If FF and FG marry in haste, the rest of us will be the ones repenting at leisure

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin needs to show leadership. Photo: Gerry Mooney

Shane Coleman

March 01 2016 02:30 AM

Micheál Martin should tell Alan Kelly, Sinn Féin, the AAA-PBP, political commentators - and anybody else trumpeting the new orthodoxy that a Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil coalition is inevitable, logical and desirable - to get stuffed.

A grand coalition of the two old Civil War enemies would not just be disastrous for Fianna Fáil (and Fine Gael), it would be bad for the country in the long term.

Many of those now leading the charge for such a coalition were those who in recent months ridiculed Martin's ruling out of coalition with Fine Gael and Sinn Féin. They argued he had rendered his party irrelevant in the upcoming election.

They were wrong then and they're wrong now.

The idea that what was a core principle in the election campaign should be tossed aside is extraordinary.

If any lesson was learned from Labour's annihilation last Friday, it is that the days of saying one thing in an election campaign and then doing something entirely different in government are over.

People, quite rightly, won't stand for it. The number one reason for the shellacking the Coalition got is that it created expectations in the lead-up to the 2011 general election that it couldn't possibly live up to.

And Fianna Fáil would be deservedly hammered if it did a U-turn and went into coalition with Fine Gael, having definitively ruled it out during the election. As if politics isn't devalued enough.

Of course their political opponents want it. It would perfectly suit Sinn Féin if the two big beasts of Irish politics went into government together - leaving it free to usurp Fianna Fáil and position itself as the alternative government for the next election.

If would also help the AAA-PBP and the Labour Party - hence Alan Kelly's line that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael needed to "cop on" and get together. Given how close he came to losing his seat, Kelly might have been better advised to hold his whisht for once.

While the political risks for Fianna Fáil are obvious, the argument is being made that it has a duty to go into coalition with Fine Gael to ensure a stable government. It's bunkum.

Certainly, in the national interest, the two parties need to ensure some form of stability and that a government is formed. But that can be done without a coalition. There's no reason why a Fine Gael minority government cannot survive for two or three years by doing a series of deals. There are up to 16 Independent TDs likely to be open to a bit of 'quid pro quo'. The same might go for the Greens, the Social Democrats and, of course, Fianna Fáil.

The only way a government can fall is on a confidence motion or a budget - and very few of the 158 TDs are going to be in any hurry to go back to the electorate. It should be eminently possible to do a deal with Fianna Fáil on a budget, particularly when there is money to spend.

It will of course require a lot of horse trading, flexibility, compromise and imagination. But that's what happens with every piece of legislation in the US Congress - why not here? Would it be so bad to have a reformed parliament that has a real input into law-making and the budgetary process?

There's no crisis, just new conditions to which the political parties need to adapt. And adapt they will. The alternative, supposedly 'simpler', solution would cause a lot more problems. Sinn Féin will be in government one day. But the party's approach to the Slab Murphy case and the Special Criminal Court, plus its frankly reckless proposal for a 59pc marginal rate of tax, means it still has some way to go before it is ready.

The AAA-PBP's proposals are utterly uncosted. During the campaign, one of its TDs promised a restoration of public sector pay to pre-crash levels without even knowing how much it would cost.

Those insisting on a Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil administration must acknowledge that the likely follow-on from that is a hard-left, Sinn Féin-led government, probably involving the AAA-PBP. And then they need to ask themselves: Is that stability? Is that in the national interest? What will the international markets and foreign direct investment make of it?

For some reason, the division of Irish politics along classic left-right lines is seen as some form of panacea. We should be careful what we wish for. A hard-left- right of centre divide, with people increasingly voting along class lines, would be deeply divisive and remove the consistency of policy that has endured, reasonably (though not entirely) successfully, for the past 30 years.

Despite what the left will argue, we don't have a tradition in this country of parties blatantly favouring one sector of society at the expense of another. Of course there are powerful vested interests. But we also have one of the most progressive taxation systems in the OECD. Critics deride Fine Gael as a right-wing party, but its economic policies are probably to the left of the US Democrats. Were politics to be divided along class lines, all that would change.

Micheál Martin and Enda Kenny, as the leaders of the two biggest parties, do need to show leadership. But real leadership sometimes involves challenging conventional thinking and seeing beyond the next month or two. And now is very much the time for real leadership.

Shane Coleman presents the Sunday Show on Newstalk.com at 10am

Irish Independent