Irish general election: 25 February 2011

[Associate Justice PiT]

For a long time Fianna Fáil didn't form coalitions at all. Fine Gael, on the other hand, has always been the second-largest party in the Dáil, and as a result has always had to form coalitions to take power. Given that Labour has always been clearly the third-largest party in Ireland, they are Fine Gael's traditional coalition partners. Moreover, the Progressive Democrats were originally Fianna Fáil dissidents.

     Why did FF not form coalitions? For any sort of non-ideological, dare I say "American-esque", party, holding power by any means necessary would seem like a logical modus operandi. Lacking ideological convictions & being unwilling to cooperate with other parties seems like a recipe for irrelevancy.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     In light of the latest poll, any chance that Sinn Féin will get more votes than Fianna Fáil?

[Associate Justice PiT]

"Independent TD for Wexford Mick Wallace says the 'archaic' dress code in the Dáil is antiquated.

He says he does not own a suit or tie.

Which makes 2 - Richard Boyd Barrett reportedly doesn't own a suit either.

     So what's their big deal? It's not as if a suit & tie are that expensive.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Couldn't FG try for a minority government in which Labour or FF could support legislation on a case-by-case basis?

It's not in the best interests of FG, though. The FG-Lab government will have an enormous majority (and Labour will be relatively pliant given how much larger FG is), whereas a minority government would be very unstable.

FG could also form a majority with indipendents. Indeed, who are these indipendents?

     As someone stated earlier, there's not enough FG-friendly independents to make the prospect any more appealing than a minority government.

     Given how obvious it is that FF's days as Ireland's biggest party are over, I'm slightly amused that they still don't want to form a government with FG. With that said, delusion on the part of politicians is nothing new, of course.