Q. What is the difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael?
A. One is the Government, and the other is the Opposition.
Ah, the old ones are the best. And there have been times, such as the present, when the opposite has been true. But not very many.
Loss of the Irish Civil War of the 1920s drove those who were to become Fine Gael back to redoubts from which they knew that they would always be the Official Opposition, or occasionally at the head of a governing coalition, but could never govern alone, while at the same time always having enough families, communities and areas that were tribally loyal enough to them to prevent any alternative second force from arising in Irish politics.
Those families, communities and areas often wanted to be told entirely different things, but that was no problem, although it must be said that catch-all populism was not and is not a difficulty for Fianna Fáil, and that Fianna Fáil has been a great deal more successful at it when it came to winning elections.
Ireland is the standing contradiction of everything that is claimed by the advocates of the Single Transferable Vote for multimember constituencies. Nothing remotely like Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil is supposed to exist under such a system. Yet there they both are.
Moreover, at national level, the parties are now as difficult to tell apart as they ever were. The only difference is that, while both still centrist-to-rightish economically, they are now pro-EU and globalist rather than at least rhetorically nationalistic, and they are now socially liberal and secular rather than self-consciously "Catholic" in a tellingly ostentatious expression of what most Irish people felt that they ought to believe rather than of what they necessarily did.
That said, the sense that one ought to hold certain beliefs is itself an expression of those beliefs. But of that, another time. The point of this piece is that the British Labour Party stands on the cusp of becoming Fine Gael.
For a while, it was not clear in partisan, rather than in ideological, terms who had won the British Civil War of the 1980s. If that reads like an exaggeration, then you obviously come from one of the places that won.
But Labour has lately been driven back to redoubts from which it knows that it will always be the Official Opposition, or occasionally at the head of a governing coalition, but can never govern alone, while at the same time always having enough families, communities and areas that were tribally loyal enough to it to prevent any alternative second force from arising in British politics, as such.
Those families, communities and areas would often want to be told entirely different things, but that would be no problem, although it must be said that catch-all populism has never been and would never be a difficulty for the Conservative Party, and that the Conservative Party has been and would be a great deal more successful at it when it came to winning elections.
Moreover, at national level, the parties would be as difficult to tell apart as they had ever been.
Loss of the Irish Civil War of the 1920s drove those who were to become Fine Gael back to redoubts from which they knew that they would always be the Official Opposition, or occasionally at the head of a governing coalition, but could never govern alone, while at the same time always having enough families, communities and areas that were tribally loyal enough to them to prevent any alternative second force from arising in Irish politics.
Those families, communities and areas often wanted to be told entirely different things, but that was no problem, although it must be said that catch-all populism was not and is not a difficulty for Fianna Fáil, and that Fianna Fáil has been a great deal more successful at it when it came to winning elections.
Ireland is the standing contradiction of everything that is claimed by the advocates of the Single Transferable Vote for multimember constituencies. Nothing remotely like Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil is supposed to exist under such a system. Yet there they both are.
Moreover, at national level, the parties are now as difficult to tell apart as they ever were. The only difference is that, while both still centrist-to-rightish economically, they are now pro-EU and globalist rather than at least rhetorically nationalistic, and they are now socially liberal and secular rather than self-consciously "Catholic" in a tellingly ostentatious expression of what most Irish people felt that they ought to believe rather than of what they necessarily did.
That said, the sense that one ought to hold certain beliefs is itself an expression of those beliefs. But of that, another time. The point of this piece is that the British Labour Party stands on the cusp of becoming Fine Gael.
For a while, it was not clear in partisan, rather than in ideological, terms who had won the British Civil War of the 1980s. If that reads like an exaggeration, then you obviously come from one of the places that won.
But Labour has lately been driven back to redoubts from which it knows that it will always be the Official Opposition, or occasionally at the head of a governing coalition, but can never govern alone, while at the same time always having enough families, communities and areas that were tribally loyal enough to it to prevent any alternative second force from arising in British politics, as such.
Those families, communities and areas would often want to be told entirely different things, but that would be no problem, although it must be said that catch-all populism has never been and would never be a difficulty for the Conservative Party, and that the Conservative Party has been and would be a great deal more successful at it when it came to winning elections.
Moreover, at national level, the parties would be as difficult to tell apart as they had ever been.
Lord Salisbury said that politics was "civil war with the gloves on" and the fact that his phrase sums up the politics of the 80s to anyone who lived through them is not accidental.
ReplyDeleteThe Right set out to smash the Left at home and abroad and it did so.
"What joy it was in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heaven".
That's not what the Right says now. Both sides seem to think that they lost in the end. They are both correct.
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