FF and FG coalition possibility: Time to end an irrelevant division

It would be a delicious irony if the greatest opportunity given to the parties of the left in the history of this State achieved what generations of moderate, loosely Christian Democratic, Social Democratic politicians with more or less the same objectives failed to do. 

How ironic it would be if our economic collapse brought about the inevitable, if gradual, unification of the two most powerful — historically at least — parties in the country.

How transformative it might be if circumstances usually regarded as an opportunity of the left actually were the catalyst that forced Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to work together or collectively face the prospect of the kind of marginalisation, one bordering on irrelevance, Fianna Fáil has had to endure since the February 2011 election.

Today’s statement from Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney that “I don’t have any ideological problem with forming a coalition with Fianna Fáil.

As long as we can hammer out a programme for Government, that is something Fine Gael can support ...” is just another indication that the preposterous vanity that convinces some diehard Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael politicians that they really are the keepers of radically different flames might at long last be coming to an end. While they fiddled, in the sense that Nero fiddled of course, Rome indeed burned.

That Mr Coveney is the second cabinet member — Health Minister Leo Varadkar was the other — to offer this viewpoint in recent months suggests a unified centre is, almost a century late, now possible.

The late Brian Lenihan referred to the possibility when he spoke at Béal na mBláth some years ago and suggested that the loss of Fianna Fáil would be a price worth paying to belatedly realise this unity of national purpose.

Even at this time when politics are held in such low regard it is not hard to imagine the energy and potential that might be freed to deal with the real problems of the day if, say, Simon Coveney and Michael McGrath were on the same side rather than being opponents fighting a fight as relevant to today’s needs as The Dixies or The Freshmen are to Twitter or Facebook. It really is that simple and that debilitating.

There are, of course, issues of style and culture but hardly any of substance and if today’s antagonists focused on the ideas that might contribute to rebuilding this country, and doing as much as is possible to making it more resilient than it was in 2008 to face the next recession whenever it befalls us, then the last crisis may not have been entirely wasted.

Both parties have skeletons they would prefer left in cupboards but it is hard not to hope that an amalgamation of the best of both parties would serve the country far, far better that today’s often indistinguishable, tribal anachronisms.

Graveyards would of course almost fly because so many tenants would spin in their graves, but then graveyards are about the past and a coalition — for starters — of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil might actually be the agent for moderate, steady and well-planned change this country has needed for generations.

It would be about what the future might be. It would also outflank the options offered by untested extremes.