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CHAPTER 3

ELECTION CAMPAIGN

On Monday mornings, I held my constituency clinic at Park House, a small community centre on Library Road in the centre of Dun Laoghaire. Since becoming Party Leader, my conversations there with constituents about their housing, social welfare or other concerns were sometimes interrupted by phone calls from our press office or head office. On Monday 22 November, 2010 one such call came in from Tony Heffernan to tell me that the Leader of the Green Party, John Gormley, had just said that a general election should be held early in the New Year. Apparently, the Green Party intended to stay in government until then to see through the December budget and the Finance and Social Welfare Bills that would follow, but after that, they were out.

In effect, this was the start of the general election campaign. Gormley’s declaration, coinciding with the arrival of the Troika, meant that the countdown to political change had started. There was no date set, but there was now no doubt there would be a general election sometime early in 2011. This was the moment I had been preparing for since I had become Leader of the Labour Party a little more than three years previously. Back then, my ambition to take Labour up to near thirty seats at the next election was considered to be overly ambitious, but not anymore. Opinion polls were now predicting that Labour would get twice, maybe even three times the level of support we got in the previous three general elections.

For most of its 100 year history, Labour had been a 10 per cent party. It got 10 per cent of the vote in the 1997 General Election under Dick Spring, the same in 2002 under Ruairí Quinn, and again in 2007 under Pat Rabbitte. Slightly better results were achieved in the Local and European Elections in 2004 (14.2 per cent) and 2009 (14.2 per cent). It was no wonder Ireland was often described as having a two-and-a-half party system, with the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael civil war divide being defining. Since the 1920s, Labour was considered to be the ‘half party’ As Leader I was determined to lift Labour’s sights and to make Irish politics a three way contest. As Dick Spring had shown in 1992, when he spoke about the idea of a ‘rotating Taoiseach’, many people wanted a credible government alternative to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. And it wasn’t going to be easy, however, or happen overnight. Politics is a sluggish beast; it can take many laps before any significant change in positioning is noticed.

During my first two years as Leader, there was little sign of a lift. The Red C series of opinion polls had us consistently around 10 per cent. In fact, their poll in September 2008, just a year after I became Leader, put us on just 9 per cent. IPSOS/MRBI had us on 11-13 per cent until February 2009, when we shot up to 22 per cent and Fianna Fáil fell back to 26 per cent. In June 2010 it jumped again to 29 per cent, and to 33 per cent in their September 2010 poll.

I was canvassing in the Markets area of Belfast with my good friend Alasdair McDonnell of the SDLP in the Westminster Election in April 2010, when news came through that Labour had reached 24 per cent in the Red C poll. The news cheered everybody, including Alasdair, who was fighting a difficult battle for re-election in Belfast South. A Millward/Brown poll for TV3 News on 23 September 2010 put Labour on 35 per cent, Fine Gael on 30 per cent and Fianna Fail on 22 per cent. It concluded:

A Labour Taoiseach is now a possibility. Our national poll reveals an electorate looking to break the two and a half party system. Who leads the next government looks to be the biggest question now facing the Irish people. With 35 per cent of first preference votes, the Labour Party have emerged as the strongest party in what is an extremely competitive scenario. It can now credibly assert its potential to lead the next government. Eamon Gilmore is also the most popular party leader for Taoiseach, underlining Labour’s surge. 35 per cent opt for him, compared to 19 per cent for Enda Kenny and just 11 per cent for Brian Cowen.

Other polls were confirming this pattern. On June 27 2010, the Red C poll gave the choices for Taoiseach as Gilmore (40%); Kenny (28%) and Cowen (18%). In their poll on September 29 2010, IPSOS/MRBI asked the question: ‘If the next General Election were to result in a Fine Gael and Labour coalition, who would you prefer to see as Taoiseach?’ 48% replied Gilmore and 26% said Kenny. The lead was consistent over all regional, age, gender and social categories, including among farmers where the result was Gilmore 42% and Kenny 33%. The only exception was Connaught/Ulster where it broke even at 37% each.

‘Gilmore for Taoiseach’ was no longer an aspirational slogan on a Labour Youth poster. The idea was now being taken seriously right across the country.

For a political leader, opinion polls are a form of political continuous assessment. There is a poll almost every week. Whether you are up or down in them, for at least two days afterwards you are answering media questions about your performance. And then things move on. They can be misleading, though. Labour’s local and European Election results in 2009, although they were our best ever, still fell short of the poll ratings both before and after the election. Short of my ambitions, as well. I wasn’t about to get complacent over the general election because of surveys.

To convert opinion poll ratings into election results, a party needs good electable candidates; good organisation in the constituency; money to pay for a campaign; and then an effective election campaign. In 1992, Dick Spring did not have enough candidates to turn votes into seats. The Labour Party in 2010 still had little or no organisation in many parts of the country. We had far less money than Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or Sinn Féin, and in previous elections our campaign had faltered in the last 10 days.

I knew the Party needed considerable modernising and looked to Mark Garrett to address these shortcomings. Mark was a former Chairperson of Labour Youth. He had supported my unsuccessful bid for the leadership in 2002, and subsequently we worked together on the Spring Commission that Pat Rabbitte set up to examine the constituencies. He was working with McKinsey Management Consultants in New York when I took over leadership and I asked him to come home to head up my team. Fortunately, Mark was up for the challenge. Brendan Halligan, who had performed a similar role in the 60s and 70s for Brendan Corish, suggested that this would be my most important appointment, and advised me to leave party business to Mark so that I could concentrate on national matters.

With a brief to open up the Party’s communication to as wide an audience as possible, Mark set about updating and professionalising Labour’s operations. Image and design were improved and standardised. All the Party’s new promotional videos were professionally produced and we started to make more use of social media to get our message out. Constituency events were transformed from traditional-style meetings in dreary union halls to receptions in local hotels to which a broader range of people was invited. Party conferences were enhanced through the use of design, presentation and floor management. The 2010 Party Conference in Galway was the first time all these new strands came together.

Party conferences are invariably stressful for political leaders. As well as the routine of work that has to be done – motions to be addressed, reports passed, officers and supportive executives elected, the Leader is under an intense spotlight and suddenly very directly accountable to everyone face to face. And then there’s the live television broadcast of the leader’s speech – the keynote event of the year for every political party.

I would generally, with Colm O'Reardon and Jean O'Mahony, begin to prepare for my speech about two weeks in advance of the conference. The content had to be carefully researched, politically sharp, engaging, inspiring and fresh. The delivery had to be a full-scale performance that satisfied all expectations. To satisfy the television producer, the length had to be spot on – with allowances made for audience reaction and possible off-the-cuff remarks, or you could find yourself being cut just at the key moment.

On Friday afternoon, 16 April 2010, I arrived at the magnificent Bailey/Allen Hall on the NUI Galway campus for the usual full run-through of the speech with the RTÉ crew. The podium and autocue were situated right in the middle of the hall and, unusually, there was a tiered bank of seating to the rear of the speaking position. Mark intended to position a crowd of mostly young members here to give a sense of the audience for the viewers at home. Directly facing me on the opposite wall was a large screen on which I could see myself as I delivered the speech. Speaking in such an unconventional setting and having a large crowd behind me was unsettling enough, but I was just not ready for the screen. ‘That screen has got to go, Mark,’ I declared. ‘It will distract me completely during the speech. I can’t watch myself on television and deliver a convincing message at the same time.’

‘Sorry, Eamon, no. The screen stays. It’s not meant for you. It’s there to give the people behind you something to look at during your speech so that they won’t be moving their heads about and distracting the people watching at home’. I was too impressed with the thoroughness of how every angle had been considered to object further. I’d just have to put up with the mirror effect of the screen and play my part as best I could. Happily, the event was a success.

The selection of candidates for the 2011 General Election would prove a bit more challenging for our team and was controversial for us in many locations. I had made it clear from early on that I wanted to contest every constituency, and to have more than one candidate in some. Unlike the situation with the local and European elections, there was no shortage of prospective candidates for the general election. Labour’s fortunes were on the rise and it was, in some respects, the jersey to wear at the time. I was approached by some high profile figures that were very keen to get on board. However, it soon became apparent that most had little interest in being TDs. They wanted to be ministers right away. One offered to run on condition that I assured him he would be Minister for Finance.

In constituencies where Labour was weak we did have to look outside the Party for candidates. In Roscommon-South Leitrim we selected Independent Councillor, John Kelly, from Ballaghadereen, and to support his candidacy we held the 2010 annual parliamentary party meeting in the Abbey Hotel in Roscommon town. Independent Councillor, Jimmy Harte, whose father Paddy had been a long-time Fine Gael TD for Donegal, came on board. The Harte family are greatly respected in Donegal, and I recall Pat Rabbitte returning from a constituency visit there enthused that the local media thought Jimmy would take a seat.

A young Independent candidate, barrister and farmer Michael McNamara, caught our eye during the 2009 European Elections. I met him in Ennis during the second Lisbon Referendum, and with the generous support of Councillor Pascal Fitzgerald, he overcame some local resistance to become our successful candidate in Clare. In Mayo, the local media speculated that Councillor Michael Kilcoyne, a trade union official and former member of the Labour Party, might re-join, and that if he did, he would win a seat for Labour. He probably would have, but it never happened, and I therefore asked former Independent TD, Dr Gerry Cowley, to stand for Labour. He joined us at the 2010 Conference in Galway.

Encouraged by Willie Penrose, we asked the former Progressive Democrat TD, Mae Sexton, whose family has deep roots in the local trade union movement, to stand in Longford. John Whelan, the former editor of the Leinster Leader, was recommended to us by some of his friends in the media. After some strong resistance in the local organisation, he was selected as our candidate for the five-seater Laois-Offaly constituency, resulting in unpleasant scenes at the selection convention in Portlaoise and several resignations from the Party.

The new candidate selection system gave the Party’s organisation committee the right to shortlist candidates, but ultimately the choice was made by the individual members at a constituency selection convention. Many of these conventions were very keenly contested.

In Wicklow, Liz McManus was retiring from the Dáil and she had hoped that her son Ronan, a councillor in Bray, would replace her. Instead, the convention selected Anne Ferris (Liz’s Dáil assistant) who went on to win a seat. She was joined on the Labour ticket by Councillor Conal Kavanagh (son of former Labour minister Liam), and with the Mayor of County Wicklow, Councillor Tom Fortune.

In Dublin South Central, Councillors Eric Byrne and Michael Conaghan (both of whom were elected) were selected along with Councillor Henry Upton (son of the late Deputy Pat Upton, and nephew of Deputy Mary Upton). I received several communications of protest from members who complained that three men had been selected over the very able Councillor Rebecca Moynihan. But that was the outcome of the vote at the selection convention. (I have no doubt that Rebecca will make it to the Dáil and be an outstanding TD).

The selection of Deputy Tommy Broughan and former Deputy Seán Kenny by the members in Dublin North Central caused disquiet among younger members of the Party, who had supported the cause of the young Councillor Cian O’Callaghan. In Dublin North West, Róisín Shortall resisted the candidacy of Councillor Andrew Montague (the man who was responsible for the Dublin Bike Scheme), and John Lyons was chosen. As it turned out, both Shortall and Lyons were elected in this three-seater. When Senator Ivana Bacik failed to win a nomination in her own constituency of Dublin South East (where Ruairí Quinn and Kevin Humphreys went on to win two seats), I invited her to stand as my running mate in Dun Laoghaire.

In Sligo-Leitrim, the contest for the nomination between European election candidate Susan O’Keeffe and Councillor Veronica Cawley ended in a draw. After hearing from both candidates, the National Executive called it in O’Keeffe’s favour. Cawley subsequently left the Party and stood as an Independent, as did two other former Labour representatives. The multiplicity of Labour and former Labour names on the ballot divided the vote and resulted in Sinn Féin taking the seat.

A number of strategic decisions were taken to add candidates who had not been through the selection conventions. Councillor Colm Keaveney from Tuam accepted that a second candidate, from the south of the county, would be needed if he were to have a realistic chance of winning in Galway East. He raised no objections to the addition of a young barrister, Lorraine Higgins from Athenry, who had been an Independent candidate in the 2009 Local Elections. Geography also dictated the necessity of adding a North Louth candidate to boost the chances of Drogheda-based Ged Nash. We nominated a well-known music teacher, Mary Moran from Dundalk. Deputy Brian O’Shea, who had been Chairperson of the Party, had decided not to seek re-election in Waterford. Local opinion polls suggested that Councillor Seamus Ryan was having difficulty picking up votes in the west of the county. We added a new young councillor from Dungarvan, Ciara Conway, who, remarkably, went on to outpoll Seamus and to take the seat.

Eventually, after careful preparations, Labour was set to contest the 2011 General Election in every constituency, with over seventy candidates in total, the highest number since 1969, and enough to become the largest party in the Dáil. We were offering the Irish people the choice of electing a Labour-led government for the first time ever. The ‘Gilmore for Taoiseach’ posters were intended to make that choice explicit; and in any event – according to the opinion polls – that was the people’s preference at that stage.

Meanwhile, we had been preparing our campaign. I had appointed Ruairí Quinn as the National Director of Elections to head a special committee composed of senior politicians and senior Party staff. The committee would run the campaign on a day-today basis. We rented an open-plan floor in a modern office building in Golden Lane (now the home of TheJournal.ie) as our election headquarters. Based on the policy preparation work undertaken by Colm O’Reardon and Jean O’Mahony, posters, pamphlets and policy documents were produced to a standard design under the banner slogan of ‘One Ireland: Jobs, Reform, Fairness’, which became the title of the election manifesto.

The manifesto, which ran to 90 pages, was drawn up at a time of turmoil in Ireland. I believed that it had to offer hope to people who were by now traumatised by the economic collapse, and who were fast losing confidence in politics.

I had lived through the economic crisis of the 1980s and had seen, at first hand, the devastating effect of losing a job on the individual worker, on his or her family, and on their community. What the new Government would have to face was worse than the 1980s. Recovery would not happen just by cutting budgets. It would have to be built on job creation. Our manifesto would spell out how that would be done by growing new jobs in tourism, in the food industry, in the green economy and through innovation. It would spell out how Ireland could increase its exports and support small businesses. Our priority would be creating jobs. But I also felt that re-building the broken economy was not enough. We also had to repair public life and politics. I asked Brendan Howlin to draw up a blueprint for reform and he produced 140 proposals for the reform of politics and the public service.

I also knew that budgets would have to be cut, but I believed that this needed to be done fairly. No cut would be painless and every cut would have consequences for somebody. But we needed to maintain a threshold of decency, a floor below which people could not be allowed to fall. That’s why we concentrated on ways to enable people to continue living in their homes, to maintain basic social welfare rates, and to restore the minimum wage.

Just after Christmas, I began my ‘Leader's Tour’ of the constituencies. It began on Wednesday January 5 at the Glen of the Downs, a short distance from my Shankill home. In the Glenview Hotel, with our three candidates and a large crowd of Labour supporters, I kicked off the general election campaign in Wicklow. Then on to Enniscorthy and Wexford to hook up with Brendan Howlin and the late Pat Cody, and from there to Clonmel to campaign with Phil Prendergast the following morning. After that it was back to Dublin for a press conference on Thursday afternoon. On Friday, it was Louth and Meath, and then back to campaign in the Dublin constituencies over the weekend. And it continued like that, every day, until polling day. We travelled in a fleet of estate cars decorated in the red Labour livery. We felt the cars would be more nimble than a campaign bus in urban traffic. I was in the first car, driven by Kevin Eager, accompanied by my Communications Manager, Karen Griffin. In the second car was a team of young election workers whom we labelled ‘the red jackets’. They created a splash of Labour colour at each stop, handing out literature and leading the way for the candidates. Behind that came the press corps, made up of RTÉ and TV3 crews, news and feature journalists from the national newspapers, and a number of photographers.

The visits followed a consistent pattern. On arrival, there was a photographed welcome for us from the candidate and his/her supporters; a doorstep interview for the media’s benefit; a walkabout with the candidate canvassing votes on the streets of the town; a visit to some venue of local significance, perhaps a shopping centre, a hospital, a factory or a community centre; a visit to the local radio station for an interview; a session with the local press on local issues and to highlight the credentials and prospects of the local candidate; a cup of tea in the local hotel or coffee-shop to give me a chance to have a ‘word in the ear’ with local people; and finally a short motivational speech for the local election team. Then, back into the cars and move onto the next town to do much the same thing all over again … and again and again.

The journey between visits was for my briefing. Karen Griffin had put together an information pack for every visit. It included a summary of the local issues, and the position being taken on them by the Labour Party. The new by-pass road; the controversial traveller housing scheme; the speculation about the future of the local hospital; the Council’s plan for a waste/recycling centre at the edge of the town etc. On these short journeys, I read the cuttings from the local newspapers, absorbed their analysis of the election contest in that particular constituency, including any local polling, and familiarised myself with the strengths and weaknesses of the other parties and candidates. I also had to ensure that I caused no offence to our own candidates and supporters. Where there was more than one candidate, I had to prepare phrases which gave each equal emphasis; I needed to know the names of their spouses and to mention anything significant which may have recently happened in their lives, like a birth or a funeral. On these journeys, Karen also ran by me, the names and photographs of our local councillors, lest I forget a name during the canvass.

I had to be word perfect all the time. Modern media, in all its forms, now records everything. Political life is now permanently public.

I developed a good working relationship with the press corps covering my tour. They were, of course, suitably challenging and probing in their questioning. I was well prepared on the main news items and issues of the day, but they were also keen to test me with requests to respond to what other party leaders had said on any number of topics or to charges somebody (sometimes one of our own!) had made against the Labour Party just a few minutes previously. Accordingly, a portion of each journey was spent on the phone to our election headquarters, getting updated on the campaign, briefed on evolving issues and sometimes making final decisions on campaign tactics.

I have always loved canvassing – talking one-to-one with a voter about a public issue or a personal worry. But for the very same reason, I hated the canvass walkabouts: there was no chance to have normal interactions with people as the peloton of candidates, red jackets, election workers and media hustled down the street or through the busy shopping centres. They were largely for show, for photographers who often jostled to get their picture of the day, for our press people who fretted about getting positive coverage, for the six o’clock news. However, they did act as magnets for the concerns of the voting public and that made them important.

The messages that came our way were consistent: workers were worried about their jobs; parents were concerned about the future for their children; pensioners were worried that the State could discontinue paying their pensions. What was most surprising was that, unlike any previous election campaign I had been on, there was little talk now of local issues. Voters were worried about the future of the country.

On most streets the shops were empty. In the entire canvass, I rarely saw a customer actually buying anything in a clothes boutique, a sports shop, or in a furniture or hardware store. The only purchase appeared to be essentials in supermarkets and pharmacies.

It was a winter campaign and I picked up a heavy cold. My family doctor looked hopelessly at me, saying ‘I suppose there’s no point in suggesting you take a couple of days to rest.’ Armed with a prescription, my Lemsip and a cough bottle, I struggled on.

I carried the cold into my first TV debate with Micheál Martin, the new leader of Fianna Fáil. For many decades, RTÉ had hosted television debates between the leaders of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. But the Labour Party had never been allowed into a 3-way Leaders Debate. Their rationale for the exclusion of Labour was that it was proper order to put head to head the potential candidates for Taoiseach. The tussle between Charlie Haughey and Garret FitzGerald was legendary. Bertie Ahern had debated with John Bruton, Michael Noonan and Enda Kenny in successive general elections. These big television debates had considerable influence on the outcomes of the elections, yet the Labour Party was not included. In more recent elections, RTÉ hosted a separate debate for the leaders of the smaller parties – the Progressive Democrats (PDs), Greens, Sinn Féin and Labour. The verbal tussle between Pat Rabbitte and Michael McDowell, the Leader of the PDs, in the 2007 General Election was especially memorable. But given how the polls were going, we were pushing for RTÉ to include me in the main Leader’s debate.

As late as the Labour Party Conference in Galway in mid-April 2010, just nine months before the election was called, RTÉ was still maintaining the status quo. I used my opening speech at the conference to make the case for Labour to be included, and in an analysis piece the following Monday in the Irish Times, headed ‘Savvy performer Gilmore would gain in three-way debate’, Deaglán de Bréadún wrote: ‘The fact that our nearest neighbours have now adopted this practice greatly increases the pressure to include the Labour Leader. It’s not a prospect calculated to delight Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, whatever public protestations they might make to the contrary.’

A highlight of the British General Election, then underway, was their series of debates between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Shortly after his election as the new Fianna Fáil leader, Micheál Martin wrote to Enda Kenny and me proposing a three-way debate. TV3 offered to host it, but Enda refused to participate. TV3 decided to run a head-to-head between Micheál Martin and me, to be moderated by Vincent Browne. It was set for Tuesday night 8 February. Among commentators the feeling was that I would win such a debate. I was not quite so confident myself. I had been performing well in the Dáil, I was a competent public speaker, I had a good command of policy, and I could generally handle myself well in an interview. However, I had had my fair share of bad days in the studio, and these haunted me a little. In a radio interview with Marian Finucane in September, I came across, I realised afterwards, as unnecessarily evasive about my political past. A technical fault on the headphones had given rise to a poor lunchtime interview with Seán O’Rourke just before Christmas. And although I did fine on the Late Late Show in late November (despite the friendly forewarning from Ryan Tubridy: ‘Eamon, we are not bringing you in for a hug’), I was subsequently criticised for saying that Labour in government would not be able to reverse Fianna Fáil's cuts.

I felt I needed to prepare thoroughly for the TV debates. I got some help from our English-speaking sister parties abroad. Kevin Rudd, who had led the Australian Labor Party back to government after eleven years, but who had since been toppled by his Deputy Leader, Julia Gillard, rang to wish me well and to offer support. I mentioned to him that the journalist Will Hutton had once said that I reminded him of Kevin Rudd, to which Rudd now replied, self-deprecatingly: ‘Oh you poor man. I sincerely hope not.’ Rudd’s policy advisor, John O’Mahony, came over from Australia and worked with a unit in our election headquarters, compiling and updating the message book throughout the campaign. He also helped prepare me for the debates.

Ed Miliband, too, offered the support of the British Labour Party and among those who came over from Britain to help was David Muir, who had worked with Gordon Brown. David, with whom I remained in contact afterwards, organised rehearsals for me before each of the early TV debates.

On the night, I was quite nervous driving into the TV3 studios in Ballymount. No matter how much preparation I had done, I knew this would come down to being able to cope with an hour of intense scrutiny in front of the cameras. The preliminaries, including the press scrum on the way in: ‘How do you feel, Eamon? Are you going to win?’ ‘What do you have to say about Enda Kenny’s refusal to take part?’ etc. was unnerving. Inside the studio building tension mixed with excitement. The debate was very important for both Micheál Martin and me, but it was arguably even more significant, certainly historic, for TV3, being their first leaders’ debate. Everybody was on edge. Make-up, the pre-debate photographs and the on-set promo seemed to go on forever. I just wanted it to start.

To my surprise, Vincent Browne attacked neither of us. He was on his best behaviour and moderated the debate very fairly, concentrating on the questions, which he had prepared well. It was a robust debate. Micheál Martin is an experienced politician and a polished media performer. He tore into me in a kind of rear guard action. Even though Fianna Fáil had been in government for fourteen years, it was as if Labour were already in power and Martin in opposition. I was put on the defensive. Coming off the set at the end, I felt I had not won and would have settled for a draw. The immediate reactions from Mark Garrett and Tony Heffernan seemed to confirm that, but some of the ‘après-match’ commentators gave it to Martin. We moved on.

The second debate included the five party leaders, with Enda Kenny, Micheál Martin, John Gormley and Gerry Adams on RTÉ, moderated by Pat Kenny, and with a studio audience. There were too many of us, and there was no clear winner.

The third debate was another historic first, this time for TG4. There had never before been a leaders’ debate as Gaeilge, and the first was to be an hour-long one between Micheál Martin, Enda Kenny and myself. It was expertly moderated by Eimear Ní Chonaola. It had 600,000 viewers and was considered by many to have been the best of all the debates. The preparation for this debate was very simple. I had dinner the previous evening, in the Radisson Hotel, Galway, with Kathleen Lough and Fidelma Mullane, both members of the Labour Party and both fluent Irish speakers. We talked, as Gaeilge, of course, about the issues likely to come up. We fashioned some phrases I could use and talked through the answers I would give. I reinforced all that the following morning when Fidelma accompanied me to the TG4 studio in Baile na hAmhann. In the end, I was proud to have taken part; and throughout the country, Irish speakers and those who love the language were encouraged by it. The mood was best captured by the message I received from the President of Conradh na Gaeilge, Pádraig Mac Fheargusa: ‘Tá talamh nua briste agaibh. Ócáid stairiúil a bhí ann, agus mar a luaigh an tOllamh Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh sa chur is cúiteamh tar éis, b’iad pobal na Gaeilge na buateoirí móra. Pobal na hÉireann a déarfainn féin; b’ábhar misnigh agus comhaontais dúinn ar fad é.’ (We have broken new ground. This was a historic occasion and as Professor Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh remarked in the commentary afterwards, the Irish speaking community were the big winners. I would say the people of Ireland were the winners, it was a source of courage and unity for us all.)

The final debate, between Kenny, Martin and Gilmore that I had been seeking, was moderated on RTÉ by Miriam O’Callaghan on 22 February. I did no formal preparation for this one. My brother John had come home from the United States to help with the campaign and gave me some good advice. He had worked for over a quarter of a century with CNN, and, for the past decade, as the senior producer on Larry King Live. He had covered several American elections, and knew a thing or two about televised debates. He had been quietly observing my preparations so far and had come to the conclusion that I was being over-coached. He advised me to dispense with rehearsals for this one, to rest on the afternoon of the debate, to go for a walk and clear my head beforehand, and to ‘just be yourself ’ in the studio. It worked. I was more relaxed, and although I’m probably the worst possible judge, I think it was my best television performance.

The new TV debates were not the only pioneering feature of the 2011 election. It was clear from the start that Fianna Fáil were finally going to be ousted from power, but what was not immediately apparent was who would lead the new government – the traditional struggle between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael was now one between Fine Gael and Labour. With a new target in its sights, Fine Gael decided to launch a broadside against the Labour Party. Michael Noonan led the attack, claiming that Labour was a ‘high tax party’. We had proposed a 48 per cent tax band on single incomes over €100,000 and on couples earning over €200,000. Yet we found it difficult to shake off Noonan’s attacks among some voters. It seemed, too, that Fine Gael’s ‘Five Point Plan’ (though its details were quite forgettable) was having more of an impact than Labour’s ‘Jobs, Reform, Fairness’.

We began our formal campaign in the Gravity Bar at the Guinness Storehouse with our intention to renegotiate the terms of the Troika bailout. We repeated the ‘renegotiate’ message over several days, at press conferences, interviews and speeches, but it was having no impact. It seemed as if nobody (the press, especially) believed that the terms of the bailout could be renegotiated. Fianna Fáil accused us of misleading the public about the possibility of renegotiating, with Micheál Martin stating that ‘Labour was attempting to deliberately mislead voters about what changes to the IMF-EU bailout deal can be achieved.’

I met with my team on the morning of 3 February to run through things shortly before a scheduled press conference. Mark Garrett made it clear that our message on renegotiating the deal was not cutting through. Our finer points of reducing the interest rate, limiting privatisation and creating a space for jobs and growth were not being heard in the noisy electoral market place. It was clear we needed to simplify our message if it was to make an impact.

I summed up the situation for myself: the European Central Bank (ECB) was insisting that the bailout deal could not be renegotiated. But Labour would insist on renegotiation. A phrase came to me: Frankfurt’s way or Labour’s way. I used it for the first time at that press conference and repeated it a number of times for effect. It cut through alright. Just not quite in the way I had intended.

Often in politics, it is not what is said that matters, but what is heard. For instance, in 1969 Jack Lynch did not say, ‘We will not stand idly by’, but that’s what people thought they heard, meaning that he intended to send Irish troops over the border to protect nationalists in Belfast and Derry. So too with ‘Frankfurt’s Way or Labour’s Way’. It was heard not as the pledge to renegotiate that it was, but as an outright, Syriza-style rejection of the bailout, which it never was. Though in government, we succeeded in getting much of Labour’s way and renegotiating the interest rate, and limiting privatisation, and restoring the minimum wage, and extending the time frame for reducing the deficit, and stopping paying the Anglo promissory note, and much more besides, some were determined to cast it as falling short of this promise.

The high point of Labour’s poll ratings came in the summer of 2010 (33 per cent in September 2010 IPSOS/MRBI). I was on holiday in early August when I heard of one particularly good outcome for us and all I could think was, ‘How long will it last?’ I knew that when the electoral contest was at its peak, we would find it hard to compete with the financial resources of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin, and that unlike Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, we would not have the organisation and members on the ground to realise our vote potential.

And indeed, as predicted, by December, Labour’s rating had dropped to 25 per cent (IPSOS/MRBI), and falling further to 19 per cent a week before the election. The pattern was the same in the Red C series, though not as dramatic. This decline was despite Fianna Fáil’s drop from 24 per cent in September to 16 per cent in February (IPSOS/MRBI). The gains went to Fine Gael, Sinn Féin and Independents. Support for Independents rose from 11 per cent and 9 per cent in September to 17 per cent and 15 per cent in February in the respective IPSOS/MRBI and Red C surveys. Both of these polling organisations found that support for Sinn Féin shot up from 8 per cent and 10 per cent to 15 per cent and 16 per cent between September and December 2010, probably due to the Donegal South West by-election. Over all this time, Fine Gael continued to rise steadily and solidly from 24 per cent in the IPSOS/MRBI series in September to 37 per cent by 18 February.

What was causing this pattern? It seemed that, as long as it was theoretical, many people were happy to express support for Labour, but once the election was on the horizon (from December 2010) – coinciding, in this case, with the arrival of the Troika and the sense that solutions must be found immediately – voters began to reconsider their positions.

The arrival of the Troika was followed by a massive 6 billion euro budget adjustment. After Christmas, the Universal Social Charge began to hit pay packets. Anger gave way to fear in the public mood. Fine Gael played on the fear, and frightened many potential voters from supporting Labour, by hammering away at us on tax.

Furthermore, following our very high polls, the media, understandably and quite rightly, began to interrogate Labour more closely on policy issues, and to become more critical when it appeared to them that our responses were less than clear. Opponents made the most of this and (wrongly) began to allege that Labour had no policies. Some sections of the media, in my opinion, took editorial decisions that were aimed at stopping Labour’s gallop. The Irish Daily Mail, which in the early years of my leadership had regularly invited me to contribute to their paper, published an editorial headed, ‘Danger in the rise of Eamon Gilmore’, which warned of Labour’s record in government with that old chestnut that the Party was ‘in thrall to the trade unions’, and concluded that ‘Mr Gilmore has done his country some considerable service in opposition – and will continue to do so.

Having him and his colleagues at the Cabinet table would be a different matter altogether.’ The Sunday Independent continued its traditional hostility to the Labour Party and, on the Sunday before polling day, its front page cried out ‘Poll: Give us Enda without Gilmore’.

There were powerful forces in Irish society, some of them in the media, who simply did not want Labour in government, and most certainly not leading it. And unfortunately there were some too in the Labour Party who felt the office of the Taoiseach was a step above our station! Another reason for the shifting preferences was that Fine Gael’s job in the election was probably easier than ours. Voters who just wanted Fianna Fáil out of office and a change of government had to just make a one-step change to Fine Gael. Voting Labour required, in a sense, two steps.

Sitting across the aisle from me during Dáil votes was Mary Harney, who hails from the same County Galway parish as I do; she offered some insights of her own to me. She thought the Donegal South-West by-election did a lot of damage to Labour. It was certainly not the constituency we would have chosen for a by-election if we’d had a choice.

Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher was elected to the European Parliament in June 2009, and his Dáil seat had been vacant for almost a year and a half. The Government, having already lost two by-elections, to George Lee (Fine Gael) in Dublin South and Maureen O’Sullivan (Independent) in Dublin Central, did not want to risk another loss in what had always been a Fianna Fáil heartland. Sinn Féin saw their opportunity, and their young candidate Senator Pearse Doherty took a High Court case which forced the holding of the election. Armed with a high profile from the court case, Doherty always held the advantage. Labour had not had an elected public representative in the constituency since the highly respected Seamus Rodgers lost his county council seat in 1999. In the 2009 local elections, Joe Costello came to me with an idea for the Stranorlar electoral area, where Labour had no candidate (or party organisation). Would I consider Frank McBrearty Jr. in the local election?

The Morris Tribunal had found that Frank had been framed for a murder by certain Gardaí in Donegal. The State ended up settling Frank’s case and paid him very considerable compensation. The shocking and unfair treatment to which Frank and his family were subjected by some had been taken up some years earlier by Brendan Howlin, then the justice spokesperson for the Labour Party. Brendan ended up being hauled through the courts because he refused to divulge the source of information which, at the time, he gave, in confidence to the then Minister for Justice, John O’Donoghue.

I agreed to have Frank as the Labour Party candidate for Donegal County Council. He was elected, and was therefore the only elected Labour representative in Donegal South-West at the time of the by-election. He quickly asserted his claim to be our candidate. There was considerable resistance to his candidacy, but I stuck by him. He was a colourful and sometimes controversial candidate. I enjoyed his company during the campaign, and I warmed to his family. As expected, though, Doherty easily won for Sinn Féin. Frank polled 8 per cent, far better than Labour had secured in this constituency for a very long time, but it was well below our national poll rating. The result on 26 November punctured a big hole in Labour’s claim to become the largest party in the country and to lead the next government.

One of the factors in elections that is rarely captured by the pollsters is the ‘retail politics’ that take place ‘on the ground’. How much direct selling a party can do depends on the size and strength of the local organisations. Even in our stronger constituencies, we found it hard to compete with the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael machines. They had branches in every parish since the foundation of the State.

For example, even though we won two out of the four seats in Dublin Mid-West, we were stretched organisationally throughout. About a fortnight before polling day, I got an email from a woman in Adamstown, who said she had considered voting Labour but was now reconsidering because ‘we have not had a single Labour person canvassing in our area’. I passed on the correspondence to Joanna Tuffy TD who was based in Lucan and Joanna wrote to the woman as follows:

This campaign is being run in Lucan by me and Labour volunteers who are made up mainly of people from Lucan, including one member from Adamstown, who work during the day in their jobs, and come out at the evening to knock on doors, poster and drop leaflets. It has been a very difficult campaign because we are having to do a lot of this in the pouring rain and strong winds. Twice today I had to come home to change my clothes and shoes and dry my hair. I also have a young child at home to try and look after. My mother babysits for me and my partner while we both go out canvassing or to other activities to do with the campaign. There are 35,000 houses in the constituency, including yours. There are about ten of us out campaigning in Lucan on any one night.

This reply incensed the woman voter. She described it as ‘a disgrace’ and accused Joanna of ‘making excuses’. She wrote: ‘I as a voter have absolutely zero interest in the challenges you have personally or otherwise when it comes to getting out and canvassing for votes.’ As the great American politician, the late Tip O’Neill, described in his memoir: on election day, his next door neighbour, Mrs O’Brien, whom he had not canvassed, said to him, ‘Tom … let me tell you something: people like to be asked.’

Joanna Tuffy is one of Labour’s very best public representatives. Indeed, prior to this she had taken some very courageous stands on the planning and development of Adamstown, where the complainant now lived. But it appeared that no matter what the track record, unless the latter was canvassed by the candidate, her vote was probably lost. In the context of our limited resources, I wondered how many other votes were slipping away because we simply didn’t have the personnel to call to every door.

Midway through the election campaign, it was clear the contest for the leadership of the new government was effectively over. Fine Gael was now at twice Labour’s standing in the polls, and heading for an overall majority. Our own private polling was telling us that the picture was possibly even worse than the published polls suggested. Transposed onto constituencies, it looked like Fine Gael would take most of the marginal seats, and would have a seat bonus over and above their vote share.

In previous general elections Labour’s support had also ebbed away during the campaign. In our pre-election planning, we considered that this might happen again. As every election has its own momentum, the direction might need to change mid-way, and that we should, therefore, be prepared to change tack, if necessary, during the campaign. We thought of how in 1997 Fianna Fáil had come from behind in the last week with tax promises, and how in 2007, voters, who at the beginning of the campaign wanted to boot Bertie from office had, however reluctantly, decided to stay with the devil they knew and put Fianna Fáil back into power. We therefore decided to hold back €150,000 of our election budget for a late campaign push or advertising campaign in the final week. The time had now come to use it.

With ten days to go, the question was no longer who would lead the next government, but whether it would be a single party Fine Gael government or a coalition. We needed to re-define the choice facing voters on polling day and to give those who were reluctant a compelling reason to switch to Labour. Fine Gael had hammered us in the media on taxation policy. Labour’s argument for a 50/50 split between tax and expenditure cuts in future budgets supplied the evidence that Labour, if not exactly the ‘high tax party’ that Fine Gael was painting us as, certainly leaned more in the tax direction. Fine Gael, on the other hand, were arguing for a 3:1 ratio between expenditure cuts and tax. (Leo Varadkar at one stage suggested it should be 4:1.) Therefore, there was no public debate about what a single party Fine Gael government might do, and no examination of their preference for expenditure cuts. We decided, therefore, to target Fine Gael’s preference for cuts and to change our main campaign pitch summary to ‘For a Fair and Balanced Government’.

A game-changing communications intervention at this stage of the campaign would need to be catchy and controversial. Mark Garrett and the team went to work on ideas. I was in the car, being briefed by Karen Griffin between stops, when Mark got back to me with a progress report. The team had an idea for a series of newspaper ads based on the Tesco catchphrase ‘Every Little Helps’. It was proposed we would run a campaign based on the phrase ‘Every Little Cut Hurts’.

Over the course of the day, the idea was developed further and applied to different formats. I eventually saw the final design proposals on my tablet computer that evening. The concept was good, and I felt the ads would get attention and could help change the outcome of the election. (They were certainly controversial, as evidenced by Tesco objecting strongly to them.) Unfortunately, I paid little attention to the detailed cuts which the ads mentioned and this was a mistake for which I would pay a very high price later. That mistake was then compounded further when those specific cuts were not weeded out in our negotiations on the Programme for Government.

I returned home to my constituency of Dun Laoghaire the day before polling, having travelled the country and given the campaign every ounce of effort and energy. ‘I can do no more,’ I told myself, and tried to relax. But without success. I found my anxiety suddenly coming to focus on my own seat in Dun Laoghaire. I felt I had spent too little time campaigning for myself locally and had effectively given my running mate, Ivana Bacik, a clear run. In the constituency I hoped that the national and media profile of a leader would compensate for my own absence from the doorsteps. As the broadcast moratorium came down on the evening of Thursday, 24 February, like the 565 other candidates, all I could do was resign my fate to that remarkable democratic phenomenon: the next morning at 7 a.m. the quiet procession of citizens to their polling stations would begin, and, in the privacy of the ballot box, they would make free choices about who would represent them in the next national parliament. Surely there is no greater honour in a democracy than to be selected for that role by our fellow citizens.

As always, I voted at around 10 a.m. in Scoil Mhuire, Rathsallagh. I was met by a bank of cameras and journalists looking for that shot and description of me dropping my voting paper into the ballot box. I returned home and spent the day with my team, planning as best we could for whatever the next days of ‘the count’ would bring.