The chemistry between Pat Rabbitte and Michael McDowell on The Week in Politics programme on RTÉ television on Sunday night was revealing, writes Vincent Browne. Exchanges of personal regard, smiles and understanding whenever any contentious issue arose, not a scintilla of dissention between them, aside from a very mild foray by Pat Rabbitte into the equality arena, and then an evasion by Rabbitte on an interesting issue.
That interesting issue was whether Labour would go into government with the PDs after the next election. About the only issue that Rabbitte is now forthcoming on is that, under his leadership, Labour will not go into government with Fianna Fáil after the next election. Asked if Labour would go into government with the PDs, he equivocated. Asked again, he equivocated again. Clearly a deal involving Labour and the PDs is on the cards, which says just about as much about Pat Rabbitte and his party as needs to be said.
The reason he leaves open the option of joining the PDs in government is simple calculation. Fine Gael and Labour won't be able to make up the numbers to form a government after the next election, principally because, incidentally, nobody expects Labour under Pat Rabbitte to make a breakthrough. Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens might not be able to make up the numbers either, which is why options vis-a-vis the PDs must be kept open.
The fact that the PDs are the ideological opposite of the Labour Party - if the Labour Party was remotely true to its origins and ethos, that is - appears not to matter. Pat Rabbitte is prepared to countenance a continuance of the policies that have caused such deep inequalities here if that is what is required to get into office.
On what possible basis can coalition with Fianna Fáil be unacceptable but coalition with the PDs be on the cards if the numbers require it? The PDs have targeted almost every vulnerable group since 1997. First there were single mothers, then Travellers, then asylum seekers and of course the poor in general. Michael McDowell was the sponsor of the citizenship referendum, founded on a fake hypothesis, motivated by an impulse to play the race card in the run-up to the European and local elections. One might have expected a left wing party to regard this stunt as disqualifying the sponsoring party and the sponsoring politicians from all decent political society. But not so with Pat Rabbitte, and hardly surprisingly, since he himself recently has played the race card with the reference to 40 million Poles and the suggestion of work permits for EU nationals.
Rabbitte had an opportunity to play the equality card on the issue of the Dublin riots. It was obvious even on Sunday afternoon that a factor in the riots was the alienation of a sizeable segment of Dublin working class youths from society and from gardaí in particular. This is a traditional left wing analysis of such upheavals, although rejected by most of those in the centre and the right of politics. But not a word from Rabbitte about this.
It was he who, as chairman of the Drugs Task Force a decade ago, produced a report identifying deprivation as the major cause of alienation in Dublin working class areas and as a major cause of the drugs problem. Isn't it obvious that the solution he advanced then - the urgent regeneration of the deprived areas - has been abandoned? How is it he now doesn't even refer to that?
Michael McDowell and Mary Harney had been out in the previous few days claiming credit for the Celtic Tiger and their sponsorship of tax reductions, which they insisted had been the driving force for the economic success Ireland has experienced.
Wasn't that face-to-face with McDowell an opportunity to challenge that analysis; to make the point that the economy was already booming in 1997 when the PDs came to office? How then could measures introduced subsequently be cited as the causes of that boom? Rabbitte might have quoted Brian Cowen, who in his Budget speech last December said tax reductions were greatly overrated as the driving force of our economic success. Instead Rabbitte was keen to dismiss any suggestion he favoured any tax increases.
Isn't there a case for arguing that the scale of inequality now requires a crash programme for the regeneration of deprived areas, for the provision of public housing, for early school education, for equality of healthcare and health welfare, for the refurbishment of dilapidated mental hospitals and for a variety of other social measures, which might require some increases in taxation?
Why is the imperative of "no new taxes" to take precedence over this? Traditionally this was a left wing argument and agenda, but no more.
Those who "lead" what passes as the country's main left wing party are now, apparently, happy to go into government with quite the most right wing party the State has known because that is what will deliver high office to them.