The end of Fianna Fail?

The Irish Times national opinion last week showed that the main opposition party Fine Gael has now taken a huge lead over Fianna Fail. 

Fine Gael support is up to 38% of voters, while Fianna Fail support is down to a miserable 21%. Even more dramatic was the poll finding that satisfaction with the government has slumped to a record low of 10%, with a massive 86% of voters now expressing dissatisfaction with the Fianna Fail-led coalition.   (Presumably the other 4% of voters are so depressed they can't be bothered expressing an opinion one way or the other.)   

For Fianna Fail, a satisfaction rating of 10% is almost unthinkable. For the party that has dominated Irish politics for several generations, this is real humiliation.   

But it goes beyond that.  It goes beyond the current public anger at the implosion of the Irish economy and the electorate getting payback on the party in power.  That is a big factor, but this rating is so low it indicates abandonment as well as revenge.  

What it means is that we could be seeing a fundamental shift in Irish politics, a shift that is not temporary but permanent.  Fianna Fail, the once mighty party that has ruled Ireland for so long, the natural party of government here, may have reached the end of its time.  We could be seeing the start of a realignment in Irish politics that will run for decades.  

Those of you who are from this side of the pond will immediately grasp the significance of this.  For those of you who did not grow up here, let me fill in the background a little. 

Throughout my lifetime, Fianna Fail has run Ireland with a grip almost as tight as the communists used to have in the USSR.  Like the commies, it was as much a national movement as a political party.  

Yes, there have been a few times now and then when a coalition of opposition parties would sneak into power for a few years, but they were the exceptions that proved the rule.  Ireland really belonged to Fianna Fail.  

In fact to many people here, it was synonymous with the country.  For supporters of the party, to be really Irish you had to be Fianna Fail.  It was almost like a religion.  Anything else was suspicious, slightly West British.  

Fianna Fail, Catholicism, the Irish language and the GAA were the four pillars of Irishness -- and the most important of these was being part of Fianna Fail. 

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Nster.com