Fianna Fail Preference for Smaller Party/Independent Combination

Listening to Bertie on Sky/RTE, he believes that independents will play a major role in government formation. This can hardly be interpreted any other way than a preference for smaller party (PD/Green) and independents as a path to government.

This was further nailed on by Conor Lenihan speaking to Sam Smyth who said that the numbers made the Labour option the most “unlikely” of options because they really don’t need that many seats. Brian Boru in the comments has hit the nail on the head for this aversion, Labour will want 5 seats (so the rumour goes) while the others will be happy to take less seats and some local delivery (depending on party/independent). He did raise the spectre of stability but it seems any stable government consists in a Green party involved.

So we have to wait and see but the flare is up.

The left as yet cannot really gloat over the demise of the PDs, they are down but they are likely to be in government. The real gloating is to be done by Fianna Fail. 42% of the vote, loss of only 3 seats and complete control of the levers of power. Equally if, as seems likely, Fianna Fail have little or no interest in Labour as coalition partner perhaps Howlin and Broughan have run a little too early on the attempt to get a new Labour leader.

Mark Hennessy‘s take is that someone needs to tell the Greens to shut up, wait and consider. The options on the table are, as Dan has pointed out, difficult to run for the full five years. A party machine is the best in terms of coalescence as it buffers them from the fallout of the unexpected. Fianna Fail will come round to this idea and the Green’s need to be waiting and have played a crafty game.  Interestingly Spokesman reckons they are doing a bit too much of the early heavy sell.