From a policy and philosophy perspective I would be closest to FG but I find the calibre of their elected members to be shockingly bad. If Brian Lenahan was leader of FF I would vote for them in the morning since he is the only government of opposition figure who has shown any clear leadership.
Labour are the political wing of the unions and their economic policies are nuts (their social policies are, however, very good). On the basis of their policies, and the total lack of anybody capable of pragmatic think on their front bench, I could not vote for them.
So, like many people, I am in a position where I feel I should vote but find myself in a position where there’s nobody I want to see in power.
+1 to some extent.
The last 18 months should have been Manna from Heaven for even a partially astute opposition. All we've had is vague promises of "we'd do it better" but without substance. And when we do get some substance, they're scatter gun policies that could never be implemented, but with enough sound bites to be trotted out occasionally to claim credit for when the government eventual bring out their own policy.
I'm actually swining towards an FF vote for a number of reasons, but it's still tenuous based upon where and how we got to where we were. The first shift was during the local and European elections. I had numerous opposition parties call and not one was willing to engage in discussions on local or European matters. Their only interest was in anti-FF sentiment. While I was as angry as everyone else, I refuse to elect someone on into an office for a fixed period where there only mandate is "that other lot are rubbish".
The other significant factor is the slow progress being made towards economic recovery. It's churlish to expect something to happen over night and it has to be one step at a time. But in comparisson to how the UK went about things, and I need to wash my tongue out here, but Cowen might have actually made largely the right choices.
Sceptics could say that their ratings were so low that it didn't they didn't have anything to lose by taking hard choices, but every politician has an eye on opinion polls. The UK government's method would have been the easy choice, a few public inquiries, lowered taxes and retail supports. for all that they've had growth of 0.1%. For all their incentives over hard action, they only managed 0.1% growth.
We've taken the pain early. It's fair to say that if it hadn't been done as soon as it was we'd be taking a lot more pain.
And at every stage the opposition has used the "we'd do it better" without one indication of how or what they'd actually do. It's easy to sit at the side lines and snipe as to how you'd do things, it's harder to come up with a quantifiable plan to back up the back seat politics.
I don't have specific political leanings, so I can't say for definite I'm one of those who will vote FF. But unless there's a shift from the opposition acting as the Mother-in-Law in the back seat, and as long as the actions taken continue to have some effect, I can't see there's any other choice.