FG and FF coalition will go the way of McDowell’s café bars

FORMER justice minister Michael McDowell introduced legislation that he hoped would see European-style café bars spread across Ireland. That was a decade ago. McDowell could never have been mistaken for a politician with a deep understanding of Irishmen beyond his old constituency of Dublin Sout-East. He believed the proposal for café bars in the Intoxicating Liquor Act would cure the Irish drink problem. A Fianna Fáil TD from the midlands laughed as he asked me at the time: ‘Does McDowell think my farming constituents should leave their wellingtons at the door of these things before ordering their chablis?’

Fianna Fáil, the senior coalition partners to McDowell’s PDs, scuppered the proposal.

Now McDowell is trying to make a political comeback in the Seanad. The PDs are long gone. Pubs and Fianna Fáil endure.

Last week the political establishment struggled to cope with a new Dáil with no obvious government combination, save a Fianna Fáil/ Fine Gael coalition. Micheál Martin suggested a vague ‘European style’ arrangement for the Dáil.

His proposal was sketchy but it appeared to hope that old, tribal party loyalties would be forgotten and a new utopian Dáil, devoid of the whip system, would emerge.

The Irish Parliamentary Party, under Charles Stewart Parnell, invented the party whip system in Westminster. It was deemed the best way to get business done. Fianna Fáil TDs don’t doubt Martin’s sincerity but don’t believe it will be abandoned any time soon.

On Thursday, Enda Kenny and Micheál Martin will stand for election as Taoiseach. Fine Gael has 50 seats and Fianna Fáil has 44 so, in a volatile atmosphere, anything can happen. There are many, many potential scenarios after that vote.

For space reasons I will just deal with what Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil want to happen.

Fine Gael, wounded after one of the most disastrous campaigns in Irish political history, is in trouble. It has no coalition part- ners. Ministers and TDs told me last week they want Fianna Fáil to prop them up.

‘How can Fianna Fáil reject the result the people have given us?’ one anxious minister asked me. ‘We need this for stability, for Ireland.’ And for Fine Gael ministers to stay in office. Fine Gael wants Fianna Fáil to betray all the commitments it made to its core voters, its Taliban supporters. Fine Gael wants its prospective partners to abandon the pledge that would get Fine Gael out of Government. Fianna Fáil still only secured 25% of the national vote, which would indicate its increase was due to the old faithful coming back. Fine Gael can, it hopes, get Fianna Fáilers into coalition, and by attrition, force them to abandon their supporters and end up like the Labour Party, after a period coalescing with the enemy.

Fine Gael will offer a rotating taoiseach, which would involve getting rid of Kenny soon. Then FG would get a leader more attuned to the party’s intellectual heritage and who would match Martin in the debating stakes.

Fianna Fáil’s plans are just as cynical. FF TDs told me yesterday that they hope Kenny wins the vote for taoiseach. If he doesn’t, after a few weeks of this European codology they may abstain in a vote for the top job. That would allow Kenny to form a minority unofficially supported by Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil TDs would tell supporters, as Albert Reynolds told them of coalition with the PDs, that it was a ‘temporary little arrangement’.

A Fianna Fáil frontbencher told me that there would be no formal arrangement, as they would be ‘compromised’. The party could then bed in its new TDs. Using the

six new wwomen and a forthcoming clatter of female senators, it can gradually further improve its image. Most importantly of all, he told me, Fianna Fáil would receive €99m of Exchequer funding. It wilwill be used for further rebuilding.rebuilding None of this could be achieved as official coalition partner to the old enemy.

Fianna Fáil would allow Fine Gael, led by a fatally weakened Taoiseach, to maintain a government for 18 months to two years. All the while it would carry the albatross of Irish Water. Then Fianna Fáil would bring the whole rotten edifice crashing down at a time of its choosing.

ATV interview with Barry Cowen last week betrayed a hint of the old Fianna Fáil arrogance. This arrogance blinds Fianna Fáil to the possibility that the public will recognise this scornful strategy for what it is. The arrogance also allows some in the party to assume that it will profit at the polls after all of this. There are cooler heads in the Fianna Fáil leadership who understand that it would be very dangerous to be seen to bring down a government intentionally. Nevertheless, it could happen by accident.

In General Election 2016, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael candidates showed they had lost none of their skills in chicanery and buffoonery.

Male Fianna Fáil candidates and their supporters verbally abused female candidates from their own party. Established Fianna Fáil TDs refused to assist their newer running mates. Those TDs who ran miles ahead of their running mates, torpedoing their chances of availing of large Fianna Fáil votes, are now damaged in the eyes of HQ. Veterans who manipulated party structures to avoid having a run- ning mate at all are also deemed to have been disloyal.

The reprehensible behaviour was not confined to men, or Fianna Fáil. The supporter of a female Fine Gael candidate punched another Fine Gael supporter at a count centre. Another safe female candidate needlessly encroached on the territory of a weaker colleague, costing him his seat. Fine Gael posters were torn down everywhere by, it is believed, Fine Gaelers.

A common thread is that misdeeds were primarily committed by Fine Gael candidates against Fine Gael candidates. Or Fianna Fáil candidates against Fianna Fáil rivals.

The multi-seat constituency means the over-riding task is to grind any challenge to personal advancement into the ground. Challenges to a job always come from within. If the relationships between supposed party colleagues remain so toxic, can we really expect Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to live in harmony for the national good?

I fear that state of affairs has as much hope of survival as Michael McDowell’s café bars.