Dream a little dream of Labour

I imagine most people outside the Labour Party will dismiss Eamon Gilmore’s dream of becoming Taoiseach and leading the largest party after the next election as so much pie in the sky.

But what else could they expect him to say? He must aim high. He was hardly going to say that Labour would once again prop up Fine Gael in a new coalition between the two main opposition parties.
That is the most likely scenario after the election as all the opinion polls and all European, local and by-elections have shown for the past year and more.
Labour’s support has doubled since the last General Election. Gilmore is the most popular party leader and Labour is now the strongest party in Dublin.
The party, however, has made very little progress in Connacht outside Galway East, in Clare or in any of the Ulster counties on this side of the border. To become the biggest party in Ireland, it would need to win much more support in those constituencies, something it is not going to do, at least in the short-term between now and the election.
Labour could not possibly go into coalition with Fianna Fáil. Former Labour leader Dick Spring did that in 1992 and, although he collapsed that coalition two years later, the voters never forgot and he paid the price at the 1997 General Election.
Anyone who votes for Labour, votes, as they did in 1992, to get rid of Fianna Fáil and Gilmore knows that the people would turn their anger on his party if he helped to put Fianna Fáil back into power after the next election.
That is the reality. He also knows, as Pat Rabbitte discovered after the last election in 2007, that any pre-election pact with Fine Gael could, and probably would, also damage Labour.
So while he is not saying that Labour will go it alone, he is saying the only thing he could say in all the circumstances: that Labour will put forward enough candidates to come back after the election with the most seats.
Even though we all know that is not going to happen. Certainly not in the short term.
It would be a foolish person, who would try to predict how many seats Labour will have after the election. It doesn’t take rocket science to say they should certainly be able to gain where they are strongest but I cannot see them winning any seats in the areas where they are weakest.
They could surprise us and realise Gilmore’s dream. Nobody forecast that Labour would win a seat in Clare in 1992 or that they would have won two seats in Dublin South and two in Wicklow if they put forward enough candidates at the same election. None of us predicted the height of the Spring Tide that year either. Perhaps we will be talking about the strength of the Gilmore Gale for years after the next election.
There have been so many false dawns for Labour to have any confidence in seeing a Labour taoiseach in the near future. A lot of us remember too well the mid to late ’60s when we believed that Labour would bury Fine Gael in Dublin and that the ’70s would be socialist.
All the bright new sparks in Irish life at the time, men such as Conor Cruise O’Brien, Justin Keating, David Thornley and Michael O’Leary seemed to be joining the Labour Party and not Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil.
At the 1969 election, Labour put forward enough candidates to win an overall majority. But the dream came crashing to the ground as Fianna Fáil, under Jack Lynch, were returned to power for the fourth successive time.
The bright new sparks had to wait until 1973 to get power when they once again propped up a Fine Gael-led government and some of those bright sparks were among the most conservative members of a very reactionary cabinet. They lost their seats at the next election and some of them retired to obscurity.
We had to wait several years until Dick Spring put some life back into what had become a very dull party, only to see Spring himself lose his own seat. Now Gilmore promises to lead his party to heights never before achieved.
I would love to see him do it because this country needs change and I cannot see Fine Gael changing much. Fianna Fáil have been in power too long and need at least one term in opposition. That party has lost touch with its roots and lost touch with the people it is supposed to represent.
I am not saying that Fianna Fáil is to blame for all our present economic woes and I certainly would not accuse Brian Cowen of “economic treason” as Eamon Gilmore recently did.
Fianna Fáil, however, has been making big mistakes it would not have made if it were in touch with the people. That party needs to eat some more humble pie before being allowed back into power again.
Perhaps the Labour Party rather than Fine Gael is the party that will make Fianna Fáil do that.
We are all entitled to our dreams.