While everybody waits to see if Enda and Micheál can rise above history and put the country before their grandfathers' grudges, I believe the REAL responsibility for the formation of a government lies with the LEFT.
It was NEVER going to take just one election for Ireland to move from an almost entirely RIGHT political landscape to a majority socialist government. At best it was going to take two elections. In my estimation that meant a first election with a government comprising Sinn Féin in some capacity, although we have yet to discover if Sinn Féin actually is a party of LEFT principles or another PSEUDO-LEFT party like Labour ... with Groucho Marx ideology .."I have principles and if you don't like them...I have others".
The LEFT have been given a huge vote by the electorate and it is up to them to go into government with one or other of the old guard whether they like it or not. What the LEFT has this time is the moral authority to REALLY set the agenda for FG or FF and not bend over like Labour did. What they have that Labour didn't is the possibility of walking if they don't get what they (and the people!) want ... and end water charges, Irish Water, property tax, action on the homeless crisis, the health crisis, protection for struggling families in rack-rent accommodation with absentee landlords and hopefully much more.
If we're going to have another election in twelve months ANYWAY!! then they've got absolutely nothing to lose..!!! Why don't SF or a combination of the other LEFT parties take their place in government to show the people what they're capable of ... actually walking out of a FG / FF led government on matters of principle would be the single biggest boost towards an even bigger win in a future (imminent) election...!!!
The risk for the LEFT is that, the people having given them a strong vote in the election, the new left would see that support fritter away with a backlash. The electorate might just say "listen ... we gave you a strong vote ... the strongest ever in the history of the state ... and you did nothing with it! Do you not want to be in government or what?"
In the Dublin South West constituency where Paul Murphy topped the poll in the 2014 by-election ahead of a Sinn Féin's candidate and an Independent candidate, one might have expected in the recent election that SF would bring home a second seat alongside Seán Crowe and a second anti-austerity candidate or Independent, but Fianna Fáil topped the poll with longtime councillor John Lahart who finished SIXTH in 2014!
My read of that result is that working class FF voters, having gone to Labour in 2011, have swung back to FF, despite the continued support against water charges and perhaps deterred from voting for SF while the party leader still brings so much uncomfortable baggage to the table.
Ireland is still fundamentally a massively conservative country. That doesn't change over the life of one government. Indeed when a government is SO far right as to be a corporate fascist regime of billionaire elitism as Fine Gael were, it is still possible to move to the left and remain right of centre!
Now is the time for AAA-PBP, Sinn Féin and the other smaller groups to take the leap and go into government with SOMEBODY! If they don't they risk losing what they've achieved ... and while they are still basking in the glory of the March election and slapping each other on the back they may pay for the same disconnect from the popular mood that the old guard suffered already this year.
It was never going to happen in one election. We were always going to have to wait the 5 years of a coalition government before seeing what a completely LEFT government might bring us. If it doesn;t happen now then we may be waiting at least the terms of two governments to find out. That's another decade of cronyism, platitudes about reform, corruption, mismanagement, waste, emigration, evictions, homelessness, deaths on trollies, suicides, child poverty, the disintegration of our education and health systems and possibly of society in general...and all the while the politicians and their [REDACTED] mates get richer and richer.
If that happens, I believe it will be the fault of the LEFT. Ideology without realism and pragmatism is worth NOTHING!
You were given the torch ... run with it or watch it burn out.
what your sayin is sf should team up with corrupt ff the very people that broke our country no thanks the people had their chance and they funked it.sf will gain in opposition anyways and that's what this is all about.
ReplyDeletethe shinners will go in with anyone asnd are already in the process of selling out on water charges, AAA/PBP will not do so and will not go in with FF.
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