Will you vote for Fianna Fail?

[AZOffaly]

Lads, I think yis are all going mad if you think Fianna Fail is going to be obliterated. Unless you mean that it will reform under a different banner or something. There will always be a party in Ireland that represents big business and finance.

I would think Fianna Fail will take the mother and father of a beating in this election, similar, if not worse than that which Fine Gael under Michael Noonan took. Enda Kenny did trojan work there in restructuring and unifying that party, and someone else will do the same at Fianna Fail.

I think Mark Twain would see parallels with some of the predictions being put forth about how FF is going to be sundered to the four winds. Once as a punishment measure, and then they'll be back, assuming they get 4 years in opposition to organise themselves.

[Billys Boots]

There will always be a party in Ireland that represents big business and finance.

Do you think "big business and finance" is going to hang around waiting for FF to get their act together - I think the Party (big P) is over!

[seafoid]

Look at what the FT is saying. Business is going to abandon FF.


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/de38ea96-2722-11e0-80d7-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1BwgXZkPN

Irish meltdown

Ireland's coalition has become the first eurozone government to fall as a result of Europe's debt crisis. That is unsurprising. Yet, the justifiable anger of Irish voters at being saddled with the debts of their reckless bankers cannot itself explain the extraordinary implosion of Fianna Fáil, the party that has long dominated Irish politics. Brian Cowen, the prime minister, was forced into calling early elections on Thursday, to resign as party leader on Saturday, all after winning a confidence vote from his parliamentary party on Tuesday. His discredited leadership had been challenged after undisclosed meetings with Sean FitzPatrick, the banker at the heart of the financial crisis, came to light. What followed was utterly cynical.  Six members of the cabinet resigned and Mr Cowen tried to give an electoral leg-up to lesser-known Fianna Fáil MPs with scattergun offers of ministerial portfolios. This reshuffle – and eventually the government itself – was scuttled by the party's Green coalition partners, leaving Fianna Fáil in meltdown and mutiny.

These factional antics, as Ireland faces arguably the worst crisis in its history as an independent nation, could turn the expected Fianna Fáil rout at the polls into electoral annihilation. That may be richly deserved. This is, after all, the party that through its cronyism and incompetence artificially prolonged the boom of the 1990s into the credit and property bubble of the past decade, and then gave a blanket guarantee to its banker friends that has ended in the humiliation of Ireland becoming a ward of the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Fianna Fáil will almost certainly be replaced by a coalition of the centre-right Fine Gael and centre-left Labour parties. But it will be vacating a lot of political space, some of which will be taken up by populists, including the Republicans of Sinn Féin, now poised for a breakthrough in the south.  It is thus vitally important that the campaign now opening properly addresses the issues of governance and accountability raised by the crisis. Whether creditors of the banks should share the pain of the bail-out with taxpayers will – and should – be a dominant theme, and the mainstream parties must take ownership of this and not leave the field to the populists.
This should also be the occasion for the independent voices clamouring for a new politics in Ireland to come forward and lay out their stalls. Irish voters, and the future of the republic, need no less.

[Hardy]

I see Conor Lenihan has announced he's not a candidate for leader of FF. I want to take this opportunity to announce that our cat has decided against applying for the job of conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. 

[Denn Forever]

I see Conor Lenihan has announced he's not a candidate for leader of FF. I want to take this opportunity to announce that our cat has decided against applying for the job of conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Maybe they don't want a falling out like the Milibands.

[Declan]

I see Conor Lenihan has announced he's not a candidate for leader of FF. I want to take this opportunity to announce that our cat has decided against applying for the job of conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Is there a more unctuous arrogant imbecile than this boyo?

[AZOffaly]

There will always be a party in Ireland that represents big business and finance.

Do you think "big business and finance" is going to hang around waiting for FF to get their act together - I think the Party (big P) is over!

No, they won't wait, but as soon as the bloodletting is over and the ship gets refloated, people will gravitate back to those they think align most closely with them. All these headline stories about FF being finished are only looking at the next election in my opinion. Sure FG were 'finished' 10 years ago.

[Bogball XV]

Look at what the FT is saying. Business is going to abandon FF.

As someone stated above, business will always follow whoever has power.  There seems to be an opinion out there that cronyism etc is linked only to FF, it may seem that way because they have been in power for most of the period since the inception of the state, give other parties power and we will see better what the truth is.  The brief periods that FG/Lab have governed in the past 20 yrs have hardly been without their share of scandals, corruption and cronyism.

Maybe this time it'll be different, but isn't that what they said about the irish property boom.

[Galwaybhoy]

There will always be a party in Ireland that represents big business and finance.

Do you think "big business and finance" is going to hang around waiting for FF to get their act together - I think the Party (big P) is over!

No, they won't wait, but as soon as the bloodletting is over and the ship gets refloated, people will gravitate back to those they think align most closely with them. All these headline stories about FF being finished are only looking at the next election in my opinion. Sure FG were 'finished' 10 years ago.

Sadly both Parties will be around for along time to come.

[muppet]

There will always be a party in Ireland that represents big business and finance.

Do you think "big business and finance" is going to hang around waiting for FF to get their act together - I think the Party (big P) is over!

No, they won't wait, but as soon as the bloodletting is over and the ship gets refloated, people will gravitate back to those they think align most closely with them. All these headline stories about FF being finished are only looking at the next election in my opinion. Sure FG were 'finished' 10 years ago.

All the media were jumping on FG's grave 10 years but there seemed little reason why. Yes they had a bad election because Noonan said cuts were inevitable. FF said otherwise, got elected, and introduced the cuts anyway. Within two years McCreevy was sent on his way and there would be no more cuts.

FF's demise this time round is for entirely different reasons. Even loyal FF supporters are disgusted with them. The unions which stood with them throughout the whole partnership era have abandoned them and big business has run a mile. It will be interesting to see what the Indo does in this campaign. My guess is they will attack Gilmore and SF relentlessly.

Of course these things do go in cycles and there could well be a swing back at the next election but I think it would need to a few years away before people forget what got us to where we are now.

I think we would all love a genuine alternative to our scummy political system to emerge. But it is unlikely.

[AZOffaly]

I just want to clarify something lest people think I'm on hard narcotics. When I say Fianna Fail will be back after 4 years, I don't mean back in power. I mean back in the discussion as a major party again.

I can't see FF in power until 3 elections time.

[seafoid]

There will always be a party in Ireland that represents big business and finance.

Do you think "big business and finance" is going to hang around waiting for FF to get their act together - I think the Party (big P) is over!

No, they won't wait, but as soon as the bloodletting is over and the ship gets refloated, people will gravitate back to those they think align most closely with them. All these headline stories about FF being finished are only looking at the next election in my opinion. Sure FG were 'finished' 10 years ago.

Yeah but FG didn't drive the country into the arms of the IMF. The cuts have barely even  started . 20/23 years have been FF. For this.

[Billys Boots]

I just want to clarify something lest people think I'm on hard narcotics. When I say Fianna Fail will be back after 4 years, I don't mean back in power. I mean back in the discussion as a major party again.

I can't see FF in power until 3 elections time.

I see the oul lunch did you the world of good. 

[seafoid]

Ireland: Fianna Foiled
Mr Cowen has surely done for his party, whomever it scrambles to put in his place
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•   Comments (14)
•   Editorial
•   The Guardian, Tuesday 25 January 2011
•   Article history
As much as a fifth of the economy has been washed away, but the bedrock is becoming visible and Ireland is inching out of recession. If the collapse of the boom is complete, the collapse of the politics it once supported is only just beginning. The principal victim could be the most successful party in western Europe.
The eternal fixers of Irish politics, Fianna Fáil – who have dominated the Dail since the 1930s – have now got themselves in a fix. Their mix of pragmatism, populism and parish politics has exerted a remarkably steady hold on around 45% of the electorate, occasionally but never permanently weakened by corruption scandals. But having cashed in on the bubble it presided over, the party was hit hard by the bust, delving to historic polling lows even before the hungover radio interview that sparked months of muttering about Brian Cowen's leadership.
Recourse to the IMF compromised economic sovereignty, tainting the ethos of the self-described "republican party", and at the start of the year a respectable poll gave it just 14%. Since then revelations about the taoiseach's involvement with the notorious financier Seán FitzPatrick have provoked ministerial resignations. Even worse, he responded to these with extraordinarily maladroit manoeuvring over cabinet posts, which persuaded his Green coalition partners to walk away, and an early general election is now on the way.
Although Mr Cowen will not fight it, he has surely done for his party, whomever it scrambles to put in his place. The party that allowed bankers, builders and landlords to gamble away a nation's prosperity deserves to be swept from power. But how much will truly change with the administration is unclear. This month Irish workers are noticing that their pay packets are lighter, thanks to December's austerity budget. Few believe a change of political personnel will alter their personal circumstances. That scepticism is well-founded. Last night's cross-party jockeying aimed to salvage the finance bill, and served as a reminder that – aside from the drawbridge economics of Sinn Féin – the electorate's choice is between flavours of deflation."There is no alternative" is a somewhat stronger argument across the Irish Sea. Euro membership restricts the options, while the sheer size of bank debts and the past dependence of tax revenues on vanishing sources, such as rising property values, make pain inevitable. The question is who adjusts – and bankers, their creditors and indeed Dublin's own lenders all have a part to play alongside the mass of the people. If Ireland's ossified party system cannot see to the pain being shared around, then within an election or two it could be consigned to the dustbin of history.

[Banana Man]

drawbridge economics, wtf does that mean