The Labour Party

Farmer Pudsey

Will the Labour Party have to have a serious rethink of it place in the political stream. It is using it political power to support public sector workers, the unemployed and those in reciept of state benifits. These people then give it little or no support,

It has alienated private sector workers with it protection of these. They now will drift back towards FF and FG. The Social Welfare recipents will drift into Sinn Fein and the other leftwing Independants. The PS back into supporting FF has it has done for the last 20 years.

Is it really only a party of opposition did it overpromise and is it being punished for it. It seems to have alienated piivate sector working family's as opposed to so called working class that now support SF,

flutered

me thinks that you could remove the bit about the unemployed and theose on state benefits, do you realise how the disabled and their carers have been treated.

sullanefc

Farmer Pudsey wrote: »

It is using it political power to support public sector workers, the unemployed and those in reciept of state benifits. These people then give it little or no support,

Are they really? After the recent CP2 negotiations, I don't think Public Sector Union leaders had a lot of nice things to say about Brendan Howlin.

aliveandkicking

I completely disagree with the OP's assessment of why the Labour vote has collapsed. I believe the opposite is the case.

What has happened since the government came into power is that the Labour party has slowly being commiting suicide by alienting their traditional support base.

A lot in the public sector voted Labour last time purely because they trusted Labour to honour the Croke Park 1 agreement. Barely two years in government and Labour (Howlin's dept) has torn up the CP1 agreement a year early and is trying to foist a new agreement on the public sector that will see many of the lower paid frontline workers hit harder than the higher paid and additional working hours for all leading to less family friendly hours of work for many parents. This happening in a climate where Labour has done nothing about extortionate pay in the higher levels of the banking industry and where there are stories coming out that many in the private sector have started getting rises again.

Labour has also overseen a cut in child benefit and cuts for carers and the disabled. Social welfare recipients again are a demographic that would be traditionally have a high proportion of Labour voters.

So with the public sector vote gone and the social welfare vote gone what is Labour left with?

The electorate put Labour in to moderate against Fine Gael's more extreme elements. Instead we have seen Labour playing poodle to FG and going along with pretty much everything FG wants. That is why they are being punished.

hyperborean

Labour got a good % of its votes from people wanting to prevent FG from running away with itself in government. These voters with revert to type in the next election, and in comes FF.......superman bless us all

ArmaniJeanss

aliveandkicking wrote: »

I completely disagree with the OP's assessment of why the Labour vote has collapsed. I believe the opposite is the case.

What has happened since the government came into power is that the Labour party has slowly being commiting suicide by alienting their traditional support base.

A lot in the public sector voted Labour last time purely because they trusted Labour to honour the Croke Park 1 agreement. Barely two years in government and Labour (Howlin's dept) has torn up the CP1 agreement a year early and is trying to foist a new agreement on the public sector that will see many of the lower paid frontline workers hit harder than the higher paid and additional working hours for all leading to less family friendly hours of work for many parents. This happening in a climate where Labour has done nothing about extortionate pay in the higher levels of the banking industry and where there are stories coming out that many in the private sector have started getting rises again.

Labour has also overseen a cut in child benefit and cuts for carers and the disabled. Social welfare recipients again are a demographic that would be traditionally have a high proportion of Labour voters.

So with the public sector vote gone and the social welfare vote gone what is Labour left with?

The electorate put Labour in to moderate against Fine Gael's more extreme elements. Instead we have seen Labour playing poodle to FG and going along with pretty much everything FG wants. That is why they are being punished.

If a private sector company believes they are making enough turnover/profit to give their staff a payrise then whats the issue? (For the sake of honestly I've got a 10% payrise this year myself).

It seems to me (from a distance) that Labour have spent a lot of time and energy fighting the corner of the Public Service, truly been the one genuine friend of the public service worker in this government. That if FG had got another 5 or 6 seats and been able to go it alone that things would be a lot worse for the average public service employee.

But yet ironically Labour are being the ones punished by the self same public servants.

aliveandkicking

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

If a private sector company believes they are making enough turnover/profit to give their staff a payrise then whats the issue? (For the sake of honestly I've got a 10% payrise this year myself).

It seems to me (from a distance) that Labour have spent a lot of time and energy fighting the corner of the Public Service, truly been the one genuine friend of the public service worker in this government. That if FG had got another 5 or 6 seats and been able to go it alone that things would be a lot worse for the average public service employee.

But yet ironically Labour are being the ones punished by the self same public servants.

Not arguing the rights and wrongs of CP. That's for another thread. Just analysing why I believe support for Labour has collapsed. Labour being part of a government that has torn up the CP agreement a year early despite promising to honour it in full has meant the support it enjoyed from the public sector has evaporated.

Tomk1

IMO: As a Lab voter, would expect FG to act similar to FF, but expect Lab to have integrity at least a voice in touch with the people.
In the past FF would leak some idea for cuts or whatever, say cut OAP, then with public backlash, drawback from the idea and do something else, maybe just politics and no intention of the first proposal, but at least the people see the TD's in touch with their electorate. With Lab it's this is what we're doing whist saying we really feel for the people, integrity out the window.

It's like this if Lab dropped the house hold charge their ratings would go up, simple as. I don't really care that they got a better deal on some bailout loan, when they still expect me to pay off someone elses gambling losses, and if I don't comply a state official has the power to walk into my house and take my possessions, makes me think of the USSR, this is not the Ireland I want to live & oneday die in.

Lab may get Ireland back on it's feet, but they will not be forgiven for crucifing the people, and imo will not be returning to government as they do not represent the people. Maybe a coin has flipped for me, I'm begining to think it's time to take a step back or breather from the EU, and that's the way I'll prob vote from now on.

sullanefc

I think the few comments in this thread so far shows us exactly why Labour's support has dwindled. Private sector workers believe that they are fighting for the public sector workers, and the public sector workers believe they are turning their backs on them. So they don't have the support of private sector OR the support of public sector, hence no votes.

Trotter

It's simple. I'd expect FF/FG to come to my door and tell me I'm now paying my neighbours mortgage, but that the great news is they've achieved a deal where I can pay it off over a long time because we are not defaulters!

I didn't vote for them because of that.

I expected Labour to either be strong in opposition or to have influence in government to A) Stop that from happening or Go down trying.

I did not expect the top 5 Labour leadership figures to partake in the shafting and join the others on my doorstep...

But sure isn't that what you tend to do during elections?

As a labour 'sympathiser' I won't be giving a preference to Ciara Conway (my labour td) again, nor will I give a preference to any TD or candidate who makes promises that are blatantly difficult to keep. Once bitten etc.

eire4

Is it really all that of a surprise that the Labour vote is getting hit hard being in coalition with Fine Gael. Historically that is exactly what has happened also in other previous coalition governments they have had with Fine Gael. To my mind their mistake was going into government with Fine Gael in the first place. It simply never ends well for them.

Farmer Pudsey

eire4 wrote: »

Is it really all that of a surprise that the Labour vote is getting hit hard being in coalition with Fine Gael. Historically that is exactly what has happened also in other previous coalition governments they have had with Fine Gael. To my mind their mistake was going into government with Fine Gael in the first place. It simply never ends well for them.

No there mistake is that they have to decide are they representing workers or non workers, the high paid public sector or the lower paid private sector worker. They also have to decide are they representing the real vulnerable or are they hung up on core payments to the dependency classes..

washman3

We can only hope that this party will be consigned to the dustbin of history joining the Greens and the PDs.
The 'elder lemons' at the top simply do not give a hoot at this stage as the will be ready to ride off into the sunset with their massive pensions, aka FF prior to the last election.:mad:

Phoebas

washman3 wrote: »

We can only hope that this party will be consigned to the dustbin of history joining the Greens and the PDs.

The Green Party are still alive and kicking - just about.

washman3

Phoebas wrote: »

The Green Party are still alive and kicking - just about.

Alive? yes.
Kicking? don't think so.!!
Hopefully this pathetic shower of pandering headbangers will never be allowed to make important decisions in this country again.:mad:

RobertKK

The Labour party is really the workers party.

Eamon Gilmore when Communism was going strong, supported the lovely regimes of North Korea, the Soviet Union, East Germany and every other communist regime going.
Obviously had no problem with concentration camps or human rights abuses.
Then the whole thing collapsed in Eastern Europe and some saw the writing on the wall, a split in the workers party and they rebranded as Democratic Left, or more like the leftovers of the workers party.
To get real power, the people in DL saw the need to be part of a more popular and mainstream left party.
The Labour party were stupid to allow in extremists into their party and then allow them to takeover the party.

Gilmore has proven himself to be an accomplished liar and the people are sick of them.
Could never understand why people voted for people in the Labour party who are associated with the workers party and how they supported regimes who put people into concentration camps and gulags to die.
Now they are overpaid champagne socialists.

flutered

RobertKK wrote: »

Gilmore has proven himself to be an accomplished liar and the people are sick of them.
Could never understand why people voted for people in the Labour party who are associated with the workers party and how they supported regimes who put people into concentration camps and gulags to die.
Now they are overpaid champagne socialists.

and the will remain overpaid despicable human waste until they die, unfortunatly for my country and all the honost people in it, add to them the sleeze from drumcondra, the clowen from offaly, add to the mix, the bottle blond bimboette from mayo, who will not stop until the majority of my country men are derided in abject poverty, for that pleasure he will trouser a teachers pension, a tds pension and a t-shocks pension, how many pensions will our spiffing president trouser, one pension for all of them, let the merkle set the amount, the same as they set the amount for the disabled, their carers and theose that they have every intention of making poorer than poor.

oscarBravo

flutered wrote: »

and the will remain overpaid despicable human waste until they die, unfortunatly for my country and all the honost people in it, add to them the sleeze from drumcondra, the clowen from offaly, add to the mix, the bottle blond bimboette from mayo, who will not stop until the majority of my country men are derided in abject poverty, for that pleasure he will trouser a teachers pension, a tds pension and a t-shocks pension, how many pensions will our spiffing president trouser, one pension for all of them, let the merkle set the amount, the same as they set the amount for the disabled, their carers and theose that they have every intention of making poorer than poor.

It really is a shame we weren't offered the opportunity to vote for someone other than those people, isn't it?

Wait, how did all of those people get into positions of power?

petronius

Laughing at " but expect Lab to have integrity"

Even Ruairi Quinn and Pat Rabbitte acknowledge they lie and say things before elections, and sign pledges, which they have no intention of keeping to

They only want to fatten up their pension plans with a few more years in the ministerial merc.

So has it been Labours way or Frankfurts way - even the misguided labour party lemming would have to admit it has been Frankfurts way