British right-wingers have spent much of the past decade or so constantly turning their eyes enviously towards our neighbour across the UK’s only land border. Now that the Conservatives and their ideological fellow travelers are no longer required to see the Republic of Ireland as some kind of state sponsor of terrorists, they have noticed that this is a county which in many ways must appear as a kind of centre-right utopia.
Two right-wing parties, with significant historical differences but few contemporary ideological variations, alternate in constant government, with the ultra-free market Progressive Democrats often featuring in coalitions (albeit by all accounts the party will soon cease to exist). The three left-of-centre parties combined achieved less than 22% of first preference votes in 2007 elections. Ireland has the lowest levelof public spending as a proportion of GDP of any of the pre-expansion EU member states (35.2% compared to an EU-15 average of 48.5%) and saw phenomenal levels of wealth growth. The easily-made, albeit false, (more…)
