ANALYSIS:FIANNA FÁIL has often been compared to the Social Democratic party in Sweden and the Institutional Revolutionary Party in Mexico.
All three parties emerged as powerful political movements in the early part of the 20th century and went on to dominate national politics for seven decades.
Over the past 10 years, the stranglehold of these three parties has been prised loose at different times and by different degrees. Fianna Fáil is the last of the three to tumble and its spectacular fall from grace has made the demise of the Swedish and Mexican parties look very modest indeed by comparison.
Perhaps the closest comparator is another venerable political party, the Progressive Conservatives in Canada. In 1993, under a comparatively new leader Kim Campbell, the party went from being the majority party in parliament to losing all but two of its 153 seats and lost its official status as a party to boot. Its vote dipped to 16 per cent, a fall in support terms that was very close to that which occurred to Fianna Fáil at a later juncture.
The reasons were very similar. In that year Canada experienced its worst recession for 50 years; unemployment skyrocketed; there were high budget deficits; voters railed against unpopular taxes; and a whiff of corruption surrounded a government that was too long in power.
There were other factors too. Canada has regional tensions – particularly surrounding Quebec. And the conservatives in Canada were ideologically more narrowly focused than the broadbased movement that was Fianna Fáil.
That said, the party did recover. However, it took the death of the old party and its name, as well as a merger with the by now much bigger breakaway group before the conservatives made inroads again. They are now in power there but the recovery took all of 15 years.
A senior Fianna Fáil figure attending the two-day think-in in Tallaght said privately that it will take Fianna Fáil a similar time span before it returns to government. The 2014 local elections and the general election of 2016 will be only modest staging posts.
“We would hope to be going into a coalition arrangement, in whatever shape that may take, in 15 years,” he said.
2026. A generation away. Micheál Marin is unlikely to be leader.
Many of its young guns now will be seasoned veterans. That puts the challenge facing the party into context.
Deeply unsurprisingly, the party’s two-day think-in has had modesty written all over it. It has been held in Tallaght, in a modest hotel, with no excesses and with its very modest group of TDs (19) and senators (14) paying for their own food and accommodation. The days of the Galway Tent and Inchdoney resort and Garglegate (only 12 months ago) have been consigned to the past.
Talking to the parliamentarians, none, young or old, accepts the party itself is also about to be consigned to the past.
It has been said that the budget will be the watershed moment for this Government, the moment when its honeymoon is over.
For Fianna Fáil, its watershed moment will be next February’s Ard Fheis, the moment when it hopes it can be released from what has figuratively been political house arrest since February.
