Fianna Gael - Village Magazine

62 February 2016

he former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds once

said that an Irish General Election was a

series of 41 constituency by-elections. The

vagaries of our proportional representation

system mean that a modern Irish election can

throw up all kinds of results. The landscape of Irish poli-

tics has been thrown into even greater uncertainty by

the extraordinary destruction of Fianna Fáil which lost

three-quarters of its seats in 2011 (dropping from 78 to

20 TDs).

The narrative for this forthcoming general election is

already well-known. Taoiseach Enda Kenny is now seek-

ing the kind of mandate Fianna Fáil used to get in former

years. The rhetoric of stability once deployed by Fianna

Fáil, is now being marshalled by Fine Gael. Kenny has

staked his ground with the mantra, “Keeping the Recov-

ery Going”, while making sure to register humility about

the electorate who have brought about the economic

improvement. The Taoiseach is understandably playing

on the anxiety of voters about the potential for eco-

nomic reverse if its voting facilitates a weak coalition

government comprising disparate parties of left and

right with little or nothing in common.

In fact 1977 was the last time an Irish party won an

outright majority and Governments which lack an

actual parliamentary majority have proved to be among

the most successful. Lemass led without

a majority in the 1960s and Haughey did

so again in the 1980s. A three-party coa-

lition led by John Bruton, with little

common ideology, ran quite smoothly

from 1994.

It appears that both Fianna Fáil and

Fine Gael actually perform best when

under the watchful eye of smaller

parties.

Clearly there is going to be a coalition.

However, the real conundrum for the

electorate is that the great probability is

that Enda Kenny will be returned as Taoi-

seach though the likelihood of Fine Gael

being back with Labour on their own is

very much an outside chance. It is more likely that

Renua and other independents will make up his

numbers.

Traditionally there has been a leader of the opposi-

tion who could put together a coalition alternative to

the parties in power. A fully effective leader of the oppo-

sition has to credibly state to the electorate his (or her)

chance of becoming Taoiseach. The numbers now, and

since 2011, do not allow Micheál Martin to make this

claim. The only way he could possible claim to having

a chance of being Taoiseach after the election is if he

consents to forming a government containing his own

party, Sinn Féin and assorted independents or smaller

parties of both left and right.

A hung Dáil could throw up all sorts of permutations

and there is an outside chance that there would be

enough, disparate parties other than Fine Gael to form

an administration. However, it seems unlikely that

Micheál Martin would become Taoiseach and exclude

both Fine Gael and Sinn Féin from government, thus

stranding both in opposition.

Indeed Martin's decision to rule out forming a gov-

ernment with or containing Sinn Féin has allowed Gerry

Adams to cleverly state that voting for Fianna Fáil is an

irrelevance. Adams has made the argument that since

Fianna Fáil would go into power with neither Sinn Féin

nor Fine Gael then it is pointless for voters to give it

support.

Sinn Féin is probably the only party in the political

system, along with the radical parties of the left, that

could, if it chose, openly claim that it is ﬁghting the elec-

tion in order not to go into power. However, it does not

appear willing to embrace this particular high-risk

Though for me FG is

more conservative, all

I could reply was that

Fianna Fáil were a party

of the entrepreneurial

bourgeoisie and Fine

Gael of the commercial

bourgeoisie

Fianna Gael

The elusive difference between

our two biggest parties

by Conor Lenihan

COLUMNS

February 2016 63

gambit. Nevertheless since Sinn Féin appears to

be playing a longer game Fianna Fáil will have

little to complain about if Sinn Féin actually does

pass it out in this particular general election.

Alternatively, if voters take it that there is no

alternative to Fine Gael back in the saddle, they

might construe this as giving them in effect ‘a

free vote’. This could see the creation of a clear,

Sinn Féin-led, left-wing opposition to the status

quo though when faced with the challenges of

being in government Sinn Féin will no doubt

knuckle down, just as it has done in the North.

Whatever the result it is most likely that it will

be open to the leaderships of both Fine Gael and

Fianna Fáil, with inevitable reticence, to form a

grand coalition. This intriguing possibility has

its supporters in both political parties. It is

noticeable that a good many of those who serve

on the Fianna Fáil front bench are privately in

favour of this should the election results make

it possible. On the Fine Gael side of the house

ﬁgures like Simon Coveney have been explicit

in not ruling this out. It would of course spell the

end for both Enda Kenny and Micheál Martin.

Maybe it is for this reason that the younger,

more ambitious members, in both parties seem

keener.

There is after all much in common between

the two big parties. Indeed the differences are

famously elusive.

The Economist magazine, in 2011, described

Fine Gael as centre-right, Labour as centre-left

and Fianna Fáil as nationalist, and of course two

biggest parties were germinated in opposing

stances during the civil war. Beyond this, Fianna

Fáil’s sobriquet is ‘The Republican Party’ and it

was for a while somewhat unsympathetic to the

British perspective.

In his history of Fianna Fáil, ‘the Party’

(1986) Dick Walsh noted that Fianna Fáil was

as much a movement as a party, had always

attracted as many rich people as Fine Gael and

as many poor people as Labour. Donal

O’Shea’s ‘80 Years of Fianna Fáil’ deﬁnes it as

a “catchall party… appealing to all classes”.

Walsh said its policies always deﬁed deﬁnition

and quoted De Valera as advising, “always

keep you policy under your hat”.

As to the difference, a French newspaper

once asked me, while a Minister, what it was

and when pushed to it all I could reply was that

Fianna Fáil were a party of the entrepreneurial

bourgeoisie and that Fine Gael tended to be

stocked by members of the commercial bour-

geoisie. Seán Lemass was once asked the same

question and rather surprised the questioner

with the curt but solemn reply – “We're in

power".

Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are often

described as pro-EU and pro-enterprise con

servative parties but for me Fine Gael is the

more conservative. My old party has the ability

to move both left and right but has traditionally

done best when it clings to the centre. Fine Gael

is steeped in a deep conservativism and in the

1930s it evolved its current name through a brief

dalliance with corporatist and fascist ideas – the

notorious Blueshirts were a pale imitation of

their continental equivalents but were none the

less moving in a similar direction. Fianna Fail,

can credibly, assert that its natural inclination

is to the left as Micheal Martin has sought to do

in the weeks before the election. It is essentially

a republican or nationalist movement with its

roots in social democratic values but without the

lineage to socialism or communism.

Kevin Byrne and Eoin O'Malley (2012) con-

sider that the differences between the two

parties evoke different nationalist traditions

(Irish Enlightenment and Gaelic Nationalist).

In fact the biggest difference for years was the

simple reality that it was Fine Gael who had to

make up the numbers with Labour to get Fianna

Fáil out. There has now been a clear role rever-

sal. Fine Gael is now the big party of power.

The remarkable thing is how long the basic,

civil-war division, as expressed in political par-

ties was able to survive. Essentially Irish voters

have shown themselves remarkably immuno-

resistant to the toxic strains of both the extreme

left or right. In this sense the country is both

politically and culturally middlebrow.

The real disappointment, from a voter per-

spective, is that few if any of the parties that are

putting themselves forward in this election are

arguing for a deep-seated restructuring of the

way in which our government works. It will

probably take another election before it is pos-

sible to change and make dynamic changes to

the system itself.

People within both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil

are apprehensive about any post-election

between the two parties as they believe it will

allow Sinn Fein to catapult itself, overnight, into

the major party of opposition and inevitably

government in a relatively short space of time.

Some within Fianna Fáil are prepared to give a

limited level of support to a Fine Gael govern-

ment once Fianna Fáil retains its status as the

major opposition party. This has been described

as a reprise of the Tallaght Strategy which Alan

Dukes announced in the late 1980s to support

Haughey’s austerity and recovery policies.

The most recent Irish Times poll exposed an

intriguing socio-economic difference between

the two parties. Fianna Fáil, despite its smaller

size, remains the only party in the system that

draws equally from the entire spectrum of

income groups. Fine Gael, by contrast, is drawn

more exclusively from the middle class and

higher income groups. This sets Fianna Fail

apart and allows it to effectively build a social

democratic platform in the future. The recent

marriage equality referendum saw the party ful-

somely supporting the liberalizing move.

The party no longer sees it as good politics

to be depicted as being on the side of the coun-

try’s more conservative forces.

Conor Lenihan is a former Minister for Science,

Technology and Innovation. For the past four

years he has been a Vice President of the

Skolkovo Foundation. His recent book

Haughey - Prince of Power was published by

Blackwater Press.

Scylla and Charybdis