What would Fine Gael have done differently if they won the last election?

ct_roy

ok so it's a little bit subjective but let's play it out.

Let's just pretend for a minute that a fine gael/labour coalition government had won the last general election.

what do people think they would have done differently?

surely enda, richard and Eamon would now be up to their proverbials in the same s*it heap that the 2 Brian's are?

i'm also betting that public sentiment to our fine gael led coalition would be in the toilet just like the current government. perhaps a very brittle coalition with tensions between FG, Labour and the Unions.

the same hard decisions would have had to have been made regarding public pay, NAMA and taxation.

would the public look back with fondness for the heady days of our Bertie led FF/PD coalitions and wonder if we'd be in this mess had we kept FF in power?

probably not - but it's interesting how a poor economy can sway peoples perceptions of a situation - regardless of the reality.

Or have people taken a long hard look at Fine Gael's economic policy and concluded that we would be in a better off position today based on sound alternative policies?

I'm trying to see beyond the current mess and identify who best can lead us going forward once the inevitable general election arrives.

Frankly I've not heard enough sound economic policies from the opposition to convince me to not leave the current lot there to sort out their own mess.

oppenheimer1

ct_roy wrote: »

ok so it's a little bit subjective but let's play it out.

Let's just pretend for a minute that a fine gael/labour coalition government had won the last general election.

what do people think they would have done differently?

surely enda, richard and Eamon would now be up to their proverbials in the same s*it heap that the 2 Brian's are?

i'm also betting that public sentiment to our fine gael led coalition would be in the toilet just like the current government. perhaps a very brittle coalition with tensions between FG, Labour and the Unions.

the same hard decisions would have had to have been made regarding public pay, NAMA and taxation.

would the public look back with fondness for the heady days of our Bertie led FF/PD coalitions and wonder if we'd be in this mess had we kept FF in power?

probably not - but it's interesting how a poor economy can sway peoples perceptions of a situation - regardless of the reality.

Or have people taken a long hard look at Fine Gael's economic policy and concluded that we would be in a better off position today based on sound alternative policies?

I'm trying to see beyond the current mess and identify who best can lead us going forward once the inevitable general election arrives.

Frankly I've not heard enough sound economic policies from the opposition to convince me to not leave the current lot there to sort out their own mess.

Haha, don't be silly. This is boards.ie/politics. People here like to vent and say how terrible the government is, not critique policy!

The idea...

thebaldsoprano

Well, they voted in favour of the original bank bailout (Credit Institutions Financial Support Bill 2008) bailing out Anglo in the process and getting the ball rolling for later bailouts.

I'd really like to know where they stand on public sector pay and similar issues, they seem to be doing little else these days apart from blaming FF.

ascanbe

Unless this is an exercise in deflection, i'd suggest there is enough coming out of today to fuel discussion without setting up a hypothetical situation.
Hard descisions to be made? - Your set-up suggests that there was no alternative.
Anyway, who cares. They didn't win the last election. They're not in power.
If you wish to spend time here in discussion why not deal with the reality of the situation.
Oh yeah, that's right. In order to keep this charade in motion, deflection and denial are paramount.
Who actually cares about the country?

thebaldsoprano

ascanbe wrote: »

Anyway, who cares. They didn't win the last election.

True, but they'll be contesting the next one, and I'd like to know where they stand.

ascanbe

ct_roy wrote: »

ok so it's a little bit subjective but let's play it out.

Let's just pretend for a minute that a fine gael/labour coalition government had won the last general election.

what do people think they would have done differently?

surely enda, richard and Eamon would now be up to their proverbials in the same s*it heap that the 2 Brian's are?

i'm also betting that public sentiment to our fine gael led coalition would be in the toilet just like the current government. perhaps a very brittle coalition with tensions between FG, Labour and the Unions.

the same hard decisions would have had to have been made regarding public pay, NAMA and taxation.

would the public look back with fondness for the heady days of our Bertie led FF/PD coalitions and wonder if we'd be in this mess had we kept FF in power?

probably not - but it's interesting how a poor economy can sway peoples perceptions of a situation - regardless of the reality.

Or have people taken a long hard look at Fine Gael's economic policy and concluded that we would be in a better off position today based on sound alternative policies?

I'm trying to see beyond the current mess and identify who best can lead us going forward once the inevitable general election arrives.

Frankly I've not heard enough sound economic policies from the opposition to convince me to not leave the current lot there to sort out their own mess.

The 'heady days' of the Bertie led FF/PD coalition are the reason for the present 'poor economy' - and poor economy is a laughable understatement.
You should worry about what those in power have actually done and are doing; not what those who might have been in power might have done.

ascanbe

thebaldsoprano wrote: »

True, but they'll be contesting the next one, and I'd like to know where they stand.

Fine. I don't know. Why not take time to digest what they have said today and the alternatives they had been suggesting before worrying about that. They won't be in power within the next week.
What the current govt. are presently engaged in has untold ramifications; surely that's worth thinking about before moving to set up hypothetical situations in order to divine what a hypothetical present govt. may have done or what a potential next govt. might do.

thebaldsoprano

ascanbe wrote: »

They won't be in power within the next week.

I wouldn't be so sure about that

ascanbe

thebaldsoprano wrote: »

I wouldn't be so sure about that

Well, if so, i hope they have the guts to disown all decisions made by the last government.

danman

No, don't be so dismissive.

This is an interesting subject for debate. It deserves a debate. Most posters on here have a better grip of policy, they might be able to put forward a better debate than me.
For example, at the time of the first bailouts, what was FG's position?
If that position had been government policy, what would be the outcome.

Would the bank bailouts have happened?
Would a form of NAMA have been set up?
Would the PS wage cuts have happened?

Even before all that, would FG have tried to slow the property bubble?

My belief is that the answer to the first set of questions would be yes.

As for slowing the bubble, they wanted to abolish stamp duty in the 2007 manifesto. So that would have draged the bubble out for a bit longer.
Granted, once they got a look at the figures, they may not have changed stamp duty, we will never know.


I don't see the point in debating whether FG/L would be now popular or not, that's just a spin by FF'ers to say they would now be popular.

But it would be interesting to see how FG policy might have turned out with hindsigt.

average_runner

In fairness FF and FG arent much different these days.

As for Labour they go to bed with anyone and when it suits will throw their toys out of their prams and walk, costing the country more money with another election.

There is two good guys that be running in the election where I live, one is FF and other is FG, hard call for who i pick as number 1.

Greens will get no vote off me, same with labour and Sinn Fein.

I do think FG will win the next election but if they go with Labour the goverment wont last the term and FF will walk back in after that.

So then we are back to where we are now, a FF goverment

All i will say is i do think both Brian Lennihan and Bruton are good men for the Minister of Finance job! Would like to see these two work together, but obviously wont happen

zootroid

At the time of the last election the damage was already done.

The only thing you could hope for had FG gotten into power, is that they would bring a fresh perspective and not keep their heads in the sand a la Brian "the fundamentals are sound" Cowen. That youtube clip of Cowen standing on the floor of the New York stock exchange 3 months before the bank guarantee saying that Irish banks are well capitalised is scary.

scr123

The thoughts of a FG single party government at any time past, present or future gives me nightmares. FG are a cocktail of right wing extremism who have to play this down because of their inability to persuade the public in total.
FG and Labour would be another nightmare in dealing with the present crisis in the economy and the fact is under such a coalition over the last 20 years we would never have progressed beyond a permanent average rate of unemployment of 12%.
Blame FF all you like for the mess but its only FF with the brave Greens who will sort out the same mess

danman

scr123 wrote: »

The thoughts of a FG single party government at any time past, present or future gives me nightmares. FG are a cocktail of right wing extremism who have to play this down because of their inability to persuade the public in total.
FG and Labour would be another nightmare in dealing with the present crisis in the economy and the fact is under such a coalition over the last 20 years we would never have progressed beyond a permanent average rate of unemployment of 12%.
Blame FF all you like for the mess but its only FF with the brave Greens who will sort out the same mess

:eek:

conorhal

I think danman has nicely outlined the events as they occurred that can form a framework for the context of this debate.

danman wrote: »

Would the bank bailouts have happened?
Would a form of NAMA have been set up?
Would the PS wage cuts have happened?

I'd add: Would the bank guarantees have happened?

I'll respond on the basis that FG won a majority in the 2007 election.

Would the bank guarantees have happened?

Yes.
I think people, with the benefit of hindsight, have forgotten the absolute panic and chaos that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the climate of fear and uncertainty that existed at the time just can't be ignored. Literally everybody I knew with a bank account (which is pretty much everybody I knew) was a hair trigger away from moving their money based on the first whiff of a rumored bank collapse.
It appears that 'Optics' and 'confidence in the market' are as important as logic and substantive economic theory to economic activity (as the boom itself proved), and the same goes for the bust. The catastrophic failure of one bank at that point would have seen all the banks folding like dominos, because at that point there was such fear and uncertainty that a run on the banks would be inevitable. And thus the guarantee was inevitable.

In hindsight the guarantee should not have extended to bond holders for Anglo Irish bank, just deposit accounts to protect the ordinary savers cash. The problem is that we just didn't know at the time how big a hole some of the banks were really in (mostly because they lied through their teeth about the level of debt they carried). Even over a year later we didn't know, Ernst & Young (I think) carried out an audit that reported to the government that the hole in Anglo’s balance sheet could be as little as 2bn over 3 years. If we knew then what we know now things would have been different and a wind up of Anglo far less costly, but given the climate of ignorance and fear at the time the guarantee was inevitable and had to happen.

Once the guarantee was in place of course, everything else that followed was also an inevitable consequence.

Would the bank bailouts and NAMA have happened?
Yes. The problem of what to do next would still have existed and a bailout would be on the card, be it by nationalization (which is happening anyway) or some other mechanism, the same amount of money would have been spent plugging the same hole.
FG's 'bad bank', and 'recovery bank' proposal are no different to the reality of nationalization and NAMA in any respect other than optics. And as for the PS wage cuts etc. If anything they might have been deeper and included compulsory redundancies had FG been in office because FG have had little experience negotiating with the unions they may have been somewhat more blunt in their approach partly because they lacked experience and also because their cuts would have had greater legitimacy given that they didn't cause the crisis.

So in conclusion, no, there would have been no real substantive difference in how things would have unfolded had FG won the election, just minor ones.
Still it could have been worse, in a hypothetical universe in which Labor had won the 2007 election, today we would be Zimbabwe.

irishh_bob

scr123 wrote: »

The thoughts of a FG single party government at any time past, present or future gives me nightmares. FG are a cocktail of right wing extremism who have to play this down because of their inability to persuade the public in total.
FG and Labour would be another nightmare in dealing with the present crisis in the economy and the fact is under such a coalition over the last 20 years we would never have progressed beyond a permanent average rate of unemployment of 12%.
Blame FF all you like for the mess but its only FF with the brave Greens who will sort out the same mess

seriously , where does this notion of fine gael right wing extremism come from ???

invinciblePRSTV

irishh_bob wrote: »

seriously , where does this notion of fine gael right wing extremism come from ???

off the top of my head a few reasons -

-C na G and the rigid police state it governed in the early years of the state

-Blueshirts & former FG president O'Duffy

-Outright xenophobes amongst its ranks like Terence Flanagan senior

-not forgetting people in FGs PP like John Deasy - unashamed US republican supporter and Alan Shatter - Isreal apologist.

In more recent decades the party has essentially become an Irish version of the Conservative party in spite of the 'social democratic' wing supposedly led by Garrett the good (more like liberal social policies in combination with the latest flavour of neo liberal capitalism) this is reflectted in the social make of the partys membership and its supporters.

FG has generally been in its policies favouring of small Government and persuing of pro-business policies whilst maintaining its gombeen heritage and patronage where applicable.

And on the point of gombeenism....

average_runner wrote: »

In fairness FF and FG arent much different these days.

As for Labour they go to bed with anyone and when it suits will throw their toys out of their prams and walk, costing the country more money with another election.

There is two good guys that be running in the election where I live, one is FF and other is FG, hard call for who i pick as number 1.

Greens will get no vote off me, same with labour and Sinn Fein.

As can be seen in rural constituencies in particular (but not exclusively), both FF & FG appeal to the same little irelander demographic. If the same people vote for the same type of party then expect a similar level of governance in return.