Time for a bit of rebranding. With elections looming, polls continuing to reflect the collapse of Labour's support base – eight per cent in the last Irish Times Ipsos poll – and Fine Gael also suffering withdrawal symptoms from the end of its post-bailout honeymoon – down five percentage points in the same early April poll – some repackaging of this coalition government has become essential.
The "renewal of purpose" of which Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore spoke this weekend is a handy political euphemism for renegotiating the programme for government. It conveys both the idea of a change of substance and direction and that of continuity and re-energising. All things to all men. It will be, Labour sources put it, a "bit of a warning shot" across Fine Gael, or, to extend the naval analogy, put blue water between Labour and Fine Gael ahead of elections in which the former, in particular, looks like it may be punished heavily by voters.
But it is an exercise that both parties, both ailing, can benefit from, as Leo Varadkar was suggesting at the weekend in the wake of Shatter crisis. Hence Fine Gael's early and easy agreement to go along with an exercise that, in truth, many will see more as PR than substantive change. We have already heard some of the early jousting over whether the Budget, freed from some of the constraints, but by no means all, of the troika years, should cut taxes or refrain from further inroads into welfare – there's room there for enough disagreement for some differentiation between the two parties without causing a fundamental rift. Labour will certainly want to be seen as sensitive to popular wishes to see some tax cuts.
No doubt there will be a renewed public emphasis by both parties on jobs as number one priority, on solving the housing crisis, and protecting family incomes. Taoiseach Enda Kenny has been down this road many times. Recently reviewing the over 200 targets in the current programme he promised that “clearly the bailout was not an end in itself, it’s the start of implementing now two priority targets, create more jobs and the fact that so many people in the country do not feel any sense of change in their lives for the better...the Tánaiste and I are committed ... to have a continued relentless focus this year now on job creation.” How many ways can you say it?
The creation of a Garda authority may be one big idea that the two can agree on, and it should be pursued with vigour. But the limits of the broader political reform agenda have already been agreed. So too has the broad direction of health sector reform. Local government reform and local and water taxation are toxic areas, unlikely to provide sexy reform ideas. There’s always a quango cull – oops, been there, failed to do that. ... This rebranding business may not be that easy. Perhaps they could just call it “new”. Works for soap powder.
