It was a very smart move by Eamon Gilmore to declare himself as a contender for the position of taoiseach. This caught Fine Gael on the hop and led to the largest surge in the opinion polls that Labour has ever had.
This puts the Labour party in a perfect position to sweep all before them in the next Local Elections.
Just like Tony Blair did in the UK, Eamon Gilmore has created the potential for a New Labour in Ireland. To do this he has had to move Labour to the right, and recent events in Galway, the home county of Eamon Gilmore, have demonstrated how he has done this.
The grand old man of Labour in Galway Michael D Higgins was always thought of as one of the more left leaning members of the Labour Party in Ireland.
Whether he was or not is a matter for history to judge. While Bertie Ahern denied that he was one of the few real socialists in the Dáil, many people would consider Michael D to be fairly left of centre in Irish terms.
Recently though Labour in Galway has gone through a series of upheavals. Two clearly left wing councillors left the party - Catherine Connolly and Labour’s sole councillor in the Galway County Council, Colm Keavney. While Cllr Keavney has since rejoined the party, Cllr Connolly remains outside the fold.
In her place it is very significant that Labour has selected the former Fine Gael candidate Níall McNelis. This was a very smart move as it allows Labour to vacuum up votes in the Fine Gael stronghold of Salthill, while the massive influence of Michael D will also bring in left leaning votes for McNelis. This puts him in with a very real chance of winning a seat despite the presence of Catherine Connolly.
There are many other signs of Labour’s subtle shift to the right but none is more stark than the courting of former PD leader Ciaran Cannon and indeed exploratory talks with sitting PD TD Noel Grealish.
While it does not look like any of these talks are going to succeed, with Sen Cannon likely to join Fine Gael and Grealish to join Fianna Fail after the Local Elections, the fact that talks occurred at all says a lot.
Another clear signal of Labour’s repositioning is the recent voting record of councillors Costello and Cameron on the city council. Among other things they have strongly supported various commercial rezoning proposals that Labour would have run a mile from in previous years.
They also took a strong stance against hard stands for Travellers, another reversal of previous Labour Party policy. Again this sends out a clear signal of the direction that Labour is now moving in.
In the UK the incredibly clever calculation of New Labour was that they only had to position themselves slightly to the left of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in order to bring in huge numbers of new voters while retaining most of the existing ones.
Oh the lefties complained all right but they still voted Labour because they could never bring themselves to vote Conservative or Liberal Democrat. A similar repositioning is going on in Ireland.
Previously the danger in Ireland was that the Sinn Féin, the Greens, or the Socialist Party could outflank Labour on the left. This is no longer a problem as Sinn Féin has failed to progress, the Greens are now in government, and the Socialists do not have a single TD in the Dáil.
It will be very telling how Labour gets on in the Local Elections. They could do very well in Galway with new candidates like Derek Nolan, Nuala Nolan, and McNelis supplementing the sitting councillors.
It will also be contesting seats in the county where it never previously made any headway. It is also possible Labour could entice Catherine Connolly back into the party with the offer of a run at the Dáil or another term as mayor.
However, it is more likely that they will opt for a more ‘New Labour’ style of candidate for those positions. Who that will be only time will tell.
