The future of Irish political culture

Duke Leonal Felmet

Do you think it is possible for a bi-partisan system to develop in Ireland, for example, a Fine Gael dominant "right wing bloc" and a Labour dominant "left wing bloc"?

Do you believe this would be beneficial for Irish politics, or detrimental?

Just something I have been thinking about lately, and I am very interested to hear peoples views.









I predict that by post #5 this thread will descend into some spiralling rant about the EU/IMF/jobz/jayzus...

Monty Burnz

I think it would be a healthy development - the electorate can chose in which direction policy should move at the ballot box. FFailure have always been a bit of a turd in the political swimming pool, floating all around the political landscape, as they try to be all things to all voters and you never know which way they are going to jump when you vote for them. Hence you had mad deregulator McCreevy in the same cabinet as 'I'm a socialist' Ahern pulling us in all different directions, ultimately to national bankruptcy.

FFailure will always do the populist thing rather than the right thing. I may not agree with all of Labour or FG's policies, but I know where they are coming from and I can respect them.

Dirk Gently

it depends if labour are willing to do the right thing and allow FF/FG to merge or form a coalition or if they're happy to support which ever of the two will have them on board to make up the numbers. Labours willingness to support the other two in government is the stumbling block to having a genuine choice in direction.

I think the whip system and the way in which TD's outside of cabinet are irrelevant is a bigger problem though.

Permabear

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Duke Leonal Felmet

Duke Leonal Felmet wrote: »

I predict that by post #5 this thread will descend into some spiralling rant about the EU/IMF/jobz/jayzus...

Ah jayzuz, the bleedin IMF...

Monty Burnz

Permabear wrote: »

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That's as maybe, but it would surely be healthy for our democracy to at least have the choice of a clear political direction? I guess the counter-argument is that the present system prevents us lurching too far in one direction.

meditraitor

Permabear wrote: »

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More scare mongering from the anti left brigade, change the record, nearly every post with Labour in it results in a donegalfella " the left will ruin us" ( take a look at your post history) reply....... nothing you say makes sense because you are guessing, no left leaning government has ever had power in Ireland.

Internationally among the current bright lights the left show strong, see Argentina for example, 9 years of socialist government has done nothing to dampen growth.....

jonsnow

Labour have traditionally been much more responsible and less populist than fianna fail in government.Ruari quinn was afar better and "conservative" MOF than McGreevy.Kept government spending low and lowered the debt.

meditraitor

jonsnow wrote: »

Labour have traditionally been much more responsible and less populist than fianna fail in government.Ruari quinn was afar better and "conservative" MOF than McGreevy.Kept government spending low and lowered the debt.

This is the point, some of the paddy neo con rhetoric will imply that the FF government were left leaning because they increased social welfare and pensions, public sector pay.
The reason for this was not any leaning to the left but a right leaning government buying votes, political capitalism at its best, pandering to the unions.

Look were it got us, maybe it is time for the real left to get a shot......

Manach

It is hardly creditable to equate FG as right-leaning party, especially with their record on social issues have been to the progressive/liberal side of the spectrum. A hard leftist party such as Sein Fein hardly reassure the multinationals which comprise the large percentage of the productive economic sector, given the "moderate" left are calling for increased Corporation tax on profits.
link.

jonsnow

Manach wrote: »

It is hardly creditable to equate FG as right-leaning party, especially with their record on social issues have been to the progressive/liberal side of the spectrum. A hard leftist party such as Sein Fein hardly reassure the multinationals which comprise the large percentage of the productive economic sector, given the "moderate" left are calling for increased Corporation tax on profits.
link.

Sinn fein are more centrist than they let on.Once they got in govt in the north they agreed to some hefty cuts in public spending.They can afford to go for the radical vote in opposition in the republic because you can take noble stands in opposition and hover up the discontented vote.

ArtSmart

Permabear wrote: »

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wrote:

The Swedish Social Democratic Party has played a leading political role since 1917, after Reformists had confirmed their strength and the revolutionaries left the party. After 1932, cabinets have been dominated by the Social Democrats. Only five general elections (1976, 1979, 1991, 2006 and 2010) have given the centre-right bloc enough seats in Parliament to form a government. However, due to poor economic performance since the beginning of the 1970s, and especially since the fiscal crisis of the early 1990s, Sweden's political system has become less one-sided, and more like other European countries.

Close to 100 years of leftist 'lunacy' has brought Sweden to the brink of world domination in education, health, wealth, innovation, happiness levels etc etc etc.

(as re: the 1970's that was the oil wars by OPEC. 1990's = one bank that did an Anglo. - not leftist policies)

and all with a population of 9 million

Monty Burnz

Manach wrote: »

It is hardly creditable to equate FG as right-leaning party, especially with their record on social issues have been to the progressive/liberal side of the spectrum. A hard leftist party such as Sein Fein hardly reassure the multinationals which comprise the large percentage of the productive economic sector, given the "moderate" left are calling for increased Corporation tax on profits.
link.

I assumed we were talking about economics. FG are (in general) social progressives like Labour.

Monty Burnz

ArtSmart wrote: »

Close to 100 years of leftist 'lunacy' has brought Sweden to the brink of world domination in education, health, wealth, innovation, happiness levels etc etc etc.

(as re: the 1970's that was the oil wars by OPEC. 1990's = one bank that did an Anglo. - not leftist policies)

and all with a population of 9 million

How did nearly 80 years of leftist lunacy work in the USSR? East Germany? Poland? North Korea? Albania?

I don't think you could characterise a Swedish-style moderate left-wing approach coupled with a strong sense of social responsibility as lunacy. It works for them, even if it probably wouldn't work for us.

Permabear

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losthorizon

Permabear wrote: »

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Ahem Its been the total lack of regulation in our economy and in the western world generally that has led us into recession caused by right wing politics championed especially by the PDs and FF in this country.FG post Fitzgerald are a different party as well. To blame social welfare recients is daft - the likes of the unemployed only became unemployed after the economy crashed not before - the problems were caused by other reasons.

Duke Leonal Felmet

losthorizon wrote: »

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Ahem Its been the total lack of regulation in our economy and in the western world generally that has led us into recession caused by right wing politics championed especially by the PDs and FF in this country.FG post Fitzgerald are a different party as well. To blame social welfare recients is daft - the likes of the unemploed only became unemploed afted the economy crashed not before - the problems were caused by other reasons.[/Quote]

It wasn't a lack of regulation, it was a lack of enforcement of regulation.

A world of difference.

meditraitor

Duke Leonal Felmet wrote: »

It wasn't a lack of regulation, it was a lack of enforcement of regulation.

A world of difference.

but certainly not left wing politics!

point

Permabear

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meditraitor

Permabear wrote: »

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Again, what has this to do with left wing politics?

you wont answer of course because your a waffler,

Blowfish

meditraitor wrote: »

but certainly not left wing politics!

point

It was a lack of enforcement of regulation which caused the banks to go boom.

It was the ridiculous increase in public spending on public services and capital expenditure which caused the deficit and hence government/state to go boom when the lack of regulation finally hit home.

Scofflaw

Permabear wrote: »

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No, but you can argue that the ease of access to credit was at least as important as the interest rates (and probably a good bit more, given that lending continued to grow even as interest rates went up) - and the ease of access to credit resulted from deregulation, by: (a) allowing the banks to believe they were safely hedging risk in complex and opaque derivatives while doing no such thing; (b) allowing them to tap enormous reserves of incredibly cheap money in the wholesale markets which they then shovelled into long-term lending as fast as possible; (c) allowing them to create dizzyingly leveraged debt heaps which relied on constantly shovelling loans out to anyone breathing...and so on.

So I'd disagree. If the banks had insisted on prudential lending based on salary multiples the interest rates would have made little difference - very high interest rates could have slowed things down, but low interest rates couldn't have boosted borrowing past the limits of prudence.

cordially,
Scofflaw

SupaNova

Our banking system and the artificially managed interest rates will always create booms and busts. Taking the latest boom bust, i can agree that the other than lowering interest rates the other factors youu mentioned made it particularly spectacular.

storker

SupaNova wrote: »

This is just wrong. Lower interests make it viable for a greater number of people to be lent to profitably. If someone can't afford to pay interest at X% and banks are prudent they will not lend, but if the same person can now afford repayments at a lower % a bank can prudently lend to them.

Not if they're using the traditional income multiples e.g. 3 x single income/2.5 x joint. If I remember correctly, when banks used to enforce these multiples, they didn't change along with the interest rate.

If those limits had been enforced, the crazy housing boom couldn't have happened because demand would have been less.

Stork

Duke Leonal Felmet

So, that's the end of the initial discussion, because we have gone a bit offroad here?

oscarBravo

Back to the topic, I think it could be healthy to have a centre-right/centre-left choice at election time. Harking back again to my Danish election thread, there were two coalitions on offer: blue and red. Red won fairly narrowly, as a result of a swing away from the ultra-nationalism that had crept into the blue coalition. Looking at the performance of the red government so far, blue will win fairly handily at the next election, because the hard-left elements in the governing coalition are making a nuisance of themselves and trying to introduce economically unsustainable positions.

It makes for a constant tension between left and right policies which keeps things relatively centred (albeit to the left of where we'd probably end up), without the electorate (or the parties) getting too complacent.

SupaNova

storker wrote: »

Not if they're using the traditional income multiples e.g. 3 x single income/2.5 x joint. If I remember correctly, when banks used to enforce these multiples, they didn't change along with the interest rate.

If those limits had been enforced, the crazy housing boom couldn't have happened because demand would have been less.

Stork

Banks don't just look at income, they also look at expenditure, lower interest rates will mean lower expenditure for the borrower making it easier to repay the loan. Standards did go out the window in the last bubble though. Lowering the interest rate beyond a natural rate is enough to cause unsustainable investment, if it wasn't housing it would be something else. Housing is a favorite industry for government to funnel cheap credit through incentives and that's where the credit went.

Apologies for going off topic.

Permabear

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