Tearing the arse out of a story: Indo hacks and Labour's "dilemma"

"Wouldn't it do your head in?", Vincent Browne rhetorically asked today in his Irish Times column.  He was talking about the positions adopted by Pat Rabbitte about possible post-election scenarios and putting Fianna Fáil back into government.  What does my head in is endless arse-tearing by commentators about hypothetical situations out of which a spurious news story is generated.  A wonderful example is today's lead in the Irish Independent: "Labour in disarray over deal with Ahern".  Answers to hypothetical questions given by Pat Rabbitte and Liz McManus have been pored over and

These series of contradictory statements by the Labour hierarchy, on what many political observers feel is an inevitable Fianna Fail/Labour coalition if the election results dictate it, is emerging as a key issue in the campaign.

What "political observers"?  Those writing the story presumably.  How is it "emerging as a key issue"?  Because they report that it is.  It's a circular process.  Journalists start talking or asking questions about hypothetical situations and they become true in the sense that they are being speculated about - by those same journalists!  "In particular it has left many floating voters confused about Labour's true intentions".  Is there any evidence of such confusion?  I imagine that most informed floating voters know perfectly well that the Labour leadership want to remove Fianna Fáil and the PDs from office and are attempting to structure the election campaign around a clear choice between two alignments of parties. 

"It will heap further pressure on Mr Rabbitte and his deputy to unequivocally clarify their position".   That "pressure" will be applied by political reporters at every opportunity because they have decided that that is the real story of the moment.  What really amused me was the following: "The studied silence of prominent Labour TD Brendan Howlin is also being viewed as significant by political observers".  Again, what "political observers" are we talking about?  Why none other than Messrs McKenna, Sheehan and Molony of course.  If Brendan Howlin had said anything - and he had no reason to - it would have been spun by the hacks as a leadership challenge.

Following Monday's coverage in the Indo that I have already discussed, Labour decided to put the questions submitted by the paper up on its website.  Question (2) was  "Would he not have an obligation to do so [enter coalition with FF], in the national interest, if the likely outcome otherwise was an early general election?"  Rabbitte's answer:

Of course I will take into account the national interest as Labour has always done. It is the very nature of politics that there can be disagreement on what constitutes the national interest at any particular juncture. It is my conviction that the national interest is best served at this time by replacing Fianna Fail and the PDs in government.

Bearing in mind that the phrase "national interest" is usually accompanied by the most self-serving load of guff, his answer is quite reasonable.  The national interest would also be best served by having a meaningful election battle between two alternative and competing blocs of parties and that there be clear and significant policy differences between them.  In 2002 Ruairí Quinn was, to say the least, equivocal about possible future coalition partners.  The fact that Quinn hedged his bets meant that the election was all about who would be going into government with FF.  Rabbitte is doing his best to make sure that this is not the case in 2007.

UPDATE
The Indo finally manage to print some Howlin quotes in this morning's edition, from an interview he gave a local Wexford paper from his holiday in Cape Town.  It's enough to generate the headline "Howlin breaks ranks over poll pact with FG".  So what did Howlin actually say? 

"But our Number One objective remains to advance the aspirations of the Labour party and the people who support it and we should pursue whatever strategy achieves that," he said. "We are going to present ourselves to the people, who are going to make their choice as to whether they want Fine Gael or Labour TDs. If not we will have to deal with the result the people give us."

He also said "I have always argued for flexibility" (as opposed to what? being rigid and unbending?).  The paper reports that Howlin "didn't want to comment specifically on Mr Rabbitte's recent remarks until he had a chance to study them in detail".  Nevertheless this reference to "flexibility" is enough for Fionnan Sheahan to conclude that Howlin's remarks were "the most graphic illustration yet of the unease within Labour over its pact with Fine Gael".  (By the way I'm not sure how those remarks could be a "graphic illustration" of anything).

Meanwhile, over at the Irish Times, Rabbitte tells Stephen Collins

"I think all I can say about it is that I have no intention of putting Fianna Fáil back in government, none at all, and I really don't think it is reasonable to ask me to say more than that; that is my settled position. I have no intention of putting Fianna Fáil back in government and I don't know how many different ways one can say that."

I feel his frustration...

Comments

[Michael]

Excellent point on the way some political journalists conduct their craft – manufacturing ‘facts’ from hypotheticals. However I can’t help thinking that the Labour leadership were unprepared, underestimating the extent to which some journalists and, of course, Fianna Fail, would attempt to exploit their coalition decision (preferring one party but not explicitly ruling out the other). While some attention has focused on the Greens and PDs, Labour has borne the brunt of this speculation but this is simply down to the fact that Labour's strength makes it a more pivotal swing party vis-a-vis either Fine Gael or Fianna Fail. There is a larger issue here, though.

And that’s the extent, or not, to which Labour strategists have absorbed the full implications of the Spring decision to enter coalition with Fianna Fial in 1992. Before then it was automatically and unquestioningly assumed that Labour would only join with Fine Gael in government (at least since the 1940s). The questions that Rabbitte faces today were unthinkable back then. The full sense of this change didn't become apparent until 2002 (given that in the previous election Labour campaigned with its government partners to be returned). Quinn tried to copy Spring’s approach but it ended in failure since (a) a lot of people, not unreasonably, wanted to know what government Labour would join (to which Labour had no answer), (b) Fine Gael was taken even less seriously than it is today, and (c) ironically Spring never campaigned, even in 1992, on an ‘all-options-open’ platform – he literally sprung it on the Labour conference and the electorate after the election.

Rabbitte has tried to repair the defieincies in Quinn’s strategy, but the dynamic has so changed that even entering a pact with one party, doesn’t rule out the option of joining with the other party. So in some senses, we're back to the 2002 equation - espcially on a slow news day with journalists that make stories out of hypotheticals. Labour will have to address this problem in a more thorough-going fashion, but that can't happen until after the election. So until then Labour will just have to see it through and concentrate on the issues - of which Jan O'Sullivan's recent piece in the Irish Times is an excellent example. Our poor-performing education system - now that's a real political story.

[crocodile]

This kind of political agenda-setting on the part of the newspapers applies to individual issues as well as to parties. Ever notice how from time to time an issue that has been simmering away in the background suddenly seems to be everywhere, without any actual event, any news item, to justify this prominence? One example I can think of in recent years is the torrent of articles about 18 months ago telling us that child care would be the big political issue of the next election. One that's underway at the moment is the campaign - it can't be called news reporting - by the education corrs against fee-paying schools.
There are so few broadsheets - and therefore such a limited number of journalists dealing with any one subject - in Ireland, that a bit of well-organised lobbying can transform almost any hobbyhorse into an agenda-topping hot issue.

[Dan Sullivan]

Rabbitte should say that if neither Enda Kenny nor Bertie Ahern are elected as Taoiseach that the Dail should recess for a week and he will put his own name forward and FF TDs are welcome to vote for him as Taoiseach and that he might allow some of them to serve in a Labour led government.