An odd resonance with the past…

The Social Democrat’s deliberations this last weekend seem to have been interesting. The Irish Times and other media, whose coverage was fairly spare, were sceptical about significant progress for that party at this point and an interesting point was made about how they overlap not just with the LP, in some respects, but also the GP. Though also mentioned was an aversion to coalition on the part of the leadership. We shall see.

One significant danger (from the perspective of the SDs) is that they become a sort of attenuated Democratic Left – with many of the same problems, not least a party that is functionally arranged around individual TDs. There really is no future in that so it will be educative to see how they intend to avoid that pitfall.

That resonance?

There is provision for entering coalition in the new constitution. It would require 60 per cent of delegates to approve such a move.

Isn’t that more or less the figure that was needed to successfully negotiate the ‘reformation’ of the Workers’ Party all those years ago. A figure that wasn’t reached with the ensuing split in the party…