FG/FF coalition

Centaur

John Bowman just made an interesting prediction. He suggested that the next time FF get into government it will be in coalition with FG. Has this election heralded the beginnings of a real left right divide in Irish politics?

Pal

they say this after every election

pigeonbutler

He said it won't be this time though. But if Labour try jump ship before next election it'll happen. Or potentially after next election.

liogairmhordain

i think kenny should talk to martin before he talks to gilmore. there is a block of approx 95 centre-right seats between them. i imagine the varadkar-deasy-mathews-creighton-harris wing of fg would prefer ff. more cabinet seats for fg as well.

Anonymous1987

If Fianna Fail are the official opposition to a Fine Gael lead government then wouldn't it be just a little bit hypocritical for them to go into coalition together?

_Bella_

I personally would be in favour of this coalition. Being quite young civil war politics does not effect me. I am not keen on having such a huge majority in government. The opposition to the government would be very weak. Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are very similar ideologically and should be able to work well together.

paul71

Centaur wrote: »

John Bowman just made an interesting prediction. He suggested that the next time FF get into government it will be in coalition with FG. Has this election heralded the beginnings of a real left right divide in Irish politics?

I heard Bowman say that, but IMO he is wrong. FF are not right wing, their core is left wing but because they became corrupt and tried to be all things to all people they gave the illusion of being right wing.

As true bed fellows SF are actually much closer to FF then FG are. I think in 10 years when SF eventually are forced to soften their hard left stance they will move closer together.

gcgirl

There both right wing conservative catholic based party's they deserve to really be together feck the civil war unite

Anonymous1987

liogairmhordain wrote: »

i think kenny should talk to martin before he talks to gilmore. there is a block of approx 95 centre-right seats between them. i imagine the varadkar-deasy-mathews-creighton-harris wing of fg would prefer ff. more cabinet seats for fg as well.

It would be politically disastrous. The Greens were obliterated for supporting a Fianna Fail government. Not only this but the Fine Gael campaign was lead on opposition to Fianna Fail's government, Kenny mentioned numerous times he would not go into government with Fianna Fail during the election campaign.

gcgirl

When the heck have FF been left ?

Anonymous1987

gcgirl wrote: »

When the heck have FF been left ?

Since the beginning, now they are roughly centre or centre right though.

gcgirl

I am falling around laughing here in my kitchen there is nothing remotely left about FF ! Absolutly nothing

Monty Burnz

gcgirl wrote: »

When the heck have FF been left ?

When Bertie as Taoiseach told us he was a socialist, and when low-paid people paid practically no tax, and when the pensions, children's allowance and unemployment benefits rose massively during the bubble.

Lots of the stuff that FFailure did was left wing. Lots of it was right wing, and an awful lot of it was just pure lunacy (e.g. zero regulation, property incentives during boom etc etc).

paul71

gcgirl wrote: »

I am falling around laughing here in my kitchen there is nothing remotely left about FF ! Absolutly nothing

Keep falling Gcgirl but you are wrong.

FF were a left party from the begining, economic reality when faced with actual power forced them to move centre, but at the core they always retained their left leanings, High Social welfare, high indirect tax to give illusion to world we are low tax, high spending public service, these core left policies led to this disaster.

opinion guy

hahahahaa
I really hope they do this - if only because I wish to see both parties demolished next time around:D

murphaph

gcgirl wrote: »

I am falling around laughing here in my kitchen there is nothing remotely left about FF ! Absolutly nothing

Increasing dole at twice the rate of inflation bringing it to €204 a week when it would have been ca. €120 if it had been allowed to rise with inflation is pretty damn "left wing" to me.

FF are in reality a populist, centrist party that will do anything to be in government. They have no real ideology beyond opposing the signing of the Treaty in 1921. Useless, bloodsucking gimps.

I am a conservative voter. I would like to see FG take up this position to the right of centre and let Labour take up their left of centre position and let FF die as they deserve to.

FG can't realistically take FF as a bedfellow now without massive repurcussions from the people who legitimately voted FF out. Ideally FG with scrape enough seats to form a government with some like minded inds and let Labour push FF into an irrelevant position as second largest opposition party. Hopefully with reduced airtime FF will wither away as their core supporters start to go to the great ballot box in the sky.

Monty Burnz

opinion guy wrote: »

hahahahaa
I really hope they do this - if only because I wish to see both parties demolished next time around:D

Perfect - then we would have a choice of the centre-left and the far left! Socialist heaven awaits us. I've compiled a list of successful socialist states and attached it to the end of my post.

gcgirl

murphaph wrote: »

Increasing dole at twice the rate of inflation bringing it to €204 a week when it would have been ca. €120 if it had been allowed to rise with inflation is pretty damn "left wing" to me.

FF are in reality a populist, centrist party that will do anything to be in government. They have no real ideology beyond opposing the signing of the Treaty in 1921. Useless, bloodsucking gimps.

I am a conservative voter. I would like to see FG take up this position to the right of centre and let Labour take up their left of centre position and let FF die as they deserve to.

FG can't realistically take FF as a bedfellow now without massive repurcussions from the people who legitimately voted FF out. Ideally FG with scrape enough seats to form a government with some like minded inds and let Labour push FF into an irrelevant position as second largest opposition party. Hopefully with reduced airtime FF will wither away as their core supporters start to go to the great ballot box in the sky.

Raising SW and cutting taxes along with ssia give outs were mere vote buying exercises

Dale Parish

gcgirl wrote: »

Raising SW and cutting taxes along with ssia give outs were mere vote buying exercises

They raised the minimum wage to ridiculous levels, and cut it by minuscule amounts; that's pretty damn left to me.

gcgirl

The cost of living is high in this lively country pushed up through the property bubble, high wages, 11 yrs ago prior to entering the actually euro currency it was a lot cheaper but as the euro rolled it I think Irish people went a lil crazy the price of goods labour property continued to surge upwards because they really did not give a hoop what they were paying for things.

paul71

gcgirl wrote: »

Raising SW and cutting taxes along with ssia give outs were mere vote buying exercises

An 80 year vote buying exercise is policy, very left wing.

Isolastionist Ecomony in 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, thats so far left we may as well have been in Warsaw pact.

Creating state monopolies = collectivisation.

Really GC you are ignoring the facts, from day one with Devs 'comely maidens' idealogy they were left wing.

Jack Lynch at the Urging of TP Whitiger eventually brought us into EEC as left wing policies had left us with one export industry, people.

The false low corp tax lauded as an incentive of proper right leaning government was/is really a subsisy from EU. Subsidies = left wing.

So we were creaming Europe, paying PS way over odds, social welfare way over odds. Taxing people indirectly through highest EU VAT rate, highest VRT on cars, excise on petrol, alcohol. Highest electricity cost in Europe paid to a state owned company.

How in the face of facts can you saw they are anything other than left wing.

Centaur

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Perfect - then we would have a choice of the centre-left and the far left! Socialist heaven awaits us. I've compiled a list of successful socialist states and attached it to the end of my post.

Whenever there is an OECD report rating countries on specific aspects of their performance the countries that consistantly appear at or near the top are the Scandanavian ones.
They combine excellent health and education services with strong performing economies. We do not have to re-invent the wheel. There is a blueprint for a social democratic model that we can follow.

doomed

FG would be murdered next time around if they did. A lot of their vote was to get rid of FF. Lab would be happy enough as it would have them as leaders of the opposition and probably leadership of the next Government as well.

As to left or right, I'm not sure we really do that stuff in Ireland. I think it may be more a case of populism. FF tends to reflect society rather than lead it. At one time the vast majority of the public were fairly poor whether they were working class or small farmers. FF was their party. They had also been defined by what they were not. They were not the merchant, landowning, professional or Anglo Irish class.

As people became more affluent and we got a bigger middle class FF shifted with them but were pushed a little further by the PD/McCreevey tendency. They also wanted their tummies tickled by the right wing media.

Monty Burnz

Centaur wrote: »

Whenever there is an OECD report rating countries on specific aspects of their performance the countries that consistantly appear at or near the top are the Scandanavian ones.
They combine excellent health and education services with strong performing economies. We do not have to re-invent the wheel. There is a blueprint for a social democratic model that we can follow.

I'd happily live under the Scandinavian model personally, but we are not starting from the same place as they did. We don't have the same sort of society, and I don't know if you can graft the political system of one community onto the people of another and expect it to work.

Incidentally, I don't think the ULA, Sinn Fein or Joe Higgins want to turn us into Sweden. For them, Sweden is still a capitalist nightmare.

By the way, Sweden are currently in the midst of their own property bubble, so I'm not sure their system is a silver bullet either - they already had a baninking crisis in the 90s.

later12

Quite surprised at some of the posts on this thread. It's always been widely accepted that Fianna Fáil have historically been a centre-left political organisation, whereas Fine Gael have always been centre right.

Both would have right wing policies on the more contentious social issues of course, but that doesn't detract very much from the general political positions.

I presume the disbelief is coming from left wingers who want to disassociate their political beliefs from the outrageous fiscal policies pursued by Fianna Fail over the past fourteen years.

murphaph

Centaur wrote: »

Whenever there is an OECD report rating countries on specific aspects of their performance the countries that consistantly appear at or near the top are the Scandanavian ones.
They combine excellent health and education services with strong performing economies. We do not have to re-invent the wheel. There is a blueprint for a social democratic model that we can follow.

Please note that Scandinavian countries have quite extensive natural resources which help greatly to subsidise their social policies. Finland had a crappy economy until the early 90's when the government realised the way out was to export and began sponsoring high tech industries like Nokia.

Denmark is harder to explain as its resources are limited. However, I have read some articles about Denmark lately that are less than inspiring and living here in Berlin know quite a few economic migrants from Denmark who left the place because the were sick of being taxed to high heaven while their hard earned cash was being handed over to what they describe as lazy wasters on the dole.

Denmark has seen significant brain drain and has been replacing its population will poorly educated immigrants. This will lead to a gradual reduction in living standards as intelligent Danes move to Germany to do business. There are plenty of Danish run businesses in Berlin where taxes and rents are much lower. This will only continue.

Please also note that these social democratic Scandinavian states generally have a falling scale of welfare (like Germany) so you receive a set %age of your salary before being made unemployed (with caps for very high earners) and this falls. In Germany it is stepped down to a basic subsistence payment of ca. €354 a month plus rent paid in a modest flat (you'll have to move if your flat is too big, if you own your own home you'll have to sell it and use the money to feed , house and clothe yourself until you meet the maximum allowable cash reserve thresholds).

The notion of just receiving a flat dole payment which never changes no matter how long you've been in receipt of it doesn't exist in these social democratic states in Scandinavia. People have to accept that too.