PresentTense: 'But, are you happy?" asks Labour's new ad slogan. Well, some people will have been happier before Labour decided that its drive for victory should require the steam-rolling of English syntax. Just because Pat Rabbitte's rhetoric is littered with exclamation marks does not mean that random commas should be allowed pollute his party's slogans.
This only distracts from Labour's question, even if what has ended up on the poster only consists of its four concluding words. The full question should actually read: "You have your double income, a property in Bulgaria, two holidays a year, a nice car, a few quid for pints at the weekend and new boobs . . . but are you happy?" It's The Life of Brian, "what have the Romans ever done for us?" school of political campaigning.
The party is posing the question because it will "strike a chord with the electorate, because they are asking themselves: 'Is this all there is, and is it worth it?'," explains Rabbitte. Actually, it sounds as if they are eyeing up a second property in Benidorm.
Labour is wading into an existentialist quagmire, but it brings with it a particularly Irish twist: the insistence that no matter how happy we think we are, if we think about it just a little bit more we'll realise that we aren't really happy at all.
In fairness, it is an Opposition party's job to convince us how unhappy we really are, but Labour joins the likes of President Mary McAleese and much of the country's commentariat in suggesting that, even as we have gained so much in recent years, we have lost something. And Rabbitte will now be among the chorus that nags at our collective conscience as we pay for shoes we don't actually need, opt for an 07 car rather than an 06, or teeter on a ski slope. Another voice asking: but are you happy? Honestly? Really? But here's the thing: we are happy. Survey after survey tells us this. And we're not just happy, we're happier than almost any other nation. We like being Irish. We like living in Ireland. Obviously, this does not mean that every one of us is always happy, with everything, all of the time. But while Labour's canvassers are likely to act as lightning rods for the electorate's gripes, when it's a researcher on the doorstep, instead of a politician, the Irish public has a habit of collectively answering "yes" when asked if it's happy.
Last year, a Eurobarometer survey ranked us second to the Dutch in terms of personal happiness - 82 per cent of us said we were happy "all" or "most of" the time. In 2005, a similar survey said that 92 per cent of Irish people are "satisfied" with their lives here (12 per cent more than the EU's average satisfaction rating of 80 per cent). That same year, 96 per cent of the Irish questioned by the OECD said they were happy.
In 2004, a poll in the Economist famously put us top of its Quality of Life league. It mirrored the results of the World Database of Happiness, compiled by a Dutch sociologist, who compared surveys in 112 nations between 1946 and 2004 and found that the Irish were the happiest of all.
There isn't much local, detailed research, but a UCD survey of 1,500 people found that, when asked to rate their life satisfaction on a seven point-scale (seven being the highest) the Irish averaged 5.5. That's pretty chirpy. Ask yourself how happy you are this morning? A 5.5 mightn't be enough to have you doing cartwheels across the new kitchen extension, but it would suggest that, apart from a tweak here or there, you are satisfied with your lot.
In that survey, inhabitants of Co Galway averaged a truly ecstatic 6.93. Even the most miserable of the Irish (Dubliners) came in at 4.97, which made them "reasonably content" rather than "happy".
Obviously, it's important to maintain a degree of cynicism about such surveys. The UCD research was carried out in 2001, which is an aeon in the lifetime of a government. And there are occasional blips in the flow of results, such as the survey by the New Economics Foundation that found us to be 113th in the world's "contentedness" league table. But it doesn't spoil the fact that time and time again we tell researchers what we might not tell politicians or Joe Duffy: we are happy.
Which poses a serious problem to any opposition. It's tough going into an election knowing that below the electorate's dissatisfaction with aspects of this Government and society there runs a strong and deep undercurrent of happiness. And each time we're slapped in the face and told to get a grip of ourselves, we just come up with a smile on our pink faces.
Perhaps Labour should have been bolder in its philosophical quest, braver in its questioning. Maybe it should instead be asking: "Why are you happy?" Or rather: "Why, are you happy?"
