Back to the future, or I’ve seen the past and it works! Fine Gael/Labour and a strategy for winning the next election… Part 1

Okay, so for Fine Gael and Labour the last weekend has been—and let’s be blunt—fairly abysmal. Desperately bad polls, which despite the best attempts of those who live and die by such data to spin them better (“it’ll take (one) or (two) or (three)—extend ad infinitum—to be sure of a trend… something suspiciously wrong with the result… sympathy vote”—well yeah, we kind of get that!). A sense that their shared enterprise is drifting, or even moving in reverse, despite—despite—the worst conceivable weeks for the Government and the Taoiseach. After all, if the whiff of scandal won’t bring down this lot, well, what on earth will?

To be honest while the polls aren’t great, I wouldn’t give up hope yet if I were them. Sure, there’s a Budget to come, the release of the SSIAs and just enough dark clouds on the economic horizon to have the electorate seeking the safety and comfort of the known. And Bertie Ahern, dear, dear Bertie—perhaps particularly to his friends—no longer the Teflon Taoiseach, more—as noted in the Examiner—like the Kevlar Taoiseach. Wait, perhaps on balance I would give up. But, nonetheless, events occur, crises arise, people slip up and who knows, perhaps that all-important—to the opposition—piece of withheld information from the Tribunal—assuming it exists—is about to appear. Or not.

So, in an unusual display of fraternal fellow-feeling and sometime nostalgia for a party I never joined (Labour), led by people who were at the top of two parties I did join, and secure in the knowledge I never will join their latest or any future political homes, I have some advice to give, for what it’s worth.

I think it’s time Fine Gael and Labour thought long and hard about what they’re trying to do. Is it about interrupting Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrat hegemony (well, not really hegemony, but you’ll know what I mean)? Or what?

The answers to these questions are crucial because upon them hinge their strategies from here on in.

Let’s be honest for a moment. There is but a hairsbreadth between our supposedly centre-right FF/PD government and our supposedly centre-left potential FG/Lab government in terms of policy. Differentiation between the two is largely illusory, it’s difficult to point to any particular area where one can with confidence say “Yes my friends, this much they will do entirely differently!” This isn’t meant as an insult. but as an observation. Both sets of parties belong to the largely consensual democratic centre—yeah, even the PDs. If I can think of one area where there might be a significant change of tone that would possibly be the North, and that would, one hopes merely be a change of tone rather than a change of policy (although one wonders about the noises off from FG regarding the St. Andrew’s “Agreement”; the arguments now voiced by FG are about supporting the centre as against the “extremes” carry little serious weight in the context of the DUP and SF being the two largest parties in the North and there is little point in fighting the battles of the dear departed 1990s).

So putting that aside, what is the purpose of the exercise? Well, clearly FG/Labour have a self image that, even if the policies are similar in execution, they will be different. That they, in some respects, will be “cleaner,” more efficient, better at management and so on and so forth.

Well, perhaps. Smiffy has noted previously that if that is the only argument in favour of change it’s not much of an argument. Experience alone would suggest the current incumbents might be better.

Still, let’s assume, and I actually think it’s not a bad argument, that some change between our political elites is better than none at all. How to get from here to there?

Let’s look at the disposition of forces and the historical precedent. First up, we’re in a very strange period of time politically, but not unknown. The elections of 1948 and 1954 were both in a very similar environment with intriguingly similar poll ratings, at least if we believe the Sunday Tribune is even close. So what do we learn? We learn that:

If one argues that PD is analogous to part of the FF vote, that Labour is equal to the sum of the two variants extant in 1948 and that Clann na Talmhan happily mops up whatever ambiguity there is in the FG vote at the moment, while the Greens can be said to fit into the margins, we see an electoral landscape with blocs not dissimilar to today. Moreover we see a situation where one overriding aim was present that allowed an unlikely coalescence of Republicans, conservatives, socialists and Independents to work together on what was a reasonably successful government for three years. Indeed the real importance of 1948 was the demonstration of key elements of the political structures within the 26-county state, that it could see an orderly transfer of power after almost twenty years of one party rule, that the opposition—however disparate—could combine in an ABFF front and that political pluralism was a reality.

2006/7 isn’t 1948, but the fragmentation of the electoral map after a decade of Fianna Fáil/PD government is such that there is a similarity to today. In Clann na Poblachta, we saw a party that had been enormously close to the then prevailing IRA, indeed in the shape of Sean MacBride, it’s leader there was a former Chief of Staff of that IRA. In the Independents we saw the usual rather eclectic mix and match of local and national issues as we see today.

1954 brought a somewhat different arrangement, where the pattern was more clearly moving towards that which prevailed in the 1960s and 70s. The margins were squeezed out, perhaps because people wanted political change, but didn’t entirely trust multi-party coalitions and therefore began to give their vote to the primary elements within such coalitions.

Okay, so away from the crude psephology; what point am I making? A basic one, which is that in order to dislodge FF/PD, the “opposition” may have to add an extension onto the tent other than the one they’ve half built for the Green Party. A much bigger extension, one which would encompass at least some of the Independents, perhaps might see FG/Labour trying to prise away some of McDowell’s band of brothers and sisters, particularly those who are no entirely sure about the current polls, or heck, why not just bring the PDs in wholesale? Finian McGrath has already talked about a cabinet seat for an alliance of Independents, brave talk indeed for a man under considerable pressure in his north-of-the-Liffey fortress that appears to be tilting ever so swiftly into the sea at Clontarf, but not in itself an utterly insane idea. As it stands, there are at least three of the Independent TDs—excluding Joe Higgins and the SP—who might just buy into such an idea. Throw in the natural urge to give a kicking to FF and… one probably still comes up short, or perhaps not.

But even were this to be a fractious government that only lasted three years, it would still give an opportunity for FG to present itself as a party of government, an important attribute in itself and one which is fairly rapidly diminishing into the dim and distant past as things stand at the moment. Get building the tent. Make the overtures. Forget about the cries of political strokes, they’ll be made if they have to be, and either you want power or you don’t… in any case I seem to recall FG in talks with one Mr. Tony Gregory back in the day before Haughey sealed that particular deal. The point is, if Fianna Fáil government is bad for this state—and there is a strong argument that continued government by a single party or coalition of parties is bad in a pluralistic democracy—well then, we know, or rather Fine Gael/Labour knows what to do…

Granted, this is merely a slightly tongue in cheek suggestion, and yet, and yet, it all depends on how much people want to exercise power and make a change…