Rearranging the chairs on the Labour ship Titanic

Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland

– 11 July 2014

The Communist Party of Ireland, commenting on the Government reshuffle, said that it was more akin to a rearranging of the chairs for a better view as the Labour Party’s ship sinks beneath the waves. 
     The Labour Party will pay the price at the next general election for its opportunism and smugness. While it may get some cosmetic changes on the margins of the reheated programme for the next seventeen months of the life of this miserable Government, the policies will remain the same. 
     The Government in reality is not in charge of fundamental economic and social policy: this has long since been surrendered to the European Union. Now the system itself is sliding into a new and potentially deeper crisis. 
     It is not a change of ministers that working people desire but rather a fundamental change of direction. Those few honest individuals within the the Labour Party who have a loyalty to the history and founding traditions of that party must recognise that it has no future. 
     We cannot go on with the myth that it is “in the country’s interests” that working people are carrying the heaviest burden. Which Ireland do they speak of?—the Ireland of the rich, the landlords, the speculators, the employers who are attacking and driving down workers’ wages to subsistence levels? 
     Working people must take their future into their own hands. The Labour Party is a party of history, not a party of the future.