaign.

On the other hand, Tánaiste and Labour leader Joan Burton has to maintain an "I'm with him" stance, even as Fine Gael Taoiseach Enda Kenny declines definitively to rule out an arrangement with Fianna Fail.

Our lead story by Fiach Kelly reports that eyebrows were raised in Labour yesterday when Mr Kenny would only go as far as saying he was not "contemplating" a post-election alliance with Fianna Fáil.

The story is topped with a contentious element of the Labour manifesto: that the junior coalition partner will insist on an abortion vote in any future deal with Fine Gael.

Fine Gael’s manifesto only commits to a citizens’ assembly to examine the Eighth Amendment.

The referendum demand might seem like something of a high stakes stance for Labour to adopt when it is riding so low in the polls, but given its long-standing position on the Eighth Amendment there can be no surprise at the party’s move.

The party’s task is to convince voters that while others (Sinn Féin, AAA-PBP and Independents) may offer something similar in their manifestos, only Labour has the potential to deliver on the promise in Government.

There will be suspicion in Labour that Mr Kenny would be more comfortable with Fianna Fáil’s stance on the issue.

In terms of coalition options, the cynic in me believes that all bets are off once the votes are counted. Politics is maths with a little razzmatazz thrown in, after all.

With the fallout from gangland killings in Dublin, issues that observers might have predicted would have caused controversy in the campaign have failed to ignite debate.

Abortion has been one of those issues to date.

That may change.