No win situation

“People have every right to hold the Labour party to account, particularly in relation to issues such as employment and growth,” said Burton, visibly irritated. “But [they should] also do the same to Fine Gael. The overwhelming majority of Labour voters, by the way, voted Yes. And a lot of the No voters were miserably unhappy with the alternative solutions being put forward by the No campaign.”

Burton’s indignation was understandable. Eamon Gilmore, the Labour leader, effectively led the referendum campaign for the government, taking part in numerous radio debates and also in televised encounters in which Enda Kenny, the taoiseach, had refused to get involved. Burton herself had worked hard on the ground, holding numerous press conferences, and galvanising a campaign to encourage women voters.

Daily notifications of canvassing schedules over the past three weeks indicated a huge effort by Labour TDs on the ground. However, opinion polls show the junior coalition party is languishing between five and nine points behind its general election result of 19%. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein’s steady advance in the polls continues unabated.

Privately, senior Labour figures admit they are worried about the lie of the political landscape. Do the the polls just reflect a temporary boost for Sinn Fein as a result of all the recent publicity it garnered by leading the No campaign? Or, in trying to sell “austerity” to its working-class support base, has Labour scored a political own goal?

Given where the No vote was concentrated — Labour’s heartland — surely Thursday’s 60-40 result was the ultimate bittersweet moment for Gilmore’s party?

“I THINK the big story of this referendum is that working-class areas voted No pretty heavily, and that must be a cause of concern for the Labour party because its base has rejected its advice,” said Boyd Barrett, as he watched the Yes votes pile up at the count centre in Citywest.

“Not surprisingly, the middle class has toed the establishment line in the hope that things won’t get any worse. But I think, as the months go by, it is going to become more apparent that this treaty doesn’t offer a solution to the crisis.”

Paul Murphy, a Socialist Dublin MEP who took over Joe Higgins’s European seat last year, took solace in the opinion polls during the referendum campaign that showed Labour’s support on a downward path, even as the Yes vote was rising.

The most dramatic of these was the Ipsos/MRBI poll, published last week, which showed Labour on just 10%, less than half that of Sinn Fein, which had risen to a new high of 23%. The Sunday Times Behaviour & Attitudes poll last weekend showed a less dramatic transfer of support, with Labour at 14% and Sinn Fein at 17%. Undeniably, though, the trend of a Sinn Fein advance at Labour’s expense is confirmed by the main political polls over the past year.

Murphy claimed one of the most significant political developments uncovered by the referendum is a “stronger class polarisation” than has been seen in previous European treaty votes. “It does look as though the working-class constituencies, or large portions of them, went No, not just the two Donegals,” said Murphy.

“I saw Labour TDs tweeting about how high the Yes vote was in Ballsbridge. [But] Labour is not going to get votes in areas such as Ballsbridge. The working-class base of Labour is deserting them in opinion polls, but also at this referendum,” he said.

Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein’s vice-president, said Labour had also been at odds with most of the trade unions, another support base for the party. “It’s clear throughout the campaign that the Labour party was on the wrong side of the debate,” she said.

Emer Costello, a Labour MEP in Dublin, naturally dismissed claims that her party had lost the working-class vote, as she watched the first tallies emerging from Dublin’s north-inner city. She pointed to a ballot box she had “tallied” from a polling booth on Sean McDermott Street, which had just 10 more No votes than Yes, a margin of just a few percentage points.

“I’ve spoken to other party colleagues, and in the so-called working-class areas of Dublin you might have expected a large protest vote where candidates of the ‘ultra left’ and Sinn Fein may be popular. But it didn’t translate into votes for them on the ground,” she said.

“In Dublin Central, the north inner city, the vote was fairly even. I don’t think there is this urban-rural divide or this class divide, but people of the ultra left are going to portray it like that.”

Leo Varadkar, the transport minister, said it hadn’t needed a referendum to establish the fact that Labour was under pressure in working-class areas from socialists and Sinn Fein, but he cautioned against identifying Gilmore’s party with that demographic alone.

“Labour has working-class support, but it also has a big public-service support and, from my experience of knocking on doors, the public service by and large voted Yes,” he said.

Can Labour survive on public-service votes alone, though? With Sinn Fein vacuuming up working-class support, and Fine Gael dominating the middle-classes, Adrian Kavanagh, a political lecturer at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, said the smaller coalition party was in danger of getting squeezed from both sides.

“The party can’t afford to abandon the working class,” he said. “I’m not saying the referendum results were indicative of an anti-Labour vote. A lot of the areas that voted No were core Sinn Fein areas, which have always voted No. But the results do suggest a stronger Sinn Fein vote, and good news for Sinn Fein is always bad news for Labour.”

Many Labour TDs last week said that regardless of the polls, their supporters would not move to Sinn Fein in a general election. “We are a mainstream party that wants to go into government and implement real policies,” said Aodhan O'Riordain, a Labour TD for Dublin North Central. “We’re not a party on the edges, promoting unrealistic policies. When push comes to shove, people will not be won over.”

While there may not be a mass movement to Sinn Fein, Kavanagh warned it might take only a small change in the weight of transfers to make a big difference to Labour. “You’ll see it in five-seat constituencies, for example, where Labour is maybe in sixth place,” he said.

“Normally, transfers from Sinn Fein and other left candidates would be enough to push Labour up to take the fifth seat. But if these poll trends continue, Sinn Fein will be a few places above Labour, and it will be Labour transferring to Sinn Fein to take the seat. The positions of the parties will be reversed.”

THE language used by Labour ministers in the immediate aftermath of the referendum result last week suggests they are keenly aware of the need to turn the focus back to stalwart party principles, such as investment and growth. “We will use this decision to promote in Europe and in Ireland the policies and steps that are necessary to create jobs for those who are unemployed; to bring investment into our country and to generate growth,” said Gilmore. Burton promised that the government would now “pursue a mandate specifically around growth, investment and employment creation” at European level.

This was in stark contrast to the priorities expressed by Lucinda Creighton, the European affairs minister, and Simon Coveney, Fine Gael’s campaign director. Both said the victory would be used to seek a better deal on Ireland’s bank debt.

While the government will undoubtedly push for concessions on all these issues, Varadkar said there was “a hell of a lot more” to be done to solve the eurozone crisis. “One thing we need quite soon is a European-wide guarantee of bank deposits — not of bondholders — but of deposits; to stop money flying from some banks to other banks. The European Stability Mechanism [ESM] could do that, or the European central bank [ECB],” he said.

“In time we will need the ESM to be able to recapitalise banks directly. We will need something similar to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that they have in America, a federal bank regulation and bank-rescue mechanism. Banks are bigger than countries. Even the remit of the ECB will need to be changed, not just to control inflation, but also to allow for growth. And Europe could use a bit of inflation.”

For Labour, the key question is whether Europe will be able to put any or all of these measures in place in time for real growth to start emerging in the Irish economy before the next general election.

Helpless in the face of the painfully slow decision-making in Europe, Joanna Tuffy, a Labour Dublin Mid-West TD reckons that in the meantime, her party needs to be “more Labour” to win back voters. “People who vote Labour expect Labour to do ‘the Labour thing’,” she said. “One of the ways they expressed that on the doorsteps was over the breaching of the pay cap to special advisers. That came up so much. The Labour party needs to think about redistribution of wealth, starting at the top. And do more about jobs. We should be addressing all of these issues.”

While Labour struggles to stay in touch with its voters, Murphy is moving on with a plan to advance the merger of the Socialist party, People Before Profit and other left-wing groups or independents.

“The United Left Alliance is a project to build a new mass party to represent working-class people,” said Murphy. “It is a process that takes time, but needs to be moved forward in the context of the crisis. Certainly, political developments [favour it], with the decline of Labour as evidenced by the votes against this treaty in traditionally Labour areas.”

While the referendum campaign may have put a dent in Labour’s support, Murphy believes the possibility that Ireland could need a second bailout at the end of 2013 poses a much bigger threat to the party.

“The government has made a series of promises about stability, about investment, implicitly about recovery, and they are not going to come to pass.

“A second bailout will be politically significant because it will show that all the things that have been sold to people haven’t worked, and the situation has got worse. There could be an explosion in this country.”

If there is, Murphy, the United Left Alliance and Sinn Fein will be standing by, eager to pick up the pieces.

Children’s poll

Even before Irish voters went to the polls last Thursday, children’s rights campaigners sent a warning to the government that there can be no wriggling out of the next referendum, writes Justine McCarthy. They want it in October.

“Rumours are circulating that there will be no children’s rights referendum should the fiscal treaty referendum fail,” said Tanya Ward, chief executive of the Children’s Rights Alliance, last Tuesday. Ward was commenting on speculation the government would not want to run the risk of being unable to insert a children’s rights amendment to Bunreacht na hEireann in the event of the fiscal treaty referendum being defeated. There was concern that, if a pattern of public protest culminated in the defeat of the children’s referendum, it could not be rerun in the lifetime of this government.

The passing of the fiscal treaty referendum leaves the way clear for the poll on children’s rights, first recommended by Catherine McGuinness, a former Supreme Court judge and chairwoman of the Law Reform Commission, in her 1993 report on the Kilkenny incest case. Bertie Ahern, the former taoiseach, announced at a Fianna Fail ard fheis in November 2006 that his government would hold the referendum but an agreed wording was subsequently discarded.

Frances Fitzgerald, the minister for children and youth affairs, gave a commitment last February that the amendment would be decided in a single-issue referendum this year. Some €3m has been allocated for it in the budget estimates.

The Campaign for Children, an umbrella for advocate groups such as Barnardos and the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, is likely to be the most prominent campaigner for a Yes vote. It has received €1.5m funding from Atlantic Philanthropies and the One Foundation. Opposition is likely to come from groups arguing the measure would weaken parents’ rights and lower the threshold for state intervention in families.