Sorry for the title, this is about Irish politics, not Ralph Nader. You might as well just read it anyway though :)
So first, a look very far into the past, back ninety years to 1918 and the victory of Sinn Féin in the Irish part of the UK general election. They decided that they would follow a policy of abstentionism, and decided to sit as a new parliament, the Dáil Eireann. For a long time, they fought a guerilla war of independence against the British, and figures some Americans, especially in the Irish-American community, would have heard about, like Michael Collins and Eamon De Valera. Eventually, the British partially acquiesced to Irish demands, and promised to free Ireland as a Dominion, similar to the status Australia and Canada had at the time.
However, three ports and Northern Ireland were to be kept in British hands, and many in the Dáil thought this treaty was tantamount to treason. It was eventually ratified, and De Valera's supporters left the Dáil and fought a civil war against the supporters of the treaty.
Eventually, the treaty supporters won and Ireland came to peace. The treaty supporters had split from Sinn Fein and formed a new party called Cumann na nGaedhael, and Sinn Fein split again between those who wanted to re-enter the Dáil, like De Valera, and those who didn't. Those that did renamed themselves Fianna Fáil, with the tagline to this day of "The Republican Party". Cumann na Gaedhael later merged with the National Centre party and a fascist organization, the Blueshirts, into Fine Gael, who called themselves the United Ireland party (they were still very nationalist and frequently denounced the partition of Ireland).
For a long time, Cumann na Gaedhael kept themselves in power by using the fear that Fianna Fáil were connected to paramilitaries and could provoke a war with our larger neighbors. However, eventually De Valera won out, and started a long string of electoral successes for Fianna Fáil that would continue, only rarely interrupted, for the rest of Irish history. The first challenges to Fianna Fáil leadership came in the late 1940s and during the 1950s when the Inter-Party governments, coalitions of agrarian parties, socialist parties, and Fine Gael, all with drastically different agendas, were set up to oppose Fianna Fáil's leadership.
The government declared Ireland to be a republic, something which had been in the makings for a long time with De Valera having ratified a new constitution earlier on, but was a symbolic gesture to the Clann na Pobhlacta republican party within the coalition. It ended up finishing prematurely when left-wing Minister for Health Noel Browne attempted to introduce universal healthcare for mothers and children, which the Catholic Church denounced and called communist- Browne was ahead of his time and many of his policies were soon implemented by the next Fianna Fáil government.
Over the years the agrarian parties slowly disappeared and mostly merged into the two main parties, and the left-wing merged into the Labour Party. More largely uninterrupted Fianna Fáil rule continued until in the 1980s where Ireland entered a severe recession or even a depression, and the rejuvenated Fine Gael under Garret FitzGerald made several deals with the Labour Party to form short-lived governments, while the disastrously managed Fianna Fáil under Charlie Haughey had no better luck. Power transfered many times under this as the governments characteristically had a very slim majority and under the British parliamentary system which we inherited if the government loses a vote on a spending bill, they have to call an election.
In 1985, anti-Haughey members of Fianna Fáil, mostly what Americans would call libertarians and we would call liberals (American liberals would be called social democrats here), were expelled from the party and created the Progressive Democrats, who at the time were heralded as forces for good- and in many ways they were at the time- they managed to significantly weaken the mold of succumbing to the will of the Catholic church, though they certainly didn't destroy it, and they made advances towards fully legalizing contraception (though they were not in government at the time, they were the strongest fighters for it).
In 1987 they became the third largest party in the Dáil, a feat they would never again achieve. Fine Gael decided to support Fianna Fáil's economic policy in the national interest around this time, and so the PDs and Labour (together only around 30 seats of 166) were unable to provide real opposition, especially since they had opposite policies on the economy. The government, however, fell over the issue of AIDS- Fianna Fáil, always a heavily Church-influenced party opposed giving state funds to AIDS sufferers but the Opposition all supported it, and Haughey's minority government fell. While he won the ensuing election, he was forced to enter coalition with the remaining PDs, though there were only 6 left at the time. This was the first time ever that Fianna Fáil entered a coalition, and every government since has had to. The thing was, the PDs were a right-wing influence on economic policy for Fianna Fáil, and forced them to pass many tax cuts and social welfare reductions.
Labour were the beneficiaries of a left-wing backlash from many of Fianna Fáil's supporters among trade unionists, and held the balance of power with 33 seats and 20% of the vote- far more than they had ever had before. They entered coalition first with Fianna Fáil, since their preferred alternative- a coalition with Fine Gael and another socialist party, Democratic Left, was out of the question, and then after some special elections made it possible and they found governance with Fianna Fáil impossible, they entered the Rainbow Coalition with Fine Gael and Democratic Left, with John Bruton as its head- Ireland's most left-wing government to date, which abolished college tuition fees, repealed some of the PD's regressive taxes, and implemented Ireland's first anti-poverty strategy under Prionsias DeRossa.
However, it was not to last, and much of the weak Fianna Fáil support for Labour evaporated at the 1997 election, which returned Bertie Ahern of Fianna Fáil to the top job, in coalition with the PDs. Under his government, Ireland started cutting taxes again and some of the programs of the Rainbow Coalition were undone. Vast de-regulation of our financial sector, which had started under Haughey and been partially undone under Bruton, continued at a faster pace than ever as we entered the Celtic Tiger boom, which was hailed by all parties- however it was artificial and caused by mass privatizations and deregulation, and it slowed down soon after the 2002 election where the FF-PD government was returned to power. Dissatisfaction with the government's record on corruption was expected to lead to a renewal of the Rainbow Coalition in 2007, this time with the support of the Green Party, however there was not enough support for this without the help of Sinn Fein, a step none of the three parties (FG, Greens, and Labour, which had merged with Democratic Left) were prepared to take. By promising massive green investment, the Greens were persuaded to support the FF-PD government again, though only one PD, Mary Harney, recieved a ministerial position this time as they had been reduced to only two seats, now considered a part of the Fianna Fáil machine and not worth voting for. This green investment never really materialized, though some productive measures were taken, but by today the Greens are staying in Government only because of their imminent demise at the polls due to their voters believing that they had betrayed their values, likely to vote for Fine Gael or Labour.
The Progressive Democrats disbanded earlier this year and their members divided equally between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
Bertie Ahern stepped down over corruption allegations and was replaced by his finance minister, Brian Cowen, whose popularity tumbled rapidly from almost 50% to 14%.
The Labour Party replaced their old leader Pat Rabbitte with the charismatic former Democratic Left member Eamon Gilmore, who has rebuilt the party to the levels it enjoyed back in the early 1990s and even beyond that.
Fine Gael have surged ahead of Fianna Fáil and are now almost twice as popular as it.
Ireland has entered a depression due to being effectively Iceland with the euro. The blame is almost all on Fianna Fáil (the Republican Party) and the Progressive Democrats.
The latest opinion polls are as follows-
Fianna Fáil- 20%
Labour- 23%
Fine Gael- 36%
Sinn Fein- 8%
Green Party- 3%
Ireland has local and European elections this Friday, and I hope that Labour can come close to Fianna Fáil's seat totals so that there's a possibility that it can build itself into a party which can compete for leading governments, not just supporting them. The policies with the most foresight and the most lasting progressive impact on Irish society have almost all come from the Labour Party's ministers, and I think they deserve to lead a government, and that they should lead a government. Fine Gael is no real alternative and are only ever popular by supporting the same conservative policies as Fianna Fáil but making semantic differences. I believe that Eamon Gilmore and Labour are the people who can lead us to a real recovery, not just a restoration of the old order of deregulation, low taxes and barely any safety net.