Fine Gael/Labour merger would only play into the hands of Sinn Féin

I WAS interested in Diarmaid Ferriter’s column arguing for a merger between the Labour Party and Fine Gael (Irish Examiner, December 28).

Interested, but in no way convinced. For some people on the left this would seem a logical progression from the decision of that section of the Workers Party that became the Democratic Left to enter the last Rainbow government — something I wrongly opposed at the time — and the subsequent merger of DL with Labour.

This has created in Ireland something that had emerged in Britain in the 1930s, namely, a significant Labour left. It is an appropriate and correct deployment of Gramsci’s method of the ‘war of position’ which shifts the public consensus in a leftward direction.