David Higgins

This weekend’s opinion poll in the Sunday Business Post has seen Fianna Fáil gain 4% support since the previous poll which was taken before the budget. Fine Gael and Sinn Féin have loss 2% each.

What has Fianna Fáil done in the past few weeks to deserve 4% of the electorate swinging their way?

Well………nothing!

Unless you’re an alcoholic or a buyer of a new ’10 car you’ve no reason to change your vote to Fianna Fáil. And I doubt those two groups make up 4% of the electorate!

If anything there should be a drop in support for Fianna Fáil. They imposed a budget which hit the lowest paid in the public service and those on social welfare. Surely there were some votes to be lost from those two groups. Many of those votes were lost from previous budgets but this budget hit families by reducing child benefit and by imposing a carbon levy on fuels. This has impacted everyone and everyone is worse off because of the budget.

If people feel that they escaped the worse in budget ’10 then they are misinformed. The fact is that, there never should have been a savage budget like budget ’10 because if Fianna Fáil weren’t in power then this economic mess never would have occurred in the first place!!

People are being led to believe that they have to play their part and considering there’s a €22bn deficit that’s a fair message to send out. However, who created the €22bn hole?!?!?!?! Fianna F***ing Fáil that’s who!

The electorate in this country suffers from memory loss. We don’t remember the bad things that our politicians do and we’ve been led like sheep to the slaughter by FF governments who bought votes by excessive budgets like budget ’07, 6 months before polling day.

The voters of Ireland need to take a good hard look at Fianna Fáil and realise that they are not the best option on offer. I’m not going to do a Fine Gael plug here. I don’t need to! Even Labour would run a better government than Fianna Fáil!

Watching RTÉ’s “The Frontline” this week it became clear the huge differences that lie between The Greens and Fianna Fáil. Councillors shouting at each other over issues such as planning and the banks showed the cracks that lie within the government. It also highlights how incompatible the two parties are and all you have to do is look at the Green’s “shopping list” for the Programme for Government. They wanted Education cuts reversed, social welfare levels maintained and a drastic reduction in the number of TD’s along with more reforms in local government. Did any of this happen, NO!

The differences that lie between FF and The Greens makes me think about the likelihood of a Fine Gael/Labour co-alition. The is the right-left alternative that is likely after the next General Election however these two parties are just as incompatible as the present co-alition.

Labour will not budge on public sector cuts while Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar has made it clear that cuts have to be made in wages of public servants.

There is also a lack of consensus on the banks too. Fine Gael has its “Good Bank” plan while Labour wants temporary nationalisation of the banks. Now maybe the establishment of NAMA will end this issue but it’s still likely to be a contentious issue around a FG/Lab cabinet table.

Many will point to the present co-alition and say that it works to have two fundamentally different parties in government however the two situations are not the same. FF has 76 TD’s while the Greens only have 6. They hold the balance of power but their influence is restrained by those numbers. My fear is that disagreements in a FG/Lab
co-alition would bring down the government within a matter of weeks.

FG will get over 70 seats next General Election and Labour could get anything up to 30 based on current opinion polls. This puts Labour in a much better bargaining position than the Greens currently have with Fianna Fáil.

So, what is the ideal co-alition? Well, Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil actually! Not only would this see an end to civil-war politics in this country but it would eventually see the fall of the Fianna Fáil party I believe. The small party in government always gets screwed. We saw it with the PDs, we’re about to see it with the Greens and after going into bed with FF and FG in the 90′s, Labour’s Spring Tide was reduced to a mere wave in 1997.

A FG/FF co-alition would highlight the fact that FF is not needed. After one term, if the economy is back on track FG would get most of the praise at the expense of FF. Likewise such a co-alition would expose the left in Ireland and it would lead to the Labour party becoming the main opposition part in Ireland. I think it’s time we had a proper left-right divide in this country instead of the on-off centre right switching game between FG and FF.

Let’s unite the right and expose the populist, no cuts approach taken by Labour, Sinn Féin, The Socialists and other non-pragmatic left parties.

I believe the upcoming budget will eat further into the FF core vote and it could push their opinion polls standing down to under 15%. If this were to be replicated in a general election then FF could find itself with only 25 or so seats, less than what Labour will get, soaring FF to third place in the parties race. They’ve held first place since the foundation of the state. This fall in support could go FG’s way to push it over the 83 seats required for an overall majority however I’m doubtful about whether that will materialise. Labour’s unwavering support for maintaining wages will go down well with the electorate and if they can continue to play populism in their favour then many of the FF seats could swing their way.

So, in the next General Election FG could find themselves just shy of the 83. Labour with well over 30 seats and FF somewhere in the 20s. Independents could support FG but the likes of Maureen O’Sullivan, Finian McGrath and Michael Lowry would not be jumping to support a FG government characterised by cuts unless there were financial injections to their respective constituencies, something this country cannot afford!

Anyway, there won’t be another chance to topple this government until after the budget. We’ll have to wait until then to see how public opinion swings during what will be the coldest winter of discontent this country has ever known.

The two most prominent political polls in Ireland are the Irish Times/TNS MRBI polls and the RedC/Sunday Business Post Poll. Both are always cited as being proof of one political parties support or they are dismissed as a “snapshot in time” by the government. In some respects both sides are right however it’s clear after the most recent polls from these outlets that either one is wrong or they’re both wrong!

One says Fianna Fáil are on 17% the other says 24% and both polls were released within a week of each other.

Both will claim that they are representative of all 43 constituencies however RedC’s poll of FF on 24% leads me to believe that they just got lazy and decided to hold the poll in Offaly.

To take an average of these polls you’ll find FF on 21%. Also taking the average Green Party vote gives you 4%. This is 25% still in support of government parties yet only 15% still claim to support the government.

Are 1 in 10 of irish voters retarded?

YES!