This website is primarily about UK politics, and rarely forays into the politics of Ireland. There’s a simple enough reason for this; the blogger doesn’t feel that there’s a significantly developed school of political thought in Ireland with a fundamentally right-of-centre political principle.
I hear lots of people complaining that ‘all the parties in Ireland are to the right’; in fact, that’s simply not true. With some notable exceptions in Sinn Féin and Labour, politics in Ireland seems to be the politics of homogeneity, where there is no effective ideological divide between the mainstream parties.
To me, that’s dreadful. With no difference, there can be no battle of ideas. The thing about a battle of ideas is that it generates more ideas for each participant on the battlefield. Politics is renewed, and people are enthused. Some people will say there’s no need for anything new. Let’s see.
The thirtieth Dáil formed in 2007 with members drawn from the following parties:
Fianna Fáil |
77 |
Fine Gael |
51 |
Labour |
20 |
Progressive Democrats |
2 |
Greens |
6 |
Sinn Féin |
4 |
Independents or others |
5 |
Let’s look at the parties still in existence and in the Dáil, and see just how different they are:
Each party’s political ideologies are given by wikipedia (not a perfect source but at least user-editable) as:
Fianna Fáil
Irish republicanism,
Liberal conservatism,
Centrism,
Populism
Fine Gael
Christian Democracy,
Centrism,
Social Liberalism,
Social Democracy (minority)
Labour
Democratic socialism,
Social democracy
Green Party
Green politics
Sinn Féin
Irish republicanism
Left-wing nationalism
Democratic socialism
Unification of Ireland
Not one party still extant has an identifiable right-of-centre political approach. I would argue that even the Progressive Democrats didn’t. They are unified by much more than that which divides them.
Of course, the politics of one country cannot be usefully transposed on another, and I am not advocating for a British style conservatism in Ireland, or the formation of a Conservative Party. But there is something mildly alarming about a country where Rand seems almost unknown, where Fukuyama has limited currency and where the political miracle of the rebirth of the tories in the UK seems to have gone unnoticed.
And so, I have decided to occasionally, and not overwhelmingly, invite critique of policies held by the parties in Ireland for the blog, from a centre-right and right-wing perspective. The parties here just can’t do it, so populist is the politics. I see this as the preamble to the formation of a small but hopefully vibrant political discussion group or thinktank, capable of advocating for small-state, low taxation policies.
If this develops, I would intend to establish a basic statement of concepts to which supporters might readily agree.
And so it is, as I said, a modest proposal.
