If the government called a general election tonight

Not exactly the same tho, is it?

TDs come and go all the time. When you vote, you vote for the candidate and/or for the party. You probably hope your choice will make it into government.

You certainly don't look at a shíte TD and say, "Well he was a crap minister but I'm gonna vote for him 'cos he has lotsa experience." And let's be honest, there have been very few good ministers in the last 12 years, no the last 20 years, the great majority of them have been pathetic, to the extent that unless they are taking care of individual constituents their records as ministers are nothing something they can safely stand on. Some people praise Enda Kenny, for instance; but when I think of him I look at the 2016 census, and see that only two counties lost population between 2011 and 2016 - and Mayo was one of those counties; Kenny - for all his 40 years' experience in the Dáil - he wasn't even able to look after his own when he became taoiseach..

In this situation of generalised ineptitude, a great many voters won't be thinking "Wow, my local TD was such a great minister that I'm going to vote for them again". A lot of people of course will continue to vote on their traditional tribal lines (ie regardless of the ministers' abilities or experience), but we're not talking about them, but about the floater who knows the Minister looking for re-election is so-and-so's son/daughter/relation but doesn't actually cut the mustard.

Do you think that to be rightwing you have to espouse Yankee libertarian ideals? because that is the impression your comment gives.

In European terms, FG is rightwing, FF is centre-right and moving further right every day.

For the sake of clarity, left and right are in the main economic stances. The rightwing stands for accumulating wealth in few hands, leftwing tries to distribute wealth throughout society so that everyone has enough.

The "woke" agenda may be considered leftwing in US terms as there is little else to distinguish between the two Big Business parties, but in European terms it is not central, although many leftwing people and movements accept a lot of its premises on the basis of tolerance/celebration of difference.

@AndrewJRenko

I'd be inclined to agree that it's better if the incoming government has some members who have served in a prior regime. That way change will be gradual and hopefully well-considered, with the 'rookies' taking advice from the old hands.

However, it's probably not that unusual in politics for there to be a complete change and it isn't always a bad thing. Tony Blairs 1997 government (after 18 years of Conservative rule) was effectively a new broom with minimal input from those who'd served under Wilson/Callaghan. And it would be regarded as a successful government. In France the rise of Macron was basically with a new party, seems to have done fine. Doubtless there's some bad examples as well (Syriza in Greece).

I guess the biggest problem would be if the new government (and clearly in an Irish context we are talking Sinn Fein) sees some narrow victory as a mandate to change the entire direction of the country overnight.

We are part of the EU. Our politics is EU politics.

Parties don’t have to be extremist nutters to be right wing or left wing. They can be moderate and one or the other.

He is correct.

FG is a mainstream European Centre Right Christian Democrat party. FF is a fairly conservative (Free Market) Liberal party.

The Conservatives in the U.K. may once have overlapped the more right wing elements of the Christian Democrats but those days are long gone. They most definitely aren’t Centre Right nowadays.

Which candidate?

Pretty sure they are as good as dissolved.

They have provided no statements of accounts since 2019.

The Conservatives have basically been taken over by their “Militant Tendency” and are characterised as “BluKIP” by some. That’s a fairly accurate tag in many ways as they have been trying to out-UKIP UKIP for many years.

That puts them in Far Right territory as they are now more extreme than many of the Far Right parties in the EU, many of whom have abandoned their overt hostility to the EU, particularly since Brexit has turned out to be a complete failure.

EU coalitions do not a definition make.

You have to understand what Left and Right wing are. Could you realistically say that any major party in Ireland is closer to capitalism than socialism?

What makes them far right?

FF was centre-left back in the 1930s when they set about building thousands upon thousands of houses for working class people. They gradually moved rightwards, first under Seán Lemass and have continued to do so ever since. Now they are indistinguishable from FG.

FG started as an avowedly rightwing party - I'm sure you have seen the photos of Blueshirts making the fascist salute. When fascism fell out of favour after WW II, they moved away from that - in public at least. But the Cosgrave, Donegan, Cooney and O'Brien cabal was a highly authoritarian rightwing government, albeit with some notes of socialism from one or two of the Labour ministers. In public, Garret the gobsh.te was keen on social justice, but it was never more than window dressing, no-one in their right minds would deny that Bruton was rightwing, and certainly (despite a window dressing of social change) there is not a single sensible person in the country who would deny that Varadkar and his coterie would happily fit into the English Tory party.

So, rightwing. Not Libertarian rightwing, not extreme rightwing, just plain old run of the mill rightwing.