The coalition Tango

The vulnerability of Labour threatens the return of teh Coalition in spite of the buoyant optimism of Fine Gael.

In the weeks before the budget the Government had commissioned qualitative opinion surveys on percepptions of the country's economic conndition and on the need for drastic acction. The surveys showed there was a considerable awareness of the gravity of the situation and of the need for severe measures. It was in this context that senior ministers went into the budget debate knowing that the fate of their Government was at risk.

When Jim Kemmy indicated after the budget statement that he would not support the Government in the lobbies that night Garret FitzGerald, Peter Barry, John Bruton and a few others were ready for another election campaign. FitzGerald made one final effort to coax Kemmy into the Govvernment lobby. Sean Loftus dithered tantalisingly at the top of the steps before tottering into the Fianna Fail side. At 8.15 prn on January 27 the Taoiseach told the House: "in view of the result of the vote, I will prooceed immediately to Aras an Uachhtarain to seek dissolution from the President. "

The June 1981 Fine Gael election campaign had bettered even the Fiannna Fail campaign of 1977. The straategy committee which ran that cammpaign had met on a number of occaasions after June to review their perrformance - the general view was that they had done a magnificent job. It was those meetings after the '81 election which managed to keep the committee together and thereby proovide a ready-made vehicle for the '82 campaign when the Government unnexpectedly fell. It is likely that the cohesiveness of the Fine Gael strategy committee and its swift recomposition once the new campaign was declared will prove a decisive factor in this election.

There was no room for agonising about the issues on which the Coalition would have to fight the election Ðit would have to be in defence of the budget and on the issues arising from it. A swift initial decision was taken to remove VAT from children's clothes and footwear but that was as far as the Government's credibility could go without damage - they were locked into the issue.

The June '81 campaign had been very much pre-planned and preaged - in the nature of things that could not be so for this election. To a large extent this has been to Garret FitzGerald's advantage. He has been more spontaneous on this occasion and has had a better feel for the issues than previously. His self-confidence has also been firm. He was positively ebulliant on the night that the election was declared and his enthusiasm transsmitted itself to the group which asssembled in his office at Leinster House when he had returned from the Park.

This was the strategy committee, under Sean O'Leary, which had asssembled once the news of the Governnment's fall became known, along with some senior ministers, O'Leary was reeappointed Director of Elections and the June organisation went smoothly into gear.

There were initial difficulties howwever. The most obvious one was the uncertain ty about Labour's position in the campaign - would they fight a joint campaign or would Labour go it alone with consequent damage to the credibility of the Government team? Then there were liaison difficulties between the Government and the straategy committee - who would decide on itineraries, on the content of addvertising, on the timing of major speeches, television appearances etc.

Peter Sutherland, the Attorney General, emerged as a central figure in the co-ordination of Government and party activities. He had been on the June strategy committee and of course was now a member of the Government.

Everybody was aware that this elecction would be greatly different to the last one. It was primarily a one or two issue campaign - the budget and the credibility of the leaders. It was also an election that would be fought out mainly on television. In the initial jousts the Fine Gael repressentatives scored notable success over the Fianna Fail men. John Kelly got the campaign off to a resounding start by roundly defeating Albert Reynolds, who should never have gone on television that night suffering as he was from a combination of jet lag (he had just returned from holidaying in Florida) and lack of sleep the night before, when the election was called. Alan Dukes clobbered Desmond 0' Malley, Peter Barry held his own against Brian Lenihan, while John Bruton at first drew with Martin O'Donoghue and then scored heavily over him when they were both faced by three journalists. Later on however, the two Labour men, Michael O'Leary and Barry Desmond, were to lose out to Des O'Malley (this was an unsightly' brawl in Cork) and George Colley respectively.

But inevitably the highlight of the campaign was going to be the TV connfrontation between Garret FitzGerald and Charles Haughey - there was no ducking a head-to-head contest on this occasion.

FitzGerald lost the TV debate of the last election. He was nervous, distracted and tired throughout it and never got into his stride. It was one of the surprises of that campaign for he had come to public prominence through television and was widely reegarded as the most talented political performer on "the box."

One of the reasons for that poor performance was FitzGerald's deep personal antipathy towards his poliitical rival, coupled with a sense of guilt for having gone overboard against Haughey when the latter was proposed as Taoiseach in the Dail in December 1979 - then FitzGerald had referred to Haughey's "flawed pedigree" and had made allusions to a dark side in his opponent's personality: "recognising how much I cannot say for reasons that all in this House understand."

Thus the television confrontation on Tuesday night is all the more inntriguing. Will FitzGerald again be mesmerised by his disdain for Haughey or will his natural ease on television come through? It could decide the election.

Both FitzGerald and Haughey will spend most of Monday and Tuesday resting and preparing for that debate and although the stakes are higher for Haughey, given the yawning credibility gap between him and the Taoiseach, FitzGerald could swing the election away from the Coalition by another indifferent performance against a conntender who is certain to be psyched up  again for the confrontation.

The press conference in the Shellbourne Hotel on Thursday, Febbruary 11, to announce the details of the National Development Corporaation could well be remembered as the death throes of the Labour Party.

It is not just that it was an entirely chaotic affair, which revealed cruelly yet again the lack of seriousness on the part of the Labour leader, not even the uproarious farce the affair turned into. Rather that a cherished mark of Labour's identity was being trodden into the mire to be left without trace.

The Labour Party has been talking about a National Development Corrporation or some such body since the heady days of the late 'sixties. Justin Keating used to beat hard on that drum before he personally demonnstrated the folly of ill-conceived state ventures with his instigation of such glorious monuments to state enterrprises such as NET, Irish Steel and of course Bula - between them a total loss of somewhere in the region of £200m.

When the last Coalition was still in office the cry for a National Devvelopment Corporation was again raised, this time by Brendan Halligan, in an attempt to display some evidence of socialist achievement during the lifeetime of that Government. Committments were entered into in early

1977 but came to nought when .the Government was defeated in June of. that year.

The idea was given another outing in the Labour manifesto for the last election. It was proposed that the NDC should have an equity capital of £300m. to be taken up over a period of years and an upper borrowing limit of £IOOOm. The programme was tanntalisingly vague on what specifically the organisation might do.

The idea appeared again in the Joint Programme for Government (the Gaiety document) but this time its equity capital was cut to £200m. and its borrowing limit to £500m.

When the details of the NDC were announced last Wednesday there was evidently no clear idea on the part of either the leader of the Labour Party or any of his officials of what exactly the NDC would do and what funds it would have at its disposal for new projects - it seemed at the end of the press conference thatit would have no funds for new ventures as the funds provided would be more than absorbbed by the massive loss-makers under its aegis.

It would have been difficult to identify a single policy for which Laabour stood that wasn't compromised entirely by the participation in Governnment, apart from the NDC. Now it

seemed there was nothing to that either.

Labour's identity has been almost entirely squashed in Government with Fine Gael. Garret FitzGerald has moved in to take over the social demoocratic ground in Irish politics - the ground increasingly occupied by Laabour in the past decade since it abanndoned its pretensions to socialism. Unnder the weight of FitzGerald's pressence, the Labour identity has been

suffocated. .

The party was placed in an imposssible dilemma at the beginning of this campaign. If it were to fight on its own it would have had to disown the budget which its three ministers parrticipated in formulating in cabinet and for which the entire Parliamentary Party voted. Yet were they not to fight on a separate platform they would be un distinguishable from Fine Gael.

Only five of Labour's 15 seats can be considered safe - those in the two Cork city constituencies, South Tippperary, and Dublin South West and Dun Laoghaire. The party is in difficulty in each of the remaining constituencies, with there being a virtual certainty of it losinp seats in Wexford and Meath. There are only three constituencies where the party is in with a chance of taking an extra seat: Dublin North West, Dublin South Central and Dubblin South East. Even the seat of the party . leader is in danger - were O'Leary to lose he would become the fourth of six Labour leaders to be defeated in a general election.