Pat Rabbitte has been a disappointment as leader of the Labour Party, but a disappointment in a way we should have anticipated. It was thought he would give the Labour Party an edge, an edge that it did not have when Ruairí Quinn was leader because of Ruairí's emollient temperament and his centrist politics, writes Vincent Browne.
Pat Rabbitte's politics, some of us believed, had been forged in a more raging furnace. After all, he had come through the Workers' Party's Stalinist ("Stickie") phase, then its Euro-communism phase, then into Democratic Left social democratic incarnation. He would have to represent a politically tougher edge than the Labour Party traditionalists. The expectation was mistaken, and inexcusably so.
For we had seen those former Sinn Féin Workers' Party alumni spin and spin. Once they had started to move away from Stalinism, they started a dizzy repetitive somersault, doing cartwheels from one ideological stance to a softer one, to a yet softer one, then into centrism, then on to soft right and finally hard right. We discovered that all along they had stood for nothing at all, merely striking whatever pose they thought would gain them attention for a while and then moving on, meanwhile claiming credit for their capacity to change their minds.
I don't believe Pat Rabbitte was or is quite in the same league as the more ideologically athletic of these ex-Stickies, but he too suffered ideological dizziness as he spun. No longer does he appear to be interested in changing the basic structure of society to make it radically fairer. Now his focus is on what he sees as power, but in reality it is merely office. He probably believes that in office he can achieve significant reform. Change by subterfuge.
One of the reasons for being opposed to the Stickies in the 1960s, 70s and 80s was that they believed (at least in part) that politics was a con job. They were into manipulation. They had secret branches within RTÉ, for example, whose role seemed to be to bend the coverage of current affairs to their ideological bias and, shamefully, they were allowed to succeed in part. They had secret branches inside trade unions, the objective being to con as many of their fellow trade unionists into voting for their secret members, thereby enabling the takeover of the trade union. They were embedded in this newspaper as well. And while they were taking a "principled" stand against the Provos over killing, they were doing a bit of covert killing themselves - but that was different..
I am not saying Pat Rabbitte himself was, or is, a con-man, rather that he was part of a movement whose strategy, in part, was conmanship and this must have left its mark. Certainly he does not seem to have imbued with the idea that politics was or is about persuading people to one's point of view, about changing and winning mindsets, about convincing enough people that society was or is deeply unfair and it needn't be that way if we were prepared to alter its basic structure. This involves challenging the prevailing "common sense", going against the grain and/or changing the flow of the grain. Now, in so far as he is interested in change at all, he sees it coming about, if not quite by subterfuge, then by stealth. The reality is not just that this is not how democracy is supposed to work but that it is impossible.
There can be no radical change without first convincing the people that change is necessary and winning their support for change. Power is not office, it is persuasion. It is about campaigning on issues of unfairness and inequality, persuading people there is a gross injustice at the heart of society and that a fair society can come about only by a change in power-relations, in greater equality of wealth and income, equality of health care, of health welfare, of education, of respect and influence.
And that can't be done in a few months of an election campaign or even in the five-year lifetime of a Dáil, and perhaps not in a lifetime. Office without that change of mindsets is powerless. Sure, some marginal improvements can be made, sure the system can be cleaned up a bit here and there. We can give back some teeth to the Freedom of Information Act, we can strengthen the anti-corruption laws, maybe improve the health system a bit and do a bit about illiteracy and maybe about housing.
But the show will continue to be run by the big boys, and the big boys will hog a vastly disproportionate share of the wealth, will corner the prize bits of the educational and health systems, will continue to set the political agenda, rigged in their own interests - and in that latter task will be enthusiastically aided and abetted by media workers. Did you notice how gushingly media reporters and commentators were over the latest Government con-trick on the National Development Plan?
And the trick-acting over a coalition with Fianna Fáil is part of Pat Rabbitte's stock in trade nowadays. Fudge a previously unqualified commitment never to put Fianna Fáil back in office. Now it is all about leaving options open, while appearing not to.
It's what politics is about nowadays, but wasn't there a time when Pat Rabbitte thought it was about something more noble?