Madam, - It now seams certain that the lemming of the Labour Party, Mr Pat Rabbitte, will get his way at the party's conference this weekend with his demented coalition strategy. Once again Labour is happy to be a small party in every sense.
About a year ago I wrote a letter to this paper in which I pointed out that Labour had been the junior partner in six governments with Fine Gael and at the end of each of them Labour was weakened. More significantly, none of the FG/Labour coalition governments was re-elected; Fianna Fáil came back to power each time, rejuvenated and strengthened. Has Mr Rabbitte been asked how he intends to defy history and make the Labour Party grow from inside a coalition government His predecessors Norton, Corish, O'Leary and Spring could not manage it. Why will it be different for Pat Rabbitte? What is his great plan to avert the inevitable electoral plunge after the party goes into coalition? - Yours, etc.,
GARY KING, Ballybane, Galway.