Mr Pat Rabbitte has pledged to protect Labour's identity in a future alliance with Fine Gael amid significant concern at senior party levels that his commitment to seeking a pre-election pact with the larger party could damage Labour's election prospects. Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent, reports.
Mr Rabbitte's remarks in a weekend speech reflect a growing realisation at leadership level that there is potential for division within the party, whose ruling national executive came within a vote last week of overturning the leader's view that Labour should not contest the presidential election.
This body will now reconvene for a special meeting on Thursday week to discuss Mr Rabbitte's announcement in Mullingar a fortnight ago that he will seek to agree a pre-election pact with Fine Gael.
Some senior sources yesterday expressed fear that such an arrangement would benefit Fine Gael but not Labour. Mr Rabbitte told a party meeting that Labour would enter such a pact "on a basis of equality and partnership, and never on a basis of subservience".
A significant minority of the national executive who were annoyed at Mr Rabbitte's initiative had planned to voice their concerns at last Thursday's meeting.
However, when the discussion on whether to run Mr Michael D. Higgins for President ran over time, the discussion on electoral strategy was postponed.
Next week's meeting will hear criticisms of the leader's strategy from those who oppose a pre-election pact with Fine Gael; those who would accept the strategy but believe that announcing it so early has damaged the party's distinctiveness; and those who believe the leader showed disregard for the party's structures in not consulting the party's national executive first.
However, while a number of national executive members are planning to vote against any attempt to endorse a pre-election pact at this stage, most senior party figures contacted yesterday believed Mr Rabbitte would win any national executive vote on the issue.
Delivering the Jim Kemmy memorial lecture at the annual Tom Johnson Summer School on Saturday, Mr Rabbitte addressed the concerns about his electoral strategy and acknowledged that there was some discontent within Labour on the issue.
He said "some commentators, and even some colleagues" had concluded that there was now a danger that Labour's values and identity would be subsumed into the political ambitions of Fine Gael, and that in the election the party will find it hard to identify unique reasons for voting Labour instead of Fine Gael.
Some of the parliamentary party expressed these concerns at last week's two-day meeting in Co Wexford. However, Mr Rabbitte insisted Labour would have a "critical" influence on a future alternative government.
"When we go to the electorate, we have to be able to say, with total conviction, that a vote for Labour will ensure the kind of changes that simply will not happen otherwise."
He restated his argument that the replacement of Fianna Fáil in office was now "absolutely vital". By the time of the next election they would have been in office for the best part of 20 years, with one short break.
The early part of that tenure was a period of "hidden financial corruption, with senior office-holders enriching themselves through payments that were intrinsically corrupt". Now there is "a politics that is based on expedience, dishonesty and gross incompetence". The Government parties were preparing to buy the next election with voters' own money, Mr Rabbitte said.