Enda Kenny will need the luck of the Irish

The BBC reports that Enda Kenny’s Fine Gael party has reached agreement with Eamon Gilmore’s Labour party. The new coalition is understood to be determined to renegotiate the precise terms of its EU/IMF bailout. If they succeed (which is far from certain) they will have served two purposes: first, to obtain a better deal for the Irish taxpayer; and second, to give the government a nourishing political victory over ‘the Germans‘, now loathed by Ireland’s boisterous eurosceptic movement. 

So, will it be an easy coalition? There is a tendency in Britain to define all politics in terms of left and right; already the BBC is busy with ‘centre-right Fine Gael’ and ‘centre-left Labour’. In fact, Irish politics does not strictly conform to this paradigm: it is largely determined by the historical context of Eamon De Valera, Michael Collins and the legacy of the Irish Civil War. Those ties persist, and many in Ireland vote as their fathers did.