Fianna Fáil’s future rests with economy

Hardly a day goes by that somebody somewhere doesn’t suggest Fianna Fáil should pack it in. I don’t think any of those suggestions are coming from Fianna Fáil members. Presumably anybody in Fianna Fáil who might have wanted the party to die have already left.
However, these almost daily calls on Fianna Fáil to leave the political field are beginning to bore me. Nobody can say with any degree of certainty what the future holds for Fianna Fáil. Perhaps there is no future for the party and perhaps there is. Your guess is as good as mine.
Only time and the voters will decide. Certainly, nobody could have foreseen five years ago, following the success of the 2007 general election, what was going to happen to the party at the next election.
Over the years we have heard experts predict there was no future for Fine Gael. I don’t know how many times we were told that Fine Gael was already dead in Dublin and that its rural demise would follow soon. We believed in 2002 when Michael Noonan lead them into their biggest defeat that there was no future for Fine Gael and they had so scrape the bottom of the barrel to find a new leader in Enda Kenny. None of us thought Fine Gael would become the biggest party in less than a decade.
So rumours about the death of Fianna Fáil now are greatly exaggerated. We were told that the Mahon Tribunal Report would be the final nail in Fianna Fáil’s coffin. However, an opinion poll taken within days of Mahon showed that Fianna Fáil was still up there – or down there if you prefer – with Labour and Sinn Féin.
So Fianna Fáil is still in there with a fighting chance despite Mahon, despite the economic mess we are in and despite all the corruption we knew was part of the Fiannna Fáil culture at the highest level for decades.
As I said, your guess is as good as mine with regard to whatever lies ahead of Fianna Fáil. But I have a gut feeling the party will still be around after many of us have gone to our graves.
That’s because Fianna Fáil, love it or hate it, is more of an institution than just another political party. The party is everywhere – in every parish or village up and down the country. Party cumainn may not be as active as they were but there are still individuals in every walk of life who are prepared to carry the party banner. To use the old cliché, they may be down but they are not out. There is a party loyalty among members of Fianna Fáil that was never in Fine Gael or in any of the other parties. Certainly, that loyalty has been tested several times over the past few years but it has survived.
Fianna Fáil grew from strength to strength in its earlier years despite the fact that – or perhaps because it was led by some of the most controversial figures around at the time such as de Valera, Lemass and Haughey. Even when Bertie Ahern was surrounded by controversy we still elected him Taoiseach.
It was not Ahern’s ‘dig-outs’ that brought Fianna Fáil down but the bank bail-outs.
We voted for Fianna Fáil down through the years because they were the party that gave us what we wanted. We knew their leaders might be feathering their own nests but we forgave them because they were feathering our nests too. They gave us low taxes and high spending. We thought that would never end but when it did end the collapse was sudden. As was Fianna Fáil’s downfall.
So what did or what does Fianna Fáil stand for? Surely not for corruption? Nor for low standards in high places? We would never have voted for them in such high numbers if we believed that.
Perhaps the only answer to that question is that Fianna Fáil stood for everything and it stood for nothing.
What does Fine Gael stand for? When you come right down to it, you wonder what does Labour stand for. They all stand for one thing in Opposition but as soon as they get into power they stand for the very things they condemned when they were in Opposition.
You might also wonder what life might be like without Fianna Fáil. The answer to that one is that it would be no different. Because in Fine Gael and Labour you have the new Fianna Fáil. In other words, who needs Fianna Fáil when you have Fine Gael and Labour. I try not to be cynical but if you know anything about politics, you cannot but be cynical. Opposition parties will always promise that when and if they get into power things will be different. But they never are. They may make a few minor changes here and there but basically things always stay the same.
If by some miracle Fianna Fáil were swept back into power before the end of the month, could you see any sweeping changes in the way the economy is handled? No, you could not. The only changes would be in personnel. Instead of Enda Kenny as Taoiseach you would have Micheál Martin.
But don’t worry. That’s not going to happen. At least not that soon. You may eventually see Micheál Martin preside over Government Buildings. But my guess is that’s not going to happen too soon, if it ever happens.
We don’t know how the economy is going be in three or four years’ time. We don’t know how the economy will change the face of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or any of the parties.
Because at the end of the day, it is the economy that decides these things. Rather than Fianna Fáil deciding our economic future, it is the economy that will decide the future of Fianna Fáil.