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Irish General Election


Dougie Do'ins
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3 hours ago, skaro said:

 

(As De Valera patiently and painstakingly mastered) Populism and the smite of the Crozier was a watertight way of staying in power.

 

 

 

3 hours ago, deiseach said:

It'd be more like Liverpool becoming independent and then alternating between Liverpool and Everton governments.

 

2 hours ago, JohnnyH said:

 

Our conservatism, is a catholic church conservatism. If anything it fed the "rebel country" ethos of the people.  The church, especially in the country,  played key parts in the war of independence from 1919-21 in planning and harbouring before and after.

 

The type of nationalist politics of the current Tory's or UKIP is a million miles from the nationalism of Sinn Fein or pre 1990s Fianna Fai. The nationalist ideal of a country struggling to understand what it is as it's Empire dwindled is polar opposite to the nationalist views of a country forced to live, die and suffer, under the tyrannical rule of an Empire.  Don't forget, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail all originally comes from splits within the original Sinn Fein. 

Thanka for the info and comments chaps, it's interesting as an outsider (with Irish and Scottish ancestry) looking in, could be a sea change with this election but it feels like there's a long way to go yet!

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It tells a story of how derided and out of touch Neo Leo Varadkar is, that he's the first ever outgoing Taoiseach not to top the poll in his own constituency, and also the first Taoiseach since Garret Fitzgerald in the 80s, not to have enough surplus to bring in a running mate. The humbling continued as he got bare handfuls of transfers to add to his 1st preference shortfall of 248. From the surplus of SF polltopper, Paul Donnelly, and eliminated independents, he had to suffer the ignominy of having to wait until the fifth count, involving a tortuous and embarrassing 3 hour wait, to be elected. 

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This is a decent little article I thought.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/10/british-political-pundits-ireland-election-sinn-fein

 

Memo to British political pundits: Ireland’s election isn’t about you

After Sinn Féin’s unexpected success commentators rushed in with half-baked conclusions about what it all meant

 

 

There has been no shortage of surprises in Ireland’s election results. A party historically linked to the Provisional IRA won the popular vote. A political duopoly rooted in a civil war a century earlier has, finally, ended. And nobody knows what the next government will look like.

 

Given all this real drama, it was more than a bit curious to see the reaction from sections of the British media. After more than three years covering Brexit as if it were a football match, more than a few British pundits seemed determined to shoehorn Ireland’s shifting politics into a black/white view of the world with Britain at its centre. At times, it felt as if London journalists were commenting on a different election altogether.

 

Some of the errors were factual. A Financial Times reporter wrongly declared on Twitter that the outgoing taoiseach Leo Varadkar had lost his seat – apparently not understanding that Ireland uses a different electoral system to the UK. (Varadkar had to sweat until the fifth round of counting.) Another newspaper’s election “explainer” got the number of seats in Ireland wrong.

 

More often, however, the Irish election hot-takes were – well, decidedly lukewarm: Sinn Féin’s surprising success was just like Brexit, or Donald Trump. The BBC’s venerable foreign correspondent John Simpson declared that Ireland, “which has been politically stable for decades”, had now “succumbed to populism” without providing any evidence of what he meant.

 

Other commentators, including a Conservative political strategist, declared that Irish voters had primarily been motivated by a rising tide of anti-British sentiment. (In fact, just 1% said that Brexit was their number one election issue.)

 

Sorry guys, but not everything is about you.

 

Yes, Brexit brought old resentments towards Britain to the fore, but this election was mainly fought on bread-and-butter politics. The much-vaunted economic recovery has not been felt by vast swaths of the population, especially those trying to find a home. The health service is a mess. No wonder most Irish voters listed housing and health as their primary concerns.

Looking at the Irish election purely through the prism of British politics – or even of the rise of populism – misses a lot of the nuances of what has happened in Ireland. Having rejected Fianna Fáil in 2011 – the party of Éamon De Valera was blamed for bankrupting the country in the financial crisis – Irish voters have turned their back on Fine Gael too. The parties’ combined vote looks likely to be about 43%, a record low.

 

Sinn Féin’s surge has been remarkable. In my native county, the party topped the poll with an unknown candidate in a constituency in which Sinn Féin had not won a seat in decades. That pattern was repeated across the country.

 

The Sinn Féin triumph has changed Ireland’s electoral landscape – and could change its relations with Britain. A border poll on Irish unity is firmly on the political agenda. But here again, British commentators would do well to take a deeper look at what’s going on.

 

A majority of young Irish voters now say they want to see border poll soon. But more than Irish unification they want public services and better prospects. Almost a third of young people in Dublin voted for Sinn Féin. The republicans’ success ensured that a slew of leftwing candidates were also elected as Sinn Féin’s voters transferred to the Greens, the Social Democrats and other parties under Ireland’s proportional voting system.

The Sinn Féin tsunami was not preordained. Many Irish voters wanted change but only alighted on Mary Lou McDonald’s party as the vehicle for their disaffection relatively late in the campaign. Having performed badly in recent European and local elections, Sinn Féin unexpectedly emerged as the alternative consensus in the closing weeks.

These are the paradoxes and complexities of a dynamic political situation. Which is something that many British commentators have not had to deal with for quite a long time now.

 

Watching RTE’s excellent election coverage over the weekend, I was struck by the absence of the predictable thinktankers and partisan talking heads that often dominate British political coverage. Rather than discussing the election they wished had happened, studio guests were talking about the vote that had taken place. Maybe it’s time Britain followed Ireland’s lead.

 

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

How do people view the voting system in Ireland and the UK ?

 

Which would you rather have ?

As an American who works in the administration of elections, I prefer Ireland's voting system over pretty much everyone's. Ranked choice voting gives every vote a chance to impact an election, which is in no way true of FPTP, or the crap we're saddled with in the USA.

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17 hours ago, ATXRED said:

As an American who works in the administration of elections, I prefer Ireland's voting system over pretty much everyone's. Ranked choice voting gives every vote a chance to impact an election, which is in no way true of FPTP, or the crap we're saddled with in the USA.


We’re great to be fair. Sadly our Senator process is shit. But that’s a chat for a whole other day. 

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21 hours ago, ATXRED said:

As an American who works in the administration of elections, I prefer Ireland's voting system over pretty much everyone's. Ranked choice voting gives every vote a chance to impact an election, which is in no way true of FPTP, or the crap we're saddled with in the USA.

You can argue about whether it produces the best outcomes, but as a process in itself it really is hard to beat. I remember an election where there was a lefty Scargill-type running in my constituency (Waterford). He picked up about 800 votes, nearly all of which would have come from the urban east of the county, and was duly eliminated. Ten of his votes transferred to a rural conservative businessman from the far west of the county who the Scargill-type would have had first up against the wall when the revolution comes. To this day it amazes me that ten people thought "him first, then him second" and it thrills me that we have that kind of granular information with which to work, all thanks to our wild and wacky electoral system.

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2 minutes ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

So what happens now ?


80 seats are needed to form a government. Sinn Fein are now speaking with the other parties and independents to see who will go into government with them with McDonald as Taoiseach.  Michael Martin, leader of Fianna Fáil who won the most amount of seats (beat Sinn Fein by 1) will be doing the same. However, they initially said they wouldn’t go into government with SF before the election. But have started to flip on that. So I think it’ll be a Fianna Fáil, Sinn Fein, Green Party coalition, left leaning government that gets fuck all done. Martin will be Taoiseach and Már Lou McDonald will be Tanaiste (deputy Taoiseach). 
 

It’s been a mad general election and the shock waves are still being felt. The leader of our Labour Party, Brendan Howlin, has just resigned.  I’d imagine he’d be shoe-in for Ceann Comhairle which is basically head of our Oireachtas. Fianna Fáil and Sinn Fein won’t want to have to give up someone to be Ceann Comhairle so it’ll go to him I’d imagine. 
 

Everyday brings something new.  Another general election in a few months is a real possibility too. 

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Just now, Dougie Do'ins said:

Cheers Johnny. So if it does go to another GE, do you think Sinn Fein will stand in more seats ?

Without question. It won’t be 80 seats, but it’ll be close to 55 or so. And the only way another GE happens will be with a general feeling that Sinn Fein and the “will of the people” have not been acted on, with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil shafting the vote. So I think even more people would vote for Sinn Fein. They’d end up in coalition with a junior partner, and McDomald would be Taoiseach. That’s my feeling. 

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