Fianna Fáil futures…

Stephen Collins this week had some harsh words for FF about its prospective longevity, and give him his due, some interesting thoughts about that party. He focusses on the apparent chaos within FF over the Presidential Election following the decision not to contest it and the clear lack of discipline in that organization given the solo run by Senator Labhrás Ó Murchú as well as a threat to resign by Eamon O Cuiv, who some of us may well have forgotten [I know I did] is FF deputy leader.

Intriguingly Collins sympathies are with that beleaguered and much diminished band, the TDs.

“The party has been hijacked by a bunch of elderly Senators who got elected by spending their time in safe Fianna Fáil houses, while we faced the wrath of the electorate. They haven’t a clue about what is happening in the real world,” said one TD.

And it’s not an entirely unfair analysis. Indeed Collins makes an excellent point when he notes:

In hindsight, Fianna Fбil’s surprisingly good performance in the Seanad election contained the seeds of future conflict.
The party won 14 Seanad seats which gave a considerable boost to the depleted parliamentary party, which had been slashed in numbers when just 20 TDs were elected in February.
However, a number of experienced Senators, who were elected in spite of a list of favoured younger candidates put forward by the leadership, were bristling with indignation and were only waiting for a chance to get their own back. They certainly availed of that chance on Thursday.
Many of these Senators have never contested a general election and have no intention of doing so, but they are a powerful component of the parliamentary party.

For Martin this must be a nightmare of dismal proportions. His Seanad representation is only somewhat smaller than his Dáil representation [and the loss of Lenihan, and most likely his seat hasn’t improved the math]. Both are, to judge from their disposition in the Chambers, a disheartened and demoralized set of crews. And both are working against each other rather than with each other.

Whether Martin’s ‘list’ would have delivered a punchier alternative is open to question. The young guns who did make it into the Seanad aren’t exactly setting it alight. And Collins seems to have an undue regard for the ‘younger’ Dáil TDs. Indeed he paints an even more catastrophic picture:

This poses a serious quandary for the younger TDs and new Senators, who represent any future the party might have.
If they are outvoted and outmanoeuvred by their older colleagues, they could quickly despair of having a political future in Fianna Fбil.

But where would they go? Where would they go?

Well check this out…

There is an even more depressing alternative that could see Fianna Fáil taken over by some dedicated group seeking to colonise the skeleton of the party for its own purposes.

And he posits:
T

he international experience of old decaying parties is worth looking at in this context.
For instance, charismatic populist the late Jorg Haider managed to take over the declining, but respectable, liberal Freedom Party in Austria, and turn it into a vibrant but controversial right-wing force.
The same fate has befallen declining political parties in other European countries.

The Freedom party, respectable, liberal? Really? Reading this one might have a very different sense of matters.

The ‘Early Years’ section is particularly useful, consider the following:

The first FPÖ party leader was Anton Reinthaller, a former Nazi Minister of Agriculture and SS officer.[14] He had been asked by ÖVP Chancellor Julius Raab to take over the movement rather than let it be led by a more socialist-leaning group.[15] While the majority of former Nazis had probably joined the two main parties in absolute numbers, they formed a greater percentage of FPÖ members due to the party’s small size.[15] Nevertheless, none of them were real revolutionaries and they pursued pragmatic, non-ideological policies.[15] The FPÖ served as a vehicle for them to integrate in the Second Republic; the party was a welcome partner with both the SPÖ and ÖVP in regional and local politics, although it was excluded at the national level.[15][16] The ÖVP and the FPÖ ran a joint candidate for the 1957 presidential election, who lost.[15]

Feel the liberalism. Wallow in the respectability. And note that the larger parties ‘excluded it at national level’.

Then for a six year period, between 1980 and 1986, the FPÖ under the leadership of Norbert Steger did indeed tilt towards centrism. But that’s okay because as early as 1983 a certain Jorg Haider who wasn’t a johnny come lately but had been a member since his youth in the 1960s became leader of the Carinthia branch and from there moved towards the leadership which he took over in 1989.

So rather than the FPO being similar to a wounded Fianna Fáil it’s an entirely different creature. Though one’s got to love the ‘vibrant but controversial’…

And how about this?

If Fianna Fáil cannot discover its own reasons for renewal it could end up with the equally unpalatable alternatives of dying or becoming the vehicle for forces that have little regard for its history or traditions.

I think he’s got this somewhat the wrong way about and not just in the somewhat bizarre comparison with the FPÖ. This is close to the end point of a process that started when FF first went into coalition with the Progressive Democrats [by the way I’m not comparing the PDs here to the FPÖ in terms of ideology], a process which was cheerled by many, including Collins. That was where it became a vehicle for forces that ‘had little regard for its history or traditions’, or perhaps knew of those traditions a little too well. That’s where its innate pragmatism faded away and where it’s Janus like ability to address directly competing constituencies of its party support base atrophied to the point of non-existence.

The result? Fianna Fáil has become in terms of national representation hardly much better than the highest point the PDs achieved back in the day. And in its inchoate, but still right of centre rhetorical and political position it continues, as it most notably did during the crisis, the policies of its former partner. Indeed if it keeps going at this rate it will soon have the more average numbers the PDs had back in the day.

Perhaps that which Stephen Collins and others sought has come to pass and he didn’t even notice.

Behold, Fianna Fáil – the new PDs! And going the same way too…