The Homestore effect - Village Magazine

20November 2014

VENTUALLY a tabloid sub-editor will come

up with a headline to sum up the imminent

demise of the parliamentary Labour Party.

It will involve some bad puns on water, loos and

the party’s ﬁnal Napoleonic election battle.

Older Labour heads are not giving up the ﬁght and

are standing their ground with a series of statements

on the water issue. Pat Rabbitte dismissed the idea of

water privatisation as a “red herring”; and another

Labour grandee, Fergus Finlay, tweeted that the

proposal for a referendum was “daft”. Such is the

credibility of the Labour party hierarchy that these

statements have been interpreted by a sceptical public

in the following way: (a) that privatisation must

deﬁnitely be on the cards and (b) that a constitutional

change to prevent the privatisation of water is

eminently sensible.

So sensible, in fact, that Labour party senators

broke ranks in the Senate to support a Fianna Fáil

motion. The Labour leadership was reported to be

“relaxed” about this minor revolt, but the signs are

ominous. Many of Labour’s top people are now

privately conceding that the game is up. When I asked

a Labour Party Minister of Sate last week how the

Christmas cards were going, he observed ruefully that

he had no supporters left to send cards to. He also gave

a brutally bleak assessment of their electoral chances:

they’d be lucky to come back with two to ﬁve seats, he

said.

I know the feeling. Let’s call it the Homestore

political eﬀect: when your electoral luck is gone, it’s

deﬁnitely gone. Just look at Obama, a president with

charisma and a recovering economy, yet an ungrateful

American electorate still gave the Democrats the

heave-ho.

But, the converse also applies. When you’re electoral

luck is in, you can do no wrong in the eyes of the

electorate, as evidenced by the spectacular poll results

of Sinn Féin.

Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour had all expected

that the sustained attacks on Sinn Féin in recent weeks

would cause their poll ratings to tumble. But the

Shinners have once again confounded their critics.

Their continued climb in the opinion polls has shocked

their opponents.

One Fianna Fáil TD, with whom I spoke, just shook

his head in disbelief. They are perplexed and deeply

frustrated.

I stated in my previous column that the Shinners

would learn quickly from the defeat in the Dublin

South west by-election. And they certainly have. Both

Gerry Adams and Mary Lou McDonald are now

standing with the people, declaring that neither will

pay the water charge.

They must be very relieved that Alan Kelly won’t be

cutting oﬀ their water supply or turning down their

water pressure. The new minister is desperately trying

to present himself as the good cop, as opposed to Big

Phil’s bad cop. The Labour Party media handlers have

also opted for the set-piece media appearance. We

used to call these a ‘standy uppy’. It means you stand

before the microphones and cameras of the assembled

hacks, deliver a few key messages and make a swift

exit. There’s no real probing or scrutiny by journalists

allowed.

That’s the theory, but there is a downside. If

government ministers constantly refuse to do more in

depth, sit-down interviews, frustrated broadcasters

on RTÉ, Newstalk or Today FM have no real choice but

to hand over the space to your

political opponents.

Paul Murphy et al will only

be too happy to oblige. They

have long understood that

water is the deﬁning issue for

the people. It’s visible,

ever-present and visceral.

Every time you make a cup

of tea or ﬂush the loo or have a

shower, or anytime it rains, the

people are reminded of the

injustice, as they see it.

Capping the cost of the bills

may help a little but essentially

it’s not the amount but simply

the idea of charging for water

that angers many voters.

The water issue has altered

the Irish political landscape in

ways that were unimaginable a few short years ago. If

the opinion polls are to be believed Fianna Fáil and

Fine Gael combined won’t have the numbers to form a

government without the assistance of some independ-

ents. This would leave Sinn Féin as the main opposition

part y.

It reﬂects too a European trend as voters’ distrust of

and disenchantment with mainstream parties has

seen the rise of AfD in Germany, UKIP in England and

host of other anti-establishment parties throughout

the EU.

Dealing a heavy blow to Labour party TDs may seem

like an attractive proposition to weary and cynical

voters right now, but they could be replacing them

with a politics they had not bargained for.

Unfortunately, for the Labour Party this is a line of

reasoning that seldom works with the electorate. •

Labour’s

W****loo:

political luck

comes and goes

on the grandest

scale

JOHN GORMLEY

The Homestore effect

I know the

feeling. Let’s

call it the

Homestore

political eﬀect:

when your

electoral luck

is gone, it’s

deﬁnitely gone

“