FF is increasingly indistinguishable from the PDs
I am not particularly a Fianna Fáil supporter, but Carlow/Kilkenny FF TD John McGuinness is right in his own similar recent observations about Fianna Fáil leaving its traditional support behind and becoming almost indistinguishable these days from its Coalition partner, the Progressive Democrats, who are like a hive that has successfully colonised its host.
So much so, that Fianna Fáil's Finance Minister, Charlie McCreevy, could comfortably move over and join them. He is now so right-wing that I am not surprised that he and Health Minister Micheál Martin are increasingly finding it hard to tango no singing duets here!
John McGuinness chose to go public, because to really push for change within a political party as much in power as FF have been, this seems to be only way to do it.
It is true that FF used to be left of centre, practicing a socialist or toned-down form of capitalism with a social ethos. Their intermittent partnerships in Government over more than a decade with the PDs has now made them take on more of their junior partner's values while losing sight of what FF is about.
Mr McGuinness's views are shared by many of his fellow party members as well as the general public about the curious complacency that has now set in, with being too long in power. This too happened to an extreme degree to the once monolithic Tory party over in Britain, now reduced to a shambles of its original, arrogant self a warning there for FF ministers.
Mary Sullivan,
Horgans Bldgs,
College Rd,
Cork.
