Is Labour a natural coalition parter with Fine Gael nowadays?
An old almanac I have (2000) defines Labour as moderate left-of-centre; Fine Gael as moderate centre-left and Fianna Fail as moderate centre-right. Is that still the case?
No. Really Left-Right don't work very well for Ireland as Irish politics works on a culture of clientalism rather than political programs or ideals as in most European countries, which helps to explain why the economy seems to collapse every 20-25 years or so. Labour are certainly to the left of FF-FG but that is not saying much and are generally more conservative than they were in the 60s and 70s - alot of progressive legislation especially on "social issues" has been due in part to Labour governments (though obviously cultural change is more important in a general sense) these issues though are irrelevant electorally. But may explain in part the paradox that they have on average in national elections the second the richest support base of all the parties, behind the Greens (as of 2002). FG are a more 'natural' conservative party to FF due to their traditional support base (small town bourgeoise + large landowners) but need Labour for government. FF is just a catch-all party whose ideology is Gombeenism. But this is true of all political parties in part. Thanks
. Was it you who once defined the difference between FF and FG as basically between sh**t and sh**te?
Most contemporary "left" parties are basically Third Way centrist
; indeed, the mainstream center-right in western Europe are probably less into neoliberalism than the British Labour Party, which is, constitutionally, and only constitutionally, a "democratic socialist" party - and in so far as 'social democracy' ever existed in the western world it was only ever as a model of capitalism
