Why is the Irish Labour party such a failure ?

They are caught between our "right" parties actually being more centrist and then the loonies giving anything further left a bad name.

They also got decimated after a stint in government. I think they had a huge increase one election and then were crucified in the next.

(I'd say SF are more populist than socialist in reality tbf)

they supported water charges......that finished them off and good riddance.

"Populist" has a meaning. Wikipedia is a starting point for anyone confused. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism

For an even quicker overview, simple English wikipedia is here https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism

The "Every political party is populist" is such a bogus and blatantly untrue argument. Anyone who uses it clearly doesn't know what populist means.

If all politics is populism, why do they bother having 2 different words for it? And at that, 2 words that have 2 totally different meanings.

I think you sum it up very well,, Bannasidhe.

But in addition, they got onto the same band wagon as FFG in spurning any advance from SF regarding coalition talks. They were clearly happier with talking to FF and FG . In that situation they reinforced their irrelevance because if they were not going to participate in a broadly left leaning government that what was the point of the Labour party. There was a time when Labour would have been agitating to lead such a broad coalition.

Kelly didn't help pushing the water charges, even after the government fell. Any shift from general taxation to individual charges is a transfer of wealth from the less well off to the better well off but Labour either couldn't see that or refused to recognise it.

Labour shifted to become the party of middle class Dublin (similar with the green party).

Appealing more to champagne socialists than the working class & trade unionists of their old base.

Labour is very much the Irish Times/RTE dinner party now. It is not the party of the Dublin middle classes though. The Greens are essentially, as someone described them, "FG on bikes". There was an influx of the type of people who would have formerly joined Labour after Labour imploded int 2016 and they, in true Stickes/Labour fashion, tried to take over the Greens and replace Eamon Ryan but, much like Labour, failed. The Greens are very different from the continental Greens who tend to be more Left-wing and almost Communist. The Irish Greens are more Right-wing. The problem for Labour is that in its move to the Right, Labour became more extreme than FG. It is now competing for the same Right of centre votes as FF/FG/Greens. It has also been replaced at the trade union by SF. There isn't really a political niche for the party now and its TDs are simply elected on their own personal vote rather than on any ideologically Labour party vote.

Regards...jmcc

There was a big failure of leadership surrounding gay marriage and abortion. Both of those should have been hammered home as Labour referendums because as you say Labour were fighting for them while everyone else was still under the bishops thumb.

Amazing that FG of all people got the credit in the end.

IMO Labour dont represent working class interests. They latch onto identity politics issues rather than substantive topics that impact all working people.

They represent the interests more of the (sterotypical) South Dublin voter rather than a shop worker or someone on the average industrial wage.

Simply Fine Gaelers with a guilty conscience.

I think they represent the interests of poorer people ( well, society at large including poor people) but they talk like middle class, educated people -because that's what they are. Isn't it interesting that they're most successful in leafy, South Dublin? People who are generally doing alright and are happy to vote for a party that will probably tax them a bit more to provide services for the less well off. And somehow both Labour and the South Dublin voters are seen as gobshytes rather than people who are happy to put their money where their mouth is for a better country.

Maybe people think Labour should learn to ham up North side Dublin accents and forget their grammar and start exchanging th for d in their speech, but I doubt that would make their detractors happy either. I think they're authentic - and authenticity doesn't usually win elections.

Whereas the likes of Mary Lou, Paul Murphy and RBB dragged themselves up from being barefoot on the streets................

You're right of course but it's the cultural/intellectual style of a certain kind of South Dublin liberal which sticks in people's craw, not whether they went to Trinity or come from wealth.

Desmond Fennell wrote about this in 'Nice People and Rednecks' and his other books.

Ture that they weren't born poor, but so what? Why is not being born poor held against the people who advocate for people less fortunate than themselves?

Should only people born poor advovare for the poor? The UK has a situation where they have a party of people generally born very wealthy who advocate for people like themselves and I don't think that's a more desirable situation.

It was a response to someone going on about "Smoke salmon socialists".

I actually had to google who the current Labour leader is to check and is Alan Kelly whose father was a small farmer from Tipperary who quit dairying to work on the roads for the local county Council. He attended Nenagh CBS.

MLM, on the other hand grew up as the daughter of a surveyor and builder. She attended a private secondary school.

RBB was brought up by an accountant and attended the well known D4 Rugby school St. Michaels

Paul Murphy's father was a senior manager in Mars Ireland and PM attended the fee paying St. Killian's and later the Institute up on Leeson Street.

Which of the above four do you think would have been least likely to have been brought up on smoked-salmon?

Kelly, if we're going by the heuristic that farmers, rural people and road workers are less likely eat smoked salmon.

I never understand the objection to smoked salmon socialist. Someone who is wealthy is entitled to spend money on nice things. Somehow that's turned into an insult when they advocate for better services for people with less than themselves.

It's seen as hypocrisy or a contradiction, but it doesn't bare a moment's scrutiny. They have money, but advocate for people with less than themselves. Why would that be a contradiction? Isn't thst precisely the kind of thing politicians are supposed to do? Arent they specifically not supposed to only look after people like themselves or the wealthiest in society?

It's an accusation that's only made against people who advocate for those with less than themselves.

Michael D. Higgins is intellectual, popular, unassuming and from Clare/Galway as an example of someone who is an intellectual but not of the 'type' I'm describing.

Like I said it's a certain kind of affected South Dublin cultural/intellectual style that many people don't like. 'The D4 set' etc.

Some of it is reverse snobbery, some of it a natural reaction to a kind of charmless intellectual vanity coupled with class assumptions. Sometimes it takes a Dub v countryside form.

It may be unfair but the perception is there.

???

OK. So if the people who want to advocate for the poor all stay in social care, then who will help the poor?

My mrs works in that kind of area. She trained to lead a service so she can actually help people by setting standards, training, adapting the services so they can meet evolving needs, learning from analogous services in other areas or countries. Is she helping people or is she someone who sees the "lower classes" from across the river as their own little pathway to management? Is that the connotation for everyone who goes into management or administration of social services?

What about of my mrs goes higher in the service and manages a regional or national service? Is she then helping more people or just using more idiots? What about going into politics to actually help shape policy to help even more people? Somehow that has even worse connotations, in your view. Better staying as a minimum wage care assistant - the only place to do this work without any connotations and with absolutely no influence over policy or how it's managed

When they started shilling for Fine Gael and pushing for the privatisation of our water infrastructure, that was probably the end of them as far as a lot of their supporters were concerned. It's astonishing that there are people like Alan Kelly now at the head of the table and moan Joan had never really had much support from Labour's traditional base. Plus there's a raft of nothing people floating around like Aodhán O'Riordáin.

They're adrift now in a sea of uncertainty because of the ill-thought out decisions a few years ago and fully deserve to be where they are.

Water services shouldn't be privatised. But there definitely should be water charges based off usage.