Former Labour Party leader Ruairi Quinn at the party’s ‘think-in’ 2014
As he steps back from struggle and spin,
The fellow they call Ruairí Quinn,
Reflects on a life,
That’s had plenty of strife,
And more than one noteworthy win.
John Moynes
Sam Boal/Rollingnews
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Another liar retires with a fat pension as a reward. Good riddance.
So Quinn says that the working class
Don’t see the sun shine from Labour’s @ss
Good thing he’s retired
Cos he too would be fired
With the rest of the fetid morass
I like this
he was an outstanding public servant, the best Minister of Finance we ever had
We’ve had good ones?
Yep.
Him for example.
When he left that office we had the most equitable and stable tax system we ever had, debt was cut and we were running a surplus.
Then came McCreevy.
*shudder*
Charlie was truly incompetent.
It is a bit sad that Labour are going down in flames. But to blame the electorate and Labour voters is just so arrogant and blind.
They’ve done great work in the past, the marriage referendum, contraception, all that stuff. But everything they do is wrapped up in the right-wing governments they support. I could buy you a diamond ring, but if I encased it in dog crap and threw it at your window you wouldn’t be pleased.
We don’t need a social democratic party that builds support on progressive policies, jumps at any chance of power, compromises all it’s principles, it’s support plummets, gets ejected, and the cycle begins again. It’s being content with scraps from the Fianna Gael table and actively retarding any prospects of an actual social democratic opposition/alternative.
So if labour had avoided coalitions and sat on the sidelines out of principle would any of that great work you talk about come to pass in ireland? The eternal question I suppose.
Great article from Quinn, he’s correct about FOT, Ross and RBB.
And hate to wreck your buzz but our social democratic social democrats will jump at their chance for power in about 7-10 days.
Look at the results. After each turn at coalition they’re reduced back to their core vote, if not lower. The changes they make are incremental, and always at the price of the other 75% of the Programme of Government that is right wing and gave us the mess of a public/private system we have.
They can never gain momentum if every time their support rises, they throw their lot in with someone from the other end of the political spectrum and are punished for it. I vote Labour for Labour policies – I continually get a Fine Gael government. That’s where my vote goes, to Enda Kenny.
I think it’s almost incontestable that if they had stayed out in 2011, we’d be a few weeks from the first Labour-led government in Irish history.
Hindsight is a beautiful thing, and you can be sure that if it happened to be the case Burton and Gilmore would be kicking themselves. Perhaps they are *grins wickedly* I hope they are.
Hindsight?
Fantasy.
I don’t know. Ahjaysis has a point. You can’t know what the political landscape would be, had Labour not gone into coalition with FG. Labour do a good job as an opposition party, and disgust for FG tactics is strong at the moment. I believe that any party in the position that FG are in would be at risk from a credible centre left party. Had Labour not sold out 5 years ago, perhaps it might have been different for them this time.
Fantasy?
Look at the support for the anti-water charges movement and anti-property charges before it – Labour, the second largest party in this Dail, were they in opposition would OWN that movement. It’s already headed by the unions who once supported Labour. They ran on those exact principles. Instead it goes to Sinn Fein and PBPAAAXYZ.
The greatest arguments against this government that the other parties are using to win support are the principles Labour stood on in 2011 and promptly cast off – they’ve ceded their own lawn to the tanks of SF and rest of the fragmented left that isn’t supporting a right-wing government.
…well so last time out they shouldn’t have snatched at their chance to be at the trough and stuck to their principles (heh or the ones they’re supposed to have at least instead of turning up at soup kitchen openings!?)
Labour are dead to me and their deviation is no glitch imo so I hope they crash and burn, I’ll make sure to add my drop of petrol.
Sorry Ahjayziz but did you even read the article?
It’s like he predicted what you would say and prebuffed it.
Good article, great man.
There’s barely a line in that piece I could fault, but I’ve always been a big fan of Ruairí Quinn so I’m not objective enough for this line of discussion.
If Labour could sell their achievements the way Ruairí does in that piece rather than faffing about they might have saved a few votes.
They’ve continually been uber sh*t at communicating any of the good they’ve done.
They haven’t achieved anything in 30 years.
They’ve ignored the current housing crisis, homelessness, the health system, the education system.
Instead we get nothing of substance. Fupp them, I hope they vanish off the face of the earth.
Not a great man, just another politician with his fat snout in the trough.
Re: 3rd level fees:
“No. It wasn’t a mistake,” he replies. “I was asked to sign a promise. I signed it in good faith
He signed a pledge and broke it before the ink was dry. He signed it with every intention of breaking it.
He’s a snake, Labour are snakes. They conned me out of my vote in 2011, they won’t do it again.
…and this adequately sums up why the hard left will never get within an a@&e’s roar of power.
If only all things in life and politics were black and white and not just one big clump of grey.
If only
Steve – it;s called integrity. Do you exempt politicians from a requirement to have any?
It’s not some revolutionary notion that when you sign something, with your own name, and swear to do it/not do it – that you don’t do it.
If Quinn had had any integrity he wouldn’t have taken the education portfolio, that’s an easy sidestep. But he did and within weeks of making a promise, to young first time voters, damningly enough, he went and confirmed every stereotype of the politician and politics.
This actually is a black and white issue – he promised not to do something, in a cast-iron way – and he went about increasing it by 500 euro a year.
Yoru attitude is the reason we have such gormless liars of politicians – you hold them to no standards, you get low standards.
No I agree with ye there, integrity is extremely important. I have always said on here that labour were stupid to promise so much in the 2011 GE. The election slogan should have been “we will do our best, like we have always done in coalition”. It might have meant a few less TDs but they could have held their head higher. They are effectively paying for that mistake now. Quinn regrets that – it’s clear in the article.
Ahjaysis I’m inferring your under 30, all your ire is directed at the last 5 years and your reference to “young first time voters”. Quinn’s article is wider in scope, as is labour’s legacy, where compromise was key to enabling the passing of progressive legislation in the years prior to 2011. It’s deserves far more respect than the vitriol spouted in the last few weeks .
I did read it – and I disagree. I’m not some mindless drone who’s been brainwashed by the media he has problems with. I’m not deaf and blind – I remember the Joan Burton who I admired greatly, who was so eloquent and damning when condemning Fianna Fail’s cronyism and then I remember the Joan Burton who installed David Begg a month before the election as pensions Tsar and used the same bloody script as the FF ministers of the time to avoid the question and pretend not to understand the principles she once fought for when asked.
I hear when they say they protected ‘Core Benefits’ – and then I remember the concept of Core Benefits didn’t exist five years ago, that wasn’t a term – Core Benefits is defined as the benefits they didn’t cut, which is convenient. And since she cut Jobseekers for anyone unlucky to be young, I guess that makes them Non-Core Citizens. It’ll make them Australian citizens, though.
A Labour party minister, for SOCIAL PROTECTION smiling for the cameras as she cuts the ribbon on a new food bank? She should have been in tears, pledging to do all in her power to make it obsolete as soon as possible. But no, she celebrated it.
Lone parents are now deemed to no longer need special support when their child turns seven. Seven year olds are able to mind themselves now, I guess. Get them a Jobbridge.
You’re a bit unfair holy man
I’m not going to offer a counter argument other than without Joan etc there there would be a lot more food banks in my opinion
How do you work that out? What measures has she taken to further support people in danger of food poverty? Do you reckon lone parents with “grown-up” seven year old’s aren’t in the queue for those wonderful food banks? Which of the five budgets that the ESRI has independently defined as regressive which she voted for did the most damage, do you think?
Is it doing that that distracted her so much that she never got around to adjusting the rent allowance to take account of massively booming rent rates? Is that why there’s over 1,500 homeless children in Dublin now?
I’m not even going to bother really as you’re such an obvious ranting geebag
However she retained most of the social welfare benefit payments at their current levels including schemes such as Back to education, back to work which are of immense practical help.
She’s not minister for housing
She’s also not responsible for historical legacy debts being paid for by the Irish people while she tries to maintain some kind of benefits framework
And I suppose you think that encouraging women to be baby machines lying around at home all their lives makes for a progressive society? It’s people like you who want to keep the poor down at the bottom where you can view them with hollow middle class pity
Next time don’t bother, pet. I don’t read past the first paragraph when it’s clear it’s written by a 15 year old who’s taking his first steps into talking to grown-ups ;o)
Hope you’re okay hun.
Everything they do has been in coalition with a right wing party. This is true, because they have never been elected with an overall majority or had the option of another left wing party to coalesce with.
Thus,there alternative would have been to never go into government at all.
As Quinn explains, this would mean never implementing any of Labour’s policies at all.
He makes a persuasive and rational case.
I’d argue that in many ways that is exactly what we need.
Look, what you want (and I suspect its the same as what I want) is never gonna happen.
The only political change that is gonna happen in this country is the FF/FG coalition.
As in no more civil war nonsense.
That’s it.
This is as Quinn says, a terribly conservative country.
In the past week and a half friends of mine have had a go at me saying that not voting for FF or FG is stupid or wasteful because either:
a) SD can’t win and will be in opposition and can do nothing from opposition (this is by far the worst argument for anything I have heard this week, given Cathrine Murphy’s work in the last Dáil but anyway)
b) All the others will tax the shite out of me to the point that I won’t be able to live.
Now point a) is incorrect but huge amounts of people will vote along those lines. Because for huge amounts of people voting is like picking a team for the world cup if Ireland doesn’t qualify.
Point b) is irrelevant because I personally believe that I can pay more in tax provided I can access the ensuing services. (and to put a point on it, I’m comfortable but I am not well off, I live frugally because sometimes really important things can get really expensive in Ireland)
But these are both reasons that people will take to heart.
What Quinn outlines there is the realistic situation that in order to REALLY affect change, you have to be in a position to dictate change, i.e. in Government.
Personally I put a premium on things like contraception and gay marriage, the things he rightly implies would never have happened if Labour (or some other Social Democratic party) were not in government.
The alternative isn’t noble, its a continuous Socialist & Social democrat opposition.
Which is a huge danger now. Because as much as I like and will vote for SD, they will only really take Labours vote. ( in areas where SF and FF aren’t already eating their lunch)
What you are proposing is a long term Social democratic opposition and centrist / centre right government.
There is no nobility in hurling from the ditch for 12 years in the hope that the next political apocalypse will usher in a new era of Social Democratic dominance.
Because it won’t for the same reason Labour are going to have a really bad day on Friday.
+1
According to Ruairi Quinn: “Ireland has…….. a government that keeps its word”
He is very cross about a Fintan O’Toole column on his desk………that he hasn’t read.
we’re now out of the crisis, according to Quinn, ignoring the fact that we most definitely are not.
we can borrow money at negative interest rates virtually. Since when is 1.5% negative interest rates?
He overlooks the QE programme and the fact that investors and cash are plentiful. This is why our interest rates are as low as they are
The Labour Party has always put the country first.
Moody’s are about to restore our full credit rating. Insider information or a guess?
The man is delusional.
In other news:
Outgoing Independent TD Michael Lowry has lost his bid to stop his prosecution on tax offences.
Mr Lowry is due to go on trial at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Enda Kenny once described Lowry as: a man of the highest integrity and honour
Dick Spring (Labour party)is on Dail record as saying “What we can take pleasure in is the fact that Deputy Lowry behaved impeccably when questions were raised about his business dealings.”
Labour party are totally without morals.
Labour now are like an episode of Bull Island. Everything is, “in the national interest.”
It’s just a coincidence that they are all retiring on stupidly large pensions for a poor performance. Had they any gumption, they wouldn’t have propped up Fine Gael for so long.
They will get their answer on Friday.