Though I am tempted, I may keep the Labour Party leader’s invitation to join the revolution on file for now
IT HAS been an exciting week for me. On Tuesday evening I got an invitation from Eamon Gilmore to join the Labour Party. As you can only imagine I was chuffed. He is after all the man of the moment.
Eamon’s invitation was delivered straight to my home. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in an envelope, nor was it addressed to me personally and I subsequently discovered that my next-door neighbours also got one but I still felt special. It was a nice little postcard with Eamon beaming out at me asking me to sign the back, insert my name and e-mail address and return it to him at party headquarters by freepost.
It was interesting that it took Eamon less than 10 words to tell me why I should join his party: “Jobs, Reform, Fairness – Leadership stands out from the crowd.” Not since the Progressive Democrats’ “Dessie can do it ” has a party pitch been so presidential in tone and so vague in content. I was tempted to reply immediately accepting Eamon’s invitation just to see how far I would get before alarms would go off for party officials in Ely Place. I may therefore keep the Labour leader’s invitation on file for now.
Whenever Labour politicians are confronted about the lack of detail in their policy pronouncements, they assert that they have published 50 documents on different policy areas since the 2007 election. I will therefore reserve my decision on whether to accept Éamon Gilmore’s approach until I have read all of these. It will no doubt be a monumental task but I feel I owe it to Eamon and his party to weigh my decision carefully.
Helpfully all 50 documents are listed and published in the Our Policies and Ideas section of the Labour Party website. They vary in length and substance. A handful cover mainstream concerns such as the economy and jobs but many deal with more peripheral issues. I look forward in particular to reviewing the Labour policy document Giving Rural Ireland a Lift: Labour's Proposals for Maintaining Rural Public Bus Services(16 Pages, December 2009) and Hailing a New Taxi Service(22 Pages, May 2009). While both are no doubt at a local or sectoral level, they are unlikely to emerge as significant national concerns for voters once the election campaign proper begins.
I am working through the documents in backward order by date of publication. The most recent is Extending the Welcome – Proposals to Sustain and Develop the Tourism Industry. This is one of the longest Labour policy documents. It runs to 38 pages but it seems, at least on first reading, to be long on criticism of the current state of the tourism industry and short on workable solutions to improve the sector.
Next I read Labour’s Priorities in Education 2010 to 2015. This is a much shorter document. In fact it is just two pages long with one page given over to a lovely detailed architect’s drawing of what Labour’s ideal 21st century school will look like.
Next up was a document published last April called Broad Consensus Now Growing on Universal Healthcare. I thought this might be a detailed outline and costing of Labour’s healthcare funding plans but in fact the document is only five pages long and is actually a speech by Eamon Gilmore, most of it devoted to crowing about how Labour suggested universal healthcare in a policy document in 2001. Looking back at the 2001 document it, too, was short and the part devoted to this aspect of health policy vague.
Then I read Investing in Our Future – An Outline of Labour's Proposal for a Strategic Investment Bank, which takes all of six pages, double-spaced.
The next document is a copy of a Private Members' Bill on the Guardianship of Children, which appears to be a substantial piece of work. The last one I got to, so far, was Raising the Stakes– Labour's proposals to tax remote betting and reform the funding of the horse and greyhound fund. I can't confirm whether this policy document is actually the election winner its title suggests because when trying to download it my computer crashed. I do not know whether this was because of the substance and size of the document or whether it, too, is padded with high-spec photos and graphs.
With 44 documents to go I obviously have much ground to cover although I am less daunted than I might be because about a dozen of the remaining documents are no longer relevant. I could probably, for example, get away without spending too long on those relating to the 2009 European elections and could skip those on the Lisbon Treaty altogether.
A few weeks ago Eamon Gilmore could not give Ivan Yates a straight answer when asked on Newstalk what Labour's policy on the proposed introduction of water charges is. Gilmore suggested the front bench had not had time to consider that issue yet. Ivan was unimpressed but then he may not have realised that the Labour Party spokespersons and backroom staff have been busy researching and publishing policy documents such as Life in Meath(10 pages, July 2009) and No Time to Waste: Improving the Implementation of European Environmental Laws(one page, June 2009).
I am determined to see this task through. If, having read the policy documents I am still undecided, I am going to read the most prominent speeches made in the Dáil by the party’s frontbench spokespersons. I will start with the more entertaining ones, like Michael D Higgins or Willie Penrose. I think I will leave Joan Burton’s substantial but grim contributions until after the summer holidays.