How come this country has never had a left-wing or liberal sort of government.

Phoebas wrote: »

Depends what a true left wing government looks like. Would a FF/LAB coalition be considered left wing?

I suppose we could have a grand SF/LAB/PBP/Inds/Socialists coalition after the next election, but it would be hard to imagine it being stable.

Ireland is very much a socialist country. Not sure how we got here without socialist parties

The church and religious views of the people had an influence, but that is changing and Ireland is becoming more liberal, but there will always be social protection.

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

Ireland? Socialist? - You're having a laugh

Excellent - enlighten me. What more would Ireland need to provide to be socialist in your view? Try to be as specific as possible.

smcgiff wrote: »

Excellent - enlighten me. What more would Ireland need to provide to be socialist in your view? Try to be as specific as possible.

I think that first of all the onus is on you to demonstrate why it is you think Ireland is a socialist country. For example, start with a definition of socialism, and demonstrate why you think Ireland meets definition.

porsche959 wrote: »

The Gini Coefficient ranking would indicate otherwise:



http://www.publicpolicy.ie/income-inequality-ireland-2/

If you think everyone should have equal wealth then you want communism. Grand if that's what you want.

You can be socialist and look after the less well off in society and still allow others to prosper.

porsche959 wrote: »

I think that first of all the onus is on you to demonstrate why it is you think Ireland is a socialist country.

So, you got nothing.

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

Ireland? Socialist? - You're having a laugh

All you have to do is look at the horrific tax and welfare system in this country to realise we are quite socialist.

smcgiff wrote: »

If you think everyone should have equal wealth then you want communism. Grand if that's what you want.

You can be socialist and look after the less well off in society and still allow others to prosper.



So, you got nothing.

Socialism is a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

What you seem to be referring to is social democracy. You seem to be equating socialism with social democracy.

porsche959 wrote: »

Socialism is a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

What you seem to be referring to is social democracy. You seem to be equating socialism with social democracy.

HOW. DO. YOU. WANT. TO. MAKE. IRELAND. MORE. SOCIALIST?

smcgiff wrote: »

HOW. DO. YOU. WANT. TO. MAKE. IRELAND. MORE. SOCIALIST?

Me personally? Far from it I would go the other way. I don't know where you got the idea I was advocating socialism - I did not.

What you don't seem to realise - or don't want to - is that definitions, the meanings of words are important before we can even have this debate.

porsche959 wrote: »

Me personally? Far from it I would go the other way. I don't know where you got the idea I was advocating socialism - I did not.

What you don't seem to realise - or don't want to - is that definitions, the meanings of words are important before we can even have this debate.

Hah, Joeytheparrot just thanked your post, wonder if he'll leave it once he sees the above post.

You want to change things to the right. Right from what - socialist?

To debate you I need to know your starting point. How would class Ireland, if not Socialist. If you think Ireland is socialist you're probably in the wrong thread as the OP thinks we've never had socialist parties.

porsche959 wrote: »

I would classify Ireland as a clientelist social democracy. Not socialist under most definitions of the term.

That's the type of socialism I take it the OP is referring to - as he's referring to Labour in the UK.

Since the foundation of the Irish State, two parties have always been a dominant figure in the politics of this country. One of the two of them has ALWAYS been in power (in some way, shape or form). Those two parties are, of course, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil can actually boast an electoral record of incredible success amongst modern parties in modern democracies; no other party has such an incredible record of election victories and length of time in power as Fianna Fáil; from the formation of the first Fianna Fáil government on 9 March, 1932, until the General Election in 2011, the party was in power for 61 of the 79 years (with Fine Gael, or some variation thereof, taking up the remaining years).

Both of them, despite protestations to the contrary, are centre to centre-right parties. Fine Gael arguably being slightly more to the right than Fianna Fáil, but both of them stemmed from very similar ideologies. The key difference between them at their inceptions was the two sides of the civil war; the pro-Treaty (Fine Gael) side, and the anti-Treaty (Fianna Fáil) side.

Other than that, their roots are deeply entwined with the Irish, Catholic, rural outlook; ie. conservative. Obviously, as times have moved on, so have the parties, but they would still be seen as the "traditional" parties out amongst a lot of Irish people.

This leads to an interesting phenomenon that has not been seen in the two other major democracies in the world (the UK and the USA). In the UK and the USA, there has always been a traditional right/left divide. The Labour Party and the Lib Dems against the Tories. The Democrats against the Republicans. Even in France, you have the UPM (Union Pour Un Mouvement Populaire) on the right, and the PS (Parti Socialiste) on the left. And so on. Almost every modern democracy in the world has had a right/left divide in its politics and subsequent governments.

However, in Ireland, the choice has nearly always been between two centre-right parties. These two parties will then almost assuredly go into coalition with a left-ish leaning party, or on one occasion into power with another centre-right party. This has led to a situation where there is no true left/right divide in Ireland. More like a centre-right/centre-right/centre-left/left divide.

Now that day may be coming to an end, with a very extreme likelihood of a Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil majority coalition following the next election. If that happens (and if FF/FF drag what it left of the Labour Party with them into government), then Sinn Féin will emerge from the ashes as the true left opposition to the centre-right government. If this scenario unfolds, then Ireland will finally have a true left/right divide.

Now, there are still vast swaths of Irish people who will not vote Sinn Féin. There is a huge protest vote out there also, that could very easily evaporate if the economy picks up at all.

In order for Sinn Féin to eventually have any chance of appealing to more voters and in order to eventually force their way into power, they will have to shed a lot of the baggage they have (shedding the likes of Adams, McGuinness, Ferris, Ellis, etc.), they will have to soften their radical approach slightly and they will need to push the new, untainted members of the party to the forefront (McDonald, Carthy, Doherty, O'Brien, Brady, etc.) and make themselves appealing to a vaster section of society. They will need to shift to a position of more centre-left to do this, adopt stances similar to what the core ethos of the Labour Party would have been, ditch the Republican nonsense and realise that Ireland is still, despite it all, still a fairly conservative country.

I think that Ireland would benefit greatly from a true left/right divide; instead of a few years of Fianna Fáil, a recession, Fine Gael cleaning up, a few more years of Fianna Fáil, a recession.... wash, rinse, repeat.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are essentially the same thing ("two cheeks of the same arse" seems to be a phrase gaining a lot of usage lately), and both are centre to centre-right parties. Ideologically almost identical, barring some minor differences. Sinn Féin represent a proper, left-leaning opposition to them.

Rightwing wrote: »

It probably boils down to the definition of socialism.

Joe Bloggs doesn't really give a crap how you define socialism - typically the only people who do are 18 - 30 year old students who have a desperate need to slap a label on everything as they go off to have a demo to change the World.

The reason why Ireland has never had a socialist government is because that sort of system never had enough support to form one. Nothing more complicated than that.

You could blame the Church, and no doubt it had an influence, but that would be simplistic. The collapse of the Soviet Union also had an effect as it effectively was seen to discredit left wing ideology as a failure. The Celtic Tiger also shaped our mindset - there we were rewarded for being less socialist, not more. There are probably numerous other reasons, but ultimately it wasn't popular enough.

In that regard, we're not that different to the rest of Europe; when you come down to it, most European socialist parties weren't exactly much more 'socialist' in their policies than FF, when they entered government - at least those policies that turned out not to be a disaster and had to be quickly dropped (Labour's three day week, anyone?). If you look at Ireland's policies with regard to state economic control, taxation and social support up until the Celtic Tiger, were were probably far 'socialist' than most.

Sometimes the answer to such questions is the simplest one. There's no grand conspiracy. It just never had the support of the people. Deal with it.

View wrote: »

No Socialist party (or indeed any party close to it on the political spectrum) pursue policies like FF which have always been designed to benefit property developers at the expense of just about every other group in society.

You know, the history of FF or Ireland, is a bit longer than 20 years...