As it struggles for relevance in a competitive political arena, debate over a report into how it handled power a decade ago is probably the last thing the Labour Party leadership wanted right now. It is a pity the report was not undertaken and published in the aftermath of its participation in government. Nonetheless, if it helps the party learn some lessons, the report may still serve a useful function.
Among its key findings, revealed in The Irish Times, are that the party should have done more to help the most vulnerable during its time in government from 2011 to 2016. It points to mistakes made around single-parent policies and medical card entitlements and asks if the party should have insisted on abandoning water charges despite the fact that they were a specific commitment entered into by the Fianna Fáil/Green Party government with the troika.
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The report does make reference to the achievements of the Fine Gael/Labour coalition in getting the economy back on track and says the bottom line is that Labour managed to steer the country out of the bailout, regain economic sovereignty and mitigate the level of austerity being sought by other parties. The reality is that Labour did not win a majority; as the smaller coalition party, it was in no position to dominate the administration. On some issues it scored important achievements, on others Fine Gael prevailed. That’s how multiparty coalitions work.
The difficulty facing Labour a decade later is that the party’s image took such a pounding from its time in government that it still struggles to make an impact on the current political debate. It needs to rediscover its confidence. It is trapped between trying to compete with a range of loud voices on the Opposition benches and offering practical alternatives to the policies being pursued by the Government. Labour actually has a proud record of achievement in office over a number of decades. The challenge facing it is how to present itself at the next election as a potential party of government without raising unrealistic expectations about what it can achieve.