WI he Irish First Past the Post Referendum passes in 1958

[neonduke]

In OTL the referendum was very narrowly defeated with 51% voting No, but what if the referendum passed and the Republic of Ireland moves to FPTP?

We are just off a storming Fianna Fail win in the 1957 election and while they would lose 7 seats in 1961 they would still retain a majority. Does FPTP simply maintain FF domination well into the 1980s when historically they first had to form a coalition? Labour is undoubtedly going to have a very hard time and while I would expect Fine Gael to eventually adapt and form a minority administration with a rump Labour but this scenario does point to an even longer dominance by Fiann Fail in Ireland.

 

[Time Enough]

I could see a call for the return of PR in no time. Also a majority Fianna Fáil would probably end up like the LDP in Japan throughout the 60s/70s/80s though I don’t think I can see them lasting as long (there too corrupt/incompetent to have a LDP style dominance of Irish Politics).

This would also probably mean the Costello/Social Democratic/Social Liberal Fine Gael folks would find themselves in charge of the show to differentiate themselves from Fianna Fáil whilst I could see Labour going a bit more Leftwards as it’s finds it’s moderate stances squeezed by Fine Gael.

 

[Ricardolindo]

In OTL the referendum was very narrowly defeated with 51% voting No, but what if the referendum passed and the Republic of Ireland moves to FPTP?

We are just off a storming Fianna Fail win in the 1957 election and while they would lose 7 seats in 1961 they would still retain a majority. Does FPTP simply maintain FF domination well into the 1980s when historically they first had to form a coalition? Labour is undoubtedly going to have a very hard time and while I would expect Fine Gael to eventually adapt and form a minority administration with a rump Labour but this scenario does point to an even longer dominance by Fiann Fail in Ireland.

What a coincidence. I thought about this today. Here's an alternatehistory.com thread by @Nofix on the subject: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/what-if-ireland-switched-to-fptp-in-1959.378623/. The consensus seems to be that Fianna Fáil would rule until whenever people got really sick of them and, then, they would utterly collapse in an election.

 

[Nofix]

What a coincidence. I thought about this today. Here's an alternatehistory.com thread by @Nofix on the subject: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/what-if-ireland-switched-to-fptp-in-1959.378623/. The consensus seems to be that Fianna Fáil would rule until whenever people got really sick of them and, then, they would utterly collapse in an election.

Wow, that was years ago.

But yeah, FF Forever (ie a couple decades until the floor falls out from under them).

 

[Observer]

Fianna Fáil would certainly have dominated things through the 60s (but then they dominated things through the 60s in any case under STV) simply because the opposition was split, and split in such a way that you had one party to FF's left (Labour) and one party largely to FF's right (the Costello/FitzGerald "Just Society" wing of FG was an anomaly within the party at large, and while left-wing within the context of FG in seeing a role for state intervention in the economy it was not especially Left overall). Had Gerald Sweetman not been killed in a car crash in early 1970 it's quite possible that the party would have remained much more clearly on the economic right.