GOODBYE PDs. Hello Greens.
In the long term, the real winner from the PDs' demise won't be Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, but the Green Party.

It's true the two parties are as alike as chalk and cheese, even if they have drawn their vote from the same urban, middle-class pool. However, the Greens can become the new PDs in one very important sense: they are now perfectly placed to take over the mantle of the natural small party of government.

Electorally, Fianna Fáil has dominated for the past two decades, holding power for all but two-and-a-half of the past 21 years. But the impact of the PDs in that time has been arguably as great, if not greater.

In that period, the PDs have been in coalition for 14 and a half years compared to four and a half for Labour and just two and a half for Fine Gael. And their impact on budgetary policy has been enormous.

Since opting for coalition, Fianna Fáil has tended to be hugely influenced by whichever party it has been in government with. It is too glib to describe it as the tail wagging the dog. But, it is no accident that the Fianna Fáil-Labour government of 1992 to 1994 would probably fall into the centre-left category, whereas, the Fianna Fáil-PDs '97-'07 administration was centre-right.

Labour during its spell in government in the 1990s got its ethics and equality legislation, the freedom of information act and, later, free third-level fees.

The PDs, meanwhile, got sharp cuts in tax rates, tax credits, individualisation, increases in old age pension, a smoke-free Dublin, taxi deregulation, the break-up of Aer Rianta and the establishment of the Personal Injury Assessment Board.

There is an argument about how democratic it is that a party with as little as 4% of the popular vote can largely dictate the direction of a government, but there is simply no denying the influence of a minority coalition partner.

This lesson was not lost on the Greens. Eighteen months before the last general election, the Sunday Tribune crunched the numbers in all the constituencies and came up with a forecast for the most likely result of an election. We predicted that the most likely outcome was a coalition of Fianna Fáil, the Greens and the PDs. It was dismissed at the time by some, who argued that the Greens and the PDs would never serve in government together as they were too ideologically different.

But, as we saw when Fine Gael and Democratic Left coalesced, ideology rarely matters when putting together a government. Politics is about being in government and getting your policies implemented. The Greens were never going to let the presence of the PDs deter them from going into government.

The party could, in the words of its critics, have "stayed true to its principles" and refused to go into coalition unless it got agreement on issues such as the M3, corporate donations or the use of Shannon airport by the US military.

Concessions on those issues were never on, so the party had a choice: stay in splendid isolation, howling at the moon, or enter government and try and implement its green agenda.

The history of the PDs, and their success in getting their policies implemented, shows the Greens made the right decision.

And with the PDs gone, the Greens are in an even stronger position of influence. Many commentators are already predicting that the next government will be Fianna Fáil-Labour. That is a possible outcome. But such predictions were also widespread before the 2002 and 2007 general elections and it didn't happen.

Labour has discovered after recent elections that a party with four, six or eight seats can be more attractive as a coalition partner than one with 20 or more TDs, which would require at least four cabinet positions.

Assuming their support holds up – and successive opinion polls show that it is doing so – the Greens now have a considerably better than each-way chance of being in government after each general election. With Fine Gael and Labour unlikely to have the numbers on their own, Fianna Fáil and Labour are the only two parties that could form a government without the Greens. Of course, the possibility of Sinn Féin being part of a future coalition can't be discounted. But Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would both surely opt for the Greens first, ahead of an untried Sinn Féin, giving John Gormley's party a de facto position of first refusal.

Think what the Greens could do if they could replicate the PDs' success and be in power for 14 of the next 20 years. Who knows the party might, like the PDs, become the victims of their own success.

The issues that caused the party to be established might be tackled or adopted wholesale by the other main parties. If that happens, you get the feeling that Gormley, Ryan, Sargent et al will happily head off to smell the roses or whatever it is that retired Green politicians do.

Post the PDs, it's just got a little easier to be Green.

scoleman@tribune.ie