Is Election 2016 a Conservative Victory?

There has been much comment in the past few days about how the election has been a victory for pro-life. That’s the good news.

A large number of candidates who pledged to protect the 8th Amendment were elected. And some of the most pro-abortion TDs lost their seats. Thank God!

More than in any previous election, at least a good proportion of voters took a principled stance by supporting pro-life candidates.

But we could have hoped for more.

A swing against an incumbent government is almost inevitable. And the principal opposition parties can expect to be the beneficiaries.

In 2011 Fianna Fáil lost three quarters of its seats while the Green Party was wiped out. The biggest opposition party, Fine Gael, achieved its historic highest number of seats.

In 2016, following five years of the worst government in the history of the State, Fine Gael lost one third of its seats (but still remained the largest party in the Dáil), and Labour took a serious hammering. Meanwhile Fianna Fáil’s gains were nowhere close to its losses in the previous election.

This was only the second election since 1927 in which Fianna Fáil didn’t win more seats than any other party.

The junior coalition parties in both cases fared worse than their senior partners. Could that be anything to do with them being the driving force behind the liberal social agenda of their respective governments? It was the Green Party that gave us Civil Partnership. Labour brought us abortion and same-sex “marriage”.

But Election 2016 wasn’t the great victory for Fianna Fáil that the exuberance of its members would suggest. Why, after such an unpopular government, did the party end up with the second lowest number of seats that it has ever had since its foundation?

The reasons are many. Its failure to live up to its important role in opposition was probably the biggest factor in the lameness of its comeback.

Opposition parties are supposed to debate legislation, to test it, question it, find flaws in it, put the government on the defensive and force them to prove that the proposed legislation is viable.

As long as they don’t fulfil this role, they might as well not be there at all.

Even when they are largely in agreement with the government, it is still better to question and test legislative bills before they are enacted than to find them flawed afterwards.

For the past five years Fianna Fáil acted as a prop to the government – a spare party in the coalition. 

This is hardly the way to present itself to the electorate as a credible alternative to the outgoing government.

On some very important issues it abandoned its responsibility as an opposition party. Why?

Its failure to oppose the property tax, other than on its timing, was out of subservience towards the EU and particularly towards the Troika, with whom it already had an understanding to introduce this unjust tax. Do they think that the electorate didn’t notice? Or at least that we don’t remember?

And out of political correctness and fear of the media they failed to oppose same-sex “marriage”, the Children and Family Relationships Bill. Some members couldn’t even bring themselves to oppose abortion.

Senator Jim Walsh had to resign the party whip in order to do his duty as an opposition senator.

By the way, two TDs (both independents) out of 166 declared themselves against the redefinition of marriage and it didn’t hurt either of them in the recent election. * 

In fact, 38% of the electorate, in the face of overwhelming pressure, misinformation and even intimidation, voted against redefining marriage. That is quite a pool of voters to be represented by only two members of the Dáil.

There are conservative votes out there for the taking by any party with the courage to canvass them.

* CORRECTION: Fianna Fáil TD, John McGuinness, also declared that he would be voting against the redefinition of Marriage. He topped the poll in Carlow - Killkenny.