A FG/FF coalition? Stranger things have happened in Irish politics ...

THE conventional wisdom is that this election is all over bar the shouting. Certainly, the polls have settled down somewhat with Fine Gael in the mid-30s, Labour in the low-20s, Fianna Fáil in the high-teens, Sinn Féin the low-teens and similar support for Independents. The Greens seem set for a wipeout.

On the face of it, therefore, the next government will most likely be a FG-led coalition with Labour and the next two-and-a-half weeks of campaigning is just about deciding their relative strengths in the coalition negotiations and how many Mercs each party receives.

Still, even if the election has become ostensibly predictable, it would be unwise to underestimate the significance of such a result. Fine Gael would be the largest party in the State for the first time in its history. Labour’s dreams of assuming that position might have receded in recent months but for it to move up to second place is still no mean feat. The next Dáil will also include by far the largest SF contingent since the mid-1920s.

FFers are disconsolate. How did we, whose support has been so consistent for decades, manage to lose more than half our voters in less than four years, they ask? We have messed up before but never been punished nearly so harshly. And, more troubling still: where do we go from here?

Chances are, FF has no option but to sit and wait for the FG-Labour government to unravel. It could be a long wait, perhaps a whole economic cycle. FG, if it plays its cards right, might well be looking at two terms in office, even possibly three.

Meanwhile, FF, deprived of the power of patronage, withers, forever casting nervous glances across at their long-lost cousins under the leadership of the TD for Louth, one Gerry Adams.

Wild voices will call for republican realignment but FF knows it has no option but to dismiss all such suggestions.

The downfall of FF is not unlike that of the UUP in the North. For almost all of the period since partition these were the two main pillars of Irish politics: one Green, one Orange but otherwise largely ideology-free catch-all parties, each seeking to embody the essence of what it meant to be Irish and British-in-Ireland respectively. Barring the occasional insult, they maintained a chilly peace between themselves, each ignoring the other if they possibly could while getting on with the important business of being “natural parties of government”.

In a very real sense, and without taking away from others contributions, the Good Friday Agreement was a deal between the UUP and Fianna Fáil. Long before 1998, members of both parties had sketched out mechanisms to bridge the north-south chasm that existed on the island while respecting each other’s red lines.

The UUP has not used the time since its own fall from grace well, caught between its instinctive hatred of the DUP and its fear of being seen to move too close to the SDLP. It seems quite incapable of communicating that it is every bit as unionist as the DUP but has a vision of a shared society, not a segregated one. To all but its most dedicated supporters and members, it has a confused brand identity.

FF’s humbling is for entirely different reasons, of course. It gained a medium-term fillip from the peace process. But, like what remains of the UUP after the dissidents left, it has no desire to upset the constitutional apple cart. Unlike in the 1980s under Haughey or during FG’s last stint in office when it labelled John Bruton, “John Unionist”, there will be no playing the Green Card. There is no difference in tone, let alone substance between it and FG these days on what used to be called the National Question.

It’s not as though attitudes to the North decided elections but it did help give some definition to the two main parties. Compulsory Irish was another quasi-dividing line. Nowadays, though, all that separates FG and FF is heritage. FG like to think they are more financially and politically upstanding than FF — in the same way the UUP like to think they’re a cut above the DUP — but power corrupts and FF have just had more power.

So why not just get it over and done with? The case for realignment is strong. FG is very unlikely to gain an overall majority. One possibility would be a reverse Tallaght strategy.

In the same way that Alan Dukes’ FG supported FF partly out of the national interest and partly to give the party to regroup, FF could support a minority FG government from outside. After all, the policy gap between them is the smallest of those between the main parties.

But with FF now down below Labour, FG has an even more intriguing option: to take FF into government with themselves without having to give away as many ministerial berths as it would to Labour.

The public mood, of course, is for FF to get a hard smack for its reckless incompetence. But will throwing them out altogether make people feel better for more than a few days or weeks? Once the euphoria is over, the hard decisions will have to be made and FG and FF seem more inclined to make tough choices.

It’s not as though Eamon Gilmore is Hugo Chavez but he has a constituency to satisfy and that makes reforming the public sector tricky.

A Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael coalition or arrangement might also be good for Irish democracy; it would allow for meaningful opposition. The performance of the Fine Gael-led opposition has been weak until lately because they agree with FF on almost everything.

SOME just dismiss an FG/FF deal as pie in the sky. The members wouldn’t like it. But who would have thought FF could do a deal with the Greens, or the PDs? Who would have imagined a DUP-SF administration in the North?

How many would have predicted the beard and sandals brigade, the Lib Dems in Britain, would sign up to a full coalition with the sons of Thatcher? The truth is the unthinkable is only unthinkable until it happens. The only other conceivable arrangement after election day is a government of the left: Labour, SF (if Left is the right word), the People Before Profit and other assorted Trots. It will only happen over Gilmore’s dead body — too much bad blood there — and, if it did, it would probably be highly unstable. Frankly, the numbers no longer look as though they are there anyway.

But perhaps it will take a FG/FF government to draw the left together and force SF in particular to join the ranks of the political touchables by dumping the last vestiges of its claims to be the true government of Ireland.

The fact is that the arguments in this election are essentially left-right ones. But the electorate has resigned itself to a mushy combination of the two. If FF, on the other hand, were to take the high moral ground and make FG an offer it couldn’t refuse, would the electorate necessarily object to a deal to end Civil War politics once and for all? If FG does well enough, it might want to pause before dismissing the chance to bury the hatchet.

Stranger things have happened.