The posters are going up on the lamp posts and the tourists and the European lorry drivers are starting to drive round in circles looking for road signs obliterated by the airbrushed smiles of party hopefuls. But this is no ordinary election. The election on February 25th will represent a snapshot of the political fallout from the economic collapse and the farcical slide into chaos of the Fianna Fáil/Green Party coalition. Farcical that is, except for the calamity that the government’s policies have created for the working class people of Ireland.

The key issue in the election will be the economy and the political and social crisis in the state. The Irish bourgeois have a series problem. It’s clear that they can’t continue to rule through Fianna Fáil, the party is too discredited. But the prospect of a Fine Gael and Labour coalition is not their ideal choice either. An FG/Labour coalition is by far and away the most likely outcome of the election and Eamon Gilmore and Enda Kenny might well be able to cobble together a programme for government. But this programme would be based on a sorry compromise between two divergent political positions the reality is that there is a country mile between an agreement between two leaders and the expectations and hopes of the working people and the middle class layers that vote for them.

In the long term it will be the different class basis of Fine Gael and the Labour Party which will be decisive in a coalition. The bourgeois will want their pound of flesh, while working people will demand reforms and radical change from the Labour Party. Over a period of time the Labour leaders will be come under increasing pressure and an opposition will develop to the policies of coalition. This was the experience of the 1980’s. If anything the pressures will be worse.

A new FG/Labour coalition will inevitably be a government of crisis. While the bailout might take some of the immediate pressures off the state in the bond markets the reality on the ground will be very different. The economy is still crawling along and the strictures of the EU/IMF small print means that the public sector will be in the front line once again. Trotsky once made the point that a cube of metal and ball of metal might appear different, but if you put them under massive pressure they both end up flat. In other words the pressure affected them in more or less the same way.

This will put the Labour Party leaders under pressure. From the point of view of the bourgeois that isn’t a good sign, it adds uncertainty to an already serious situation. It helps to explain Michéal Martin’s comments that Fianna Fáil would be willing to support a minority Fine Gael government. This isn’t the first time that the FF leaders have touted the idea of some sort of national government. The recent discussions prior to the announcement of the four year budget plan reflected the statements of Olli Rehn that the various parties needed to sort themselves out. The ruling class want stability, but not for the same reasons that workers do. The bosses want a stable united government that is prepared to do their bidding down to the letter, that means making the workers pay for the crisis.

While a national government might not be the immediate perspective, the collapse of FF and the exit of a large part of the leadership from the Dáil has put the party into crisis. There have been examples internationally of once dominant parties imploding, not least in Italy where the Christian Democrats, the Socialist Party and the Communist Party have all disappeared over time. In Ireland the Progressive Democrats survived for over 20 years after a split in both FF and FG. Doubtless the possibility of a formal alliance between FF and FG might be too much for some.

The experience of the past period in Ireland is that the battle lines have been drawn between the bosses and the working class. Class tensions have risen, the public sector workers have been scapegoated and attacked time and time again, while the private sector bosses have been given free reign by the government. The sight of Thomas Cook workers being manhandled down Grafton Street and thrown in Jail angered many workers. The repeated struggles at Aer Lingus, the Waterford Crystal occupation, the TEEU and Electrical Contractors dispute and particularly the collapse of the building industry are all examples of the bosses’ assault on the working class.

The new government will be thrown into this maelstrom, and the Trade union movement will come under massive pressure to defend working people. The state has entered an age of austerity, the same impasse that affects Europe and the US and the masses in the ex colonial countries. The ideas of Marxism and of militant trade union action will become increasingly relevant over the next few years.

We make no apologies for calling for a vote for Labour in the election. Individuals to the left of the party might make a breakthrough in one or two places. But without a programme of transforming the Labour Party and the trade unions, defeating the ideas of reformism and winning the mass of the working class to the perspective of the socialist transformation of society there are serious limits to the possibilities for small “independent” left groups. The Irish working class have demonstrated time and time again that they have the capacity to struggle to defend their jobs, wages and conditions. That needs to be combined with a clear sighted Marxist leadership. There are no short cuts.

• Vote Labour and Fight for Socialist Policies
• For a Majority Labour Government with a Socialist Programme