FF and FG in their nest agree!
[Normal weekly service resumes next week.]
The most interesting reflection on Irish politics to cross my radar over the long summer was a piece[i] behind the paywall of the on-line business publication The Currency by Kevin Cunningham, an independent analyst and pollster, under the headline: “Power, passion and pragmatism — the paradox of Fianna Fáil”.
Regular readers of this blog will be weary of my frequent rehearsal of the evolution of the parliamentary configuration of Irish politics since independence. For most of that period, Fianna Fáil could be described as the fulcrum around which the system revolved. From 1932–2011, it emerged from every general election with more seats than any other party. It governed alone with or without an overall majority for more than half of that time — during which no other party ever achieved the status of forming a single party government. Altogether, including its participation in coalitions, it was in government for approximately 80% of that period.
After the election of 2007 came the crash of 2008.
At the next election in 2011, Fianna Fáil’s vote share compared to the previous election tumbled from 41.6% to 17.4% and its seat tally from 78 to 20. It was relegated to third place in terms of Dáil numbers, light years behind Fine Gael which won 76 of the 166 seats being contested. Having looked rock solid for generations as the natural party of government, it looked unlikely ever to be in government again and, indeed, seemed to be dicing with following the dinosaurs into extinction.
But the patient did not die. The party recovered ground at the election in 2016 and emerged from the 2020 election in roughly the same place as Sinn Féin and Fine Gael in terms of both votes and seats. It is back in government.
While Sinn Féin established a clear ascendancy in opinion polls for the first two years since the present government was formed in June 2020, its poll level has retreated since. In broad brush terms, opinion polls now have Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in roughly the same place they finished in the 2020 election with 20–25% of the vote each. It should be noted — if only for the record — that while the actual vote share of the two “civil war” parties in the recent local and European elections were in line with the results of the 2020 election, Sinn Féin’s vote share had fallen by approximately half.
So back to Mr. Cunningham. His article examines how Fianna Fáil managed to cling on to life after the disastrous election in 2011 and its current resilience.
One reason why Fianna Fáil support collapsed in the first place after the crash is that Ireland is much less monolithic or homogeneous and more volatile now compared to the last century during which Fianna Fáil was often and uniquely described as the “catch all” party because it drew its support regularly and evenly across all social and economic classes and age groups.
In those bygone days, once a party had your support at all, it probably had it for life. Voters today are much less sticky and more transactional in their loyalties from one election to the next.
Ironically though, this political promiscuity may have helped Fianna Fáil’s revival between 2011 and 2016. If Fine Gael expected voters to reward them in 2016 for having navigated the country out of the post-crash depression, they were sadly disappointed. While they still emerged as the largest party from the 2016 election, they dropped a third of their vote (from 36% to 25%) and their seats (from 76 to 50) compared to 2011. On the other hand, Fianna Fáil’s seat tally more than doubled (from 20 to 44) compared to 2011 and their vote increased by almost 40% (from 17% to 24%).
Clearly, a substantial cohort of voters who deserted Fianna Fáil in 2011 had not damned them in perpetuity but were comfortable to revisit them in 2016.
The mix of the crash and changing social trends and demographics has certainly caused some voters to switch definitively from Fianna Fáil to Sinn Féin, the “Left” and independents. Its vote share will never return to the 40%+ heights of yore.
However, there is a decent sized cluster of voters who see the choice between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael as like that between beef and salmon for dinner, a decision between small and inconsequential differences. Though many deserted Fianna Fáil for Fine Gael in 2011, they were happy to return pragmatically rather than permanently five years later.
Mr. Cunningham identifies other features that contribute to Fianna Fáil’s continuing robustness.
First, though it may no longer be the “natural party of government”, it remains unashamedly a party that seeks to be in government. There are plenty of voters who find that ambition distasteful at best. But there is a large constituency of “responsible” voters who recognise that, however grubby the business of governing can be compared to the purity of sitting on the sidelines, the country needs a government of some sort.
Second, Fianna Fáil does better than other parties at choosing candidates who are already recognised and enjoy a personal support base in their constituency over and above their political affiliation. Their survival prospects are better through thin as well as thick.
Third, the party has shifted gradually closer to the centre from the conservative right even if some of its representatives have had to be dragged kicking and screaming along that journey.
Fourth, always at worst an emollient figure who was little disliked, Micheál Martin’s personal popularity has grown during the lifetime of this government, especially during his spell as Taoiseach — notably among voters whose primary loyalty is to Fine Gael.
The evolution of the relationship between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is most important.
In the last century, the major schism of the civil war melted gradually into an intense narcissism of small differences. In mid-century, Seán Lemass described the difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael as being that “we are in and they are out”. But, however small, those differences counted for a lot.
Among voters, you were either for Fianna Fáil or for Fine Gael much as you might be a supporter of Celtic or Rangers. There was little or no common ground, only polar opposition. At elections, Fianna Fáil proclaimed as a virtue their unwillingness to seek transfers from any other party but in the sure and certain knowledge that they would get few or none from Fine Gael voters anyway.
The expansion and fragmentation of the parliamentary political spectrum has had an impact. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil may not be identical twins but they share the characteristic of occupying the middle ground of that spectrum with more commonality than difference of outlook — with more “extreme” parties and people either side of them to highlight the fact.
That simple compatibility took concrete expression when Fianna Fáil entered into a structured confidence and supply arrangement with the minority Fine Gael led government in 2016 and more explicitly when the two “auld enemies” entered into coalition in 2020. However much they might protest both decisions as “responsible” arrangements of necessity rather than convenience, they have become easy bedfellows.
Fianna Fáil has become transfer-friendly rather than merely transfer-tolerable to Fine Gael voters — and certainly not transfer-toxic.
So, heading into an election, the fulcrum of Irish politics is no longer a single party but the duopoly of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael with an expectation of achieving 40–50% of votes between them, possibly even an overall majority of seats. But though they now bear a strong family resemblance and loyalty, they are not identical twins. Their support bases overlap only to a large extent, not completely. They will campaign separately before the election without laying into each other to ensure that they marry lingering distinctiveness with mutual transfer-friendliness.
Even if they emerge with an overall majority between themselves, to distract from their increasing resemblance, they will probably try to attach a third small and relatively inconsequential third leg to their coalition stool and maintain what they would describe as the moderate, managerial, delivery-focused approach of the present government, all turbo-charged by wads of corporate tax receipts.
Others might see the current government’s performance as timid, muddling and dawdling — an inversion of the oft-invoked analogy of the swan on the water moving apparently effortlessly but paddling furiously and invisibly below the surface. From this government, there is plenty of visible splashing above the surface but little progress through the water because not enough is happening underneath — despite the wads of corporate tax receipts.
Two other propositions look robust.
First, Fianna Fáil will not ally with Sinn Féin before or after the election at the risk otherwise of alienating Fine Gael sympathies deeply and indefinitely.
Second, the Fianna Fáil — Fine Gael duopoly will be hard to dislodge as the hinge of Irish politics for the foreseeable future. Hanging together has created a buffer against the risk of either or both of them being hung separately
But there is cost and risk about that.
Neither party alone will ever again cherish for itself alone the high ambitions of former days to be a dominant party of government. They may still be natural parties of government, but they have both come down in the world — a lot.
And however loudly they continue to protest their distinct identities and propositions, there is a risk of those protests wearing increasingly thin. It’s a bit like George Orwell’s Animal Farm where the pigs led the other farm animals in revolt against their human masters and swore eternal antagonism towards them, only for the pigs eventually to become more masterful over other animals than the humans ever were. The book ends thus:
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
All of this has implications for Sinn Féin.
As stated earlier, I don’t expect Fianna Fáil to echo Fine Gael in bristling with hostility to the notion of participating in government with Sinn Féin. But I don’t expect Fianna Fáil to evince much positive openness to the idea either.
In 2020, that ostracization by the more established parties worked to Sinn Féin’s electoral advantage.
But at the next election, rather than facing two similarly sized but separate parties in the contest for government leadership, Sinn Féin will be standing against two parties implicitly destined and having the credentials for stable coalition with their tanks in firm occupation of the centre ground.
Unless it can project a similarly weighty alternative government in waiting, Sinn Féin will look less like an alternative government leadership party than “only” the largest party in a highly fragmented and irreconcilable opposition archipelago. What does it do — nail its colours to leadership of the “Left” or try to hustle for the centre too? It is placing a lot of chips on its housing plan as straddling both left and centre.
However if the housing plan ignites only a spark of enthusiasm rather than a blaze, being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea suggests an outcome for Sinn Féin more akin to last June than 2020.
[i] https://thecurrency.news/articles/154012/power-passion-pragmatism-kevin-cunningham-on-the-paradox-of-fianna-fail/
