Garret FitzGerald 1926-2011

Garret FitzGerald, who died today, was Ireland's first post-nationalist Taoiseach, and in that role he laid the groundwork that has culminated in this week's extraordinary visit of the Queen to the Republic. He was not, truth be told, a hugely successful Taoiseach in policy terms, but his contribution to Irish life far outweighed any of his achievements as head of government. He set a tone of integrity that stood in marked contrast to the corruption of Charles Haughey, his main Fianna Fail opponent. His leadership of Fine Gael and the coalition government marked a sea-change in Irish life, as an intellectual who, while getting elected through the clientilist system, managed to transcend such narrowness to embody what President McAleese called the characteristics of the Renaissance man. An economist, his politics were those of the European social democrat - albeit sometimes at odds with a Fine Gael party led by the ultra-conservative Liam Cosgrave during the 1970s - rather than the scion of a party born of obscure Civil War arguments.

It is a tribute to this intellectual giant that he continued to contribute wise economic and politics analysis to the Irish Times every week until shortly before his recent illness. But the respect he earned was genuine and widespread. In truth, his Anglo-Irish Agreement lacked the subtley to transcend the sectarian divide, but he had understood the need to move forward politically, which would lead in time to the Good Friday Agreement. His social agenda, too, proved premature, and it took time - and the election of Mary Robinson in 1990 and the 1992 coalition with a strong Labour presence - for the advances he supported in areas like divorce to be realised. But as his highly readable autobiography demonstrated, it was not for want of trying. Ireland today is a very different place socially and culturally than it was when Garret FitzGerald entered politics. And that it is owes no small debt to his sense of what it could be.

The definitive death of Dev's doleful legacy

Ireland's election result is no less groundbreaking for having been largely predictable. Fine Gael is likely to form a strong government with Labour, between them holding 113 seats out of 166 in the Dail. They will seek better terms than the crippling 5.8% interest rates that they have to pay on their European bailout loans. But essentially they will preside over a continuity of the austerity that had been begun under Fianna Fail in the years that saw its demise. But the real importance of the election is the collapse of DeValera's party, an event that with the liberal reforms that were symbolised by the 1990 election of Mary Robinson as President, the neutralisation of Northern Ireland as an issue and the collapse of Catholic church authority under a welter of child abuse scandals has finally brought to an end the stifling insularity that characterised Ireland from the 20s to the 70s.

Of course, some things haven't gone away. The economic collapse has brought back the spectre of emigration, though it lacks the permanence or distance of earlier years and there remains a strong and growing private sector thanks to the low corporation taxes so hated by Germany and France. Fianna Fail, with just 20 seats, has partly lost ground to a stronger Sinn Fein party which has obscured its past to secure 14 seats. But as importantly, the Irish Labour Party, despite a haltingly confused election campaign, is now Ireland's second party, with 37 seats and has done better than its previous best result in 1992. It is the predominant party in Dublin, and the opposition benches also have several hard left TDs who may form an informal alliance with Sinn Fein to challenge the next coalition with Fine Gael on around 75 seats, from the left.

That Fianna Fail has fallen so low doesn't, of course, mean that it will permanently be stuck in the doldrums. Its new leader, Micheal Martin has at least halted what could have been an even worse slide. The Canadian Conservatives showed that parties can recover from such a drubbing. But what it does mean is that the old assumptions are finally dead and buried. To some extent, the Celtic Tiger boom was the catalyst for much of that change already. But it was presided over by Fianna Fail, which had managed to adapt in many ways to those winds of change, though never convincingly to embrace them. So, the transition could never be complete while the party of Dev continued to dominate Irish politics.

Now that party will need to face up to a future that it had sidestepped while Bertie was in charge as the money flowed in. Ireland needs to show that it can be modern and efficient with more realistic and soundly based growth. Whatever happens, there is no doubt that the election of 2011 will come to be seen as just as seismic an event in Irish political history as the 1918 poll that saw the demise of the Irish national party in favour of a Sinn Fein that gave birth to the two parties that dominated independent Ireland's politics for 90 years.

This post also appears at Public Finance.

Ireland's call, Kenny's choice

There is a peculiar air of unreality around the Irish election campaign. The big issue seems to be whether one-time teachers like Enda Kenny, the man likely to be Taoiseach by the weekend, should continue to access teachers' pensions (which he has decided not to take while in office). However, the real issue is whether it is good for Ireland to face a Fine Gael minority government rather than the long anticipated coalition with Labour.

To be fair, Kenny has fought a pretty good campaign, though he started it with a reputation for leadership so low that the only way was up, and as predicted here, Labour has provided a spectacular object lesson in how not to win elections, schizophrenically tacking left on tax and spend policy while running ads intended to undermine Fine Gael's appeal to middle class, fiscally conservative voters. The party leader, Eamon Gilmore, who had a brief moment not so long ago when he could credibly talk of himself as a future Taoiseach, has lost his personal lead as potential Taoiseach to the new kid on the block, Micheal Martin, who has rescued Fianna Fail from oblivion if not a pretty crushing defeat with as few as 30 seats. More seriously, his strategy of talking of higher taxes for those earning over €100k (£85k) a year could have cost him a swathe of Dublin seats, as Fine Gael is now leading the capital's polls.

Even so, Labour is still likely to achieve a result that will come close to Dick Spring's 33 seats (from a 166-member Dail) in 1992, and Fine Gael seems certain to exceeed 70 seats. (The Guardian will be disappointed that Sinn Fein will probably have to settle for a dozen seats at most, though Gerry Adams will probably take a seat). But with a swathe of independents, including assorted Trotskyists, likely to win seats, the temptation for Kenny could be to ignore Labour and cobble together a coalition with the independents. However, Garret Fitzgerald, a former Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader, has struck a timely note of caution in this respect in a speech, as the Irish Times reported:

Dr FitzGerald said such a coalition would be “much more solid” than seeking support from Independents, which he described as “disastrous”. “With Independents you have no idea. They can blackmail you for something in their constituency,” he warned. Dr FitzGerald believes the two parties can sort out their differences. “If they sort those out and stick together for five years, you have the kind of majority needed to do all the unpopular things that need to be done.”

Kenny has sought to increase his international standing during the campaign with visits to Chancellor Merkel and EU President Jose Manuel Barroso, intended to suggest that he could re-negotiate the stiff interest rates demanded for the Irish bailout. Even if he does, he faces a pretty tough time as Taoiseach. It would be crazy to go into it without a strong partner in government, and Labour is still the only serious option. Gilmore has started to remind people of this and to rein in the more damaging rhetoric. Kenny needs to show he means business, by urging vote transfers to Labour on Friday, if he wants the chance to lead as Taoiseach rather than forever having to buy off the whims of unreliable independents.

A new dawn for Irish politics?

With an Irish general election likely before the end of the month, how likely is it that this will be a mould-breaking election? Certainly the position of Fianna Fail had seemed precarious until the clever former foreign minister Michael Martin manouevered Brian Cowen out of his party's leadership and moved himself into the top job.

Martin is now displaying the ruthlessness expected of the party of DeValera, Lemass and Haughey, and is busy sidelining TDs and running a very tight seats strategy to make the most of the party's dismal poll showing in the Irish PR system. He has also been making smart noises about backing a Fine Gael government to keep Labour out, noises unwelcome to Fine Gael's hapless leader Enda Kenny who wants to lead a coalition with Labour. With a 16% Fianna Fail poll showing yesterday, there is every chance of that rising to 24% by polling day as Fianna Failers furious with Cowen's ineptitude return to the fold.

That said, Fianna Fail will do well to hold a third, let alone half, their seats in the current circumstances. And the likelihood is that there will be a Fine Gael-Labour government with Kenny as Taoiseach (though Labour's Eamon Gilmore is far more popular). The issue will be the respective showings of the opposition parties - and the Greens - in the final votes and seats tallies. The Greens seem likely to lose most of their seats, and Labour should at least double its seats. The extent to which they succeed, especially in Dublin where Labour should be the largest party, depends on the success of Sinn Fein, with Gerry Adams seeing to enter the Dail, and the ragbag of Trots, leftists and local independents who can expect to pick up a share of the disillusionment vote. Labour has beaten Fine Gael in some polls, but seems unlikely to do so in the vote that matters unless Kenny screws up big time - an achievement of which he is more than capable.

But will this really be a mould-breaker? While a welcome breakthrough for Labour would undoubtedly alter its position in Irish politics, not least if it overtakes Fianna Fail, any government will be severely constrained by the European austerity measures agreed by Cowen, even though Labour is proposing to backload the cuts. Sinn Fein could gain some extra seats, and may even deprive Labour of some expected gains, but is unlikely to be more than a louder voice in the next Dail. And Martin seems set to turn Fianna Fail into a credible opposition, erasing the memory of Cowen's ineptitude.

That will make it even harder for Labour is to retain its strength in Government, a feat it has not achieved in previous coalitions. After all, Labour had 33 seats in 1992 which it halved in 1997, though that owed much to an unexpected deal with Fianna Fail for three of those years. Without the demise of Fianna Fail, that mould will be a lot harder to break - even though the results seem certain to represent a historic high for the Irish left.

The strange death of Fianna Fail Ireland

The final capitulation by Irish Taoiseach Brian Cowan to the IMF and the European Union over a bailout must mark the last rites for his Fianna Fail party. The party founded by Eamon DeValera in 1927 had seen itself as the natural party of government since 1932, and it enjoyed a dominance of Irish politics only occasionally interrupted by coalitions of the opposition parties over the following 80 years. But all that is now at an end.

Fianna Fail scored a mere 17% on one poll last week, with Fine Gael on 33% and Labour on 27%. In Thursday's by-election in Donegal, not only are Sinn Fein set to win with as much as 40% of first preference votes, but Labour may score 15% in a seat where they barely scraped 3% before. Some polls even make Labour the largest party nationally, and it undoubtedly is in that position in Dublin.

When I was at university, we were taught that Ireland was a two-and-a-half-party system with Labour as the half-party. Now Fianna Fail may find itself in that unenviable position after an election that will now happen in January when the Greens pull the plug on their uncomfortable coalition with Fianna Fail. Why has this happened?

The most obvious reason is the economy. Fianna Fail has presided over a culture that allowed the property boom to develop, and which favoured unregulated development. Banks like Anglo-Irish were indulged, but so too were public sector trade unions as wages far exceeded the long-term capacity of the economy. The populist economic approach of Fianna Fail had a lot to do with the economic problems.

But that is not the only reason. The collapse of the Irish Catholic Church impacted on the party too: Fianna Fail was more closely in step with the hierarchy than its opponents, particularly in the 70s and 80s, and slower to embrace liberal reforms. The legacy of Charles Haughey and his cronies took their toll too. But above all, the near-death of Fianna Fail symbolises the profound social changes that have outlived the demise of the Celtic Tiger, which really gained traction after Mary Robinson was elected President in 1990.

All that is needed now is for the electorate to act as undertaker to Dev's party in the new year. The extent to which the Irish Labour Party can gain most from the remains will depend a lot on its ability to consolidate the popularity of its leader Eamon Gilmore - compared with Fine Gael's lacklustre Enda Kenny - into solid and credible policies for the age of austerity. The next two months could change the face of Irish politics forever.

Treat celebrity politicians with care

As the prospect of more celebrity politicians looms on this side of the Irish Sea, with the likes of Esther Rantzen staking her claim to parliamentary seats, I have sad tidings to report from my old constituency of Dublin South in Ireland. George Lee had gained a name for himself as an incisive critic of government economic policy on RTE during the boom years. With the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, he acquired secular sainthood, so it was quite a coup when he agreed to stand for Fine Gael, the main opposition party, in a parliamentary by-election last June. He won a spectacular 52% of the vote and his victory cemented Fine Gael's national poll lead (Fianna Fail has remained in third place behind Labour).

Of course, George thought he had gone into the Dail not just to win a spectacular by-election victory for Fine Gael but so that he could speak truth onto power by taking charge of his new party's economic policies. Instead, he found himself sidelined by the party leader Enda Kenny as the head of the sort of useless economic forum that oppositions create to keep their supporters busy, while the regular politicians continued slagging off the government as if nothing had changed. All this clearly upset Boy George. With the result that yesterday he announced not only that he was leaving Fine Gael, but that he was quitting his Dail seat. Conveniently his RTE job is still open to him should he wish to resume his punditry.

I'm sure there is a moral in this tale somewhere about the need to treat celebrity politicians with kid gloves. But let's just say Fianna Fail's hapless leadership can't believe their luck. And Kenny is reduced to seeking loyalty pledges from his shellshocked backbenchers. Nobody ever said that Irish politics lacked drama.