Madam, - Garret FitzGerald wrote in this newspaper two years ago that Fine Gael and Labour needed to display "common purpose" in their opposition to the "right-wing" policies of the Fianna Fáil-PD government. Sadly, Dr FitzGerald's social democratic prescriptions are ignored by many of Fine Gael's current leadership who seem to pine after the days when the party was the political wing of the IFA and the Law Library. Tom Parlon and Michael McDowell's Progressive Democrats are already successful proponents of this ideology, garnerning a massive 4 per cent of the national vote.
It is this obsession among Fine Gael's Conservative wing with trying to out-PD the PDs that has led the party to issue policies such as abolishing neutrality, making opportunist attacks on public sector workers and endorsing the Government's referendum on citizenship. This has alienated the party from the large "pool of votes which is, broadly speaking, of a Social Democratic hue", to use the words of Gary King (May 17th). This anti-FF-PD vote has drifted to Labour, Sinn Féin and the Greens in recent years, while Fine Gael remained moribund.
Enda Kenny's leadership has been uninspiring. Fine Gael is still clearly the second largest party in the Irish Republic (nearly 30,000 members), but it has been seriously underperforming for quite some time. As Mr King suggests, the Labour Party, by showing undeserved deference to a misguided Fine Gael, inhibits the growth of the broad centre-left anti-Government vote.
If FG refuses to galvanise the social democratic vote, Labour must offer the lead. As Mr King wrote, "it would be a shame if the summit of [Pat Rabbitte's\] ambition is to be Mr Kenny's Tánaiste". That is why Labour must not only rule out coalition with Fianna Fáil, but promise to enter government only in the event of Labour being the largest party in a non-FF coalition. - Yours, etc.,
STEPHEN NOLAN, Delaford Avenue, Firhouse Road, Dublin 16.