The real difference between FF and FG

The seating arrangements on the Claire Byrne debate last Monday night spoke volumes. On the right sat Fine Gael’s Michael Noonan and Fianna Fáil’s Michael McGrath together. On the left, Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty and Labour’s Brendan Howlin. The personalities were different, but the ideologies on the left and right of the RTE studio were the same.

This realisation is not lost on a public aware of opinion polls which suggest that the ...