The year of the fall… Fianna Fáil

THE most remarkable thing about the past year in politics was undoubtedly the continuing decline in support for Fianna Fáil. The year started reasonably well for the party with opinion polls showing it to be closing the gap on Fine Gael while Labour was firmly in third place.

However, as the year progressed and as the economy slipped deeper into the mire, Fianna Fáil support plummeted to depths never before experienced. As the year ended, the opinion polls showed that Fianna Fáil might actually have less support than Sinn Féin.
While the pundits were predicting that over the course of a long election campaign, Fianna Fáil should be able to win back much of the support the party had lost during the year, few were saying that it could hold more than 40 seats. Some were forecasting that Fianna Fáil could lose around 50 seats as the party would fail to pick up those vital transfers needed in any election.
It is anybody’s guess at this stage as to where the party might stand in a few months’ time. It will certainly be in Opposition and almost certainly with a new leader. With the departure from the political scene of such prominent party stalwarts as Dermot Ahern and Noel Dempsey, the Fianna Fáil we are going to see in the next Dáil will be very different to the party that is clinging on to power at the end of 2010.
Only time can tell whether 2010 will turn out to be the worst year in that party’s history. It has certainly been the worst so far and if it turns out that 2011 is any worse, then this time next year, we will be writing the party’s obituary.
Fianna Fáil is blamed for the economic mess the country is in and only a tiny fraction of the people – the die-hard supporters – believe it has the ability to get us back on the road to recovery.
Some of the final nails in Fianna Fáil’s coffin were the surrender to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the savage budget in early December.
It is going to be extremely difficult for the party to pick itself up from where it is now and it will be a long time before Fianna Fáil can again become the largest political party in the State – if that can ever happen. We cannot say that things could not possibly be worse for Fianna Fáil. We might have said that last year but look at where the party is now.
The future is so unpredictable that it is impossible to say what role Fianna Fáil will play in the next Dáil. It will probably be the largest party in Opposition but it is also possible that Fianna Fáil might support a minority Fine Gael Government in a new twist to the Tallaght strategy.
The future looks bright for Fine Gael. The party had a good year overall despite a poor start when Fianna Fáil appeared to be closing the gap. Then there was the party’s failure to hold on to its brightest new star in George Lee. And there was also the failure on the part of Enda Kenny to project himself as the alternative Taoiseach. A mid-year heave against Kenny failed because the rebels did not have the balls to go for the kill. While Kenny survived that heave, he proved to be unable to lead the attack on Fianna Fáil from the front. That role fell to the newly promoted spokesman on finance, the veteran Michael Noonan, who might yet turn history upside down by once again taking over the leadership despite having failed miserably in that capacity nearly a decade ago. Back to the future, you might say, but, somehow, I doubt it. I think the best Michael Noonan can hope for is to be the next Minister for Finance. But again, only time can tell.
For a while there during the year, it appeared that Labour might win more seats than Fine Gael in the election. Actually that was the trigger for the heave against Kenny’s leadership. However, as the year drew to a close, the opinion polls once again predicted Fine Gael would come out on top in the election with Labour in second place. Some of that improvement in Fine Gael’s position was put down to the performance of Michael Noonan. It could also be said that closer examination of Labour’s economic policies might have taken some of the shine off Eamon Gilmore and Joan Burton.
Still, Labour is expected to win more seats than ever before, possibly over 40 and possibly even over 50. (The party won 33 seats in the spring tide of 1992).
It is also impossible to predict what the future holds for Sinn Féin. The party appeared during the past year to be going nowhere. It did badly in the local elections in 2009 and lost its only seat in the European Parliament. At least two of the party’s four seats in the Dáil looked extremely vulnerable.
However, following the party’s victory in the Donegal South-West byelection, things are beginning to look up once more for Sinn Féin. The winner of that byelection, Pearse Doherty has shown himself to be a very able performer in the Dáil and on television. At the time of writing, Sinn Féin looks set to at least double its current representation in the new Dáil. However, the party’s current popularity might just be a flash in the pan to disappear on election day.
We shall see.