Although counting continues in various constituencies across Ireland, the outcome of Friday's election is clear in its broad outlines - and the results are frankly astonishing. Fianna Fail has been reduced to a sullen stump of its former self. Regnant for decades in Dublin, the party now has only one solitary seat in the west of the city; one seat in the rural Republican bulwark of Donegal; one seat in Clare. Large areas of the country, for the first time in 80 years, will be without a Fianna Fail representative. Comparisons with similar demolitions in Canada, Italy and Japan are apposite. The party which has dominated Irish elections since 1932 - indeed, dominated much of recent Irish history - is suddenly, at a stroke, an irrelevancy.
And yet there is no dynamic sense of upheaval such as would normally accompany such defeats - this is not 1918 redux. In most of the country, the main beneficiaries of the collapse have been Fine Gael, who will become the state's largest party for the first time since the 1920s, and who will now lead the next Government. While ostensibly a dramatic shift, in ideological terms many people appear happy to have exhanged six of one for half a dozen of the other: votes have transferred, in great preponderance, from one large centre-right party to another. Indeed, the comparative ease with which this switch has taken place simply underlines the large areas of policy agreement between the parties. Angry with the status quo, yet fearful of change, much of the electorate decided to leave the edifice of Irish politics undisturbed. They have plumped, instead, for a new coat of paint.
Fine Gael have been loudly declaring their sweeping 'mandate' from the people - Taoiseach-designate Enda Kenny went so far as to position himself at the head of a 'democratic revolution' - yet in reality their share of the vote ended up at around 36%, a plurality but far from a majority. Labour return to the Dail with their share of the vote (at just under 20%), and their parliamentary representation (at perhaps 37 seats), almost doubled - a fantastic result. More importantly, they have now consolidated their support in all of the country's large urban areas - Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, North Leinster - giving them real institutional density where before they had none. The party, however, will rue the missed opportunity: if ever Ireland appeared poised for a radical break with its past conservatism, it was now. The necessary momentum for that kind of change, however, stalled early in the campaign. Labour, charged falsely with being a 'high tax' party, saw support from more middle-class voters gradually drift away. It was this that guaranteed that they would end up, in second place, behind Fine Gael.
The two parties are now likely to form a kind of grand coalition, a 'balanced Government', and while discussions have apparently not yet started as to ministerial allocations, the general tilt of the next administration will necessarily be more right than left. (As all budgets for the next four years will be prepared under the aegis of the IMF and the European Commission, this was inevitable in any event). Labour will, however, be in a position to soften the edges of whatever austerity is planned, and can place emphasis on the two areas - job creation and social protection - that are the main concerns of their supporters. This alone can be chalked up as a major victory for Irish liberalism.
Labour will be aware that there will be a loosely aligned band of nationalists and socialists to their left who will, naturally, excoriate every Government decision made. Their problem - not unlike that of the Liberal Democrats in Britain - will be in trying to influence the positions of the next Government, without being identified with the unpopularity that will eventually attach to it. As Nick Clegg is no doubt well aware, this is a difficult needle to thread. What is more, 'civil War politics' in Ireland, the national shorthand for the Fianna Fail-Fine Gael duopoly, has been shaken, but not removed altogether. Fianna Fail will, no doubt, find its voice in opposition. The cuts and taxes that are still to be levied on the Irish people will certainly give them plenty to shout about; that these exactions were necessitated by their own policies will be quickly forgotten. One thing that may be safely predicted about this election outcome is that it is unlikely to change Fianna Fail's penchant for utter shamelessness.
And so this has been an election where everything has changed but much remains the same. The party of government has been handed an historic repudiation - and yet its successor offers many of the same policies, sweetened only with vague talk of reform. The left in Ireland has made, by any measure, an epochal breakthrough - and yet it will remain tethered to a larger, right-wing partner in order to govern. The new administration has a huge task before it, and a popular mandate to take it on. What they make of it remains to be seen.
Reflecting yesterday morning on the import of the results, historian Diarmuid Ferriter noted that, while outside observers deemed the absence of outward anger on the part of the population - no riots, no strikes - mysterious, in reality the electorate was simply biding its time. The people reserved their anger for the ballot box, he said, and their wrath has been visited upon the ruling party in high style. One can take no small measure of satisfaction that Irish democracy remains so healthy, and so responsive, as to perform such necessary vengeance. (Sean Coleman)
