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Rebel Keaveney may not be the last of the disenchanted to join the Soldiers of Destiny

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World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

Colm Keaveney’s decision to join Fianna Fáil last week was – to put it at its very mildest – took us all by surprise. The first I heard about it was about 8.50am on Tuesday morning when RTE’s Morning Ireland phoned me to say that the story was trending on Twitter and would I mind coming on to talk about it.

I made a few frantic phone calls to senior Fianna Fáil people I knew but none were able to confirm. Twitter is grand but it’s not the Oracle and I wasn’t going to go onto national radio and confirm it on the back of a couple of tweets. So it was a very conditional interview…full of ‘on the one hand’ and ‘on the other hand’ get out clauses.

I did say that if it were true it would be intriguing and almost sensational.

Five minutes after the programme went off air, one of the Fianna Fáil people came back to say it was true, and Keaveney would be joining the party that very day and he and Micheal Martin would be appearing on the plinth of Leinster House at lunchtime.

“Alea iacta est,” Keaveney had said when he decided to vote against his own party when the vote on social welfare measures came up after Budget 2012.

Its meaning is the die has been cast. It referred to the decision by Julius Caesar to cross the Rubicon, giving notice he was challenging the authority of the Empire to which he had sworn allegiance.

And now for a second time, Tuam’s own legionnaire was crossing the Rubicon, this time to rejoin the party with which he was associated as a young man.

Within minutes of the announcement, his former colleagues in the Labour Party were busy foraging through the archives, finding juicy comments by the same Colm Keaveney slating Fianna Fáil. They didn’t have to search too hard. There were many, including a few choice YouTube clips, and boy, did Keaveney go in hard on Fianna Fáil, accusing it of corruption, graft and the divil and all.

He stuck to the argument that Fianna Fáil had changed and was the only party to have learned from mistakes of the past. Did it sound hollow? Well, a little. You just couldn’t escape from the impression that for each party in the transaction, the other was a flag of convenience.

That said, Keaveney was a Fianna Failer in his youth, and even when he was involved in student politics. It could be that he is returning to the roost but he will need to show, in the immediate to medium term at least, that he is a party person first and foremost and is not likely go go on a solo run every time the ball is passed to him.

So what are the issues? Well, on a national level will it make a difference and is it the beginning of a trend? On a local level, how is it going to play in Galway East, both within Fianna Fáil and in the wider constituency?

Keaveney is a capable politician and there is no doubt that he is more interested and involved in policy than many of his fellows. He has also shown a high degree of skill in building up a base in Galway East from nothing that brought him a Dail seat in the 2011 election.

In the past few days, there have been rumours that other TDs and Senators may follow Keaveney into Fianna Fáil. Those who have been mentioned include the Meath West TD Peadar Tóibín – who is out of favour and out of sorts with Sinn Féin – and two independent TDs Peter Mathews in Dublin South and Stephen Donnelly in Wicklow.

The over-loquacious Mathews tends to dominate every meeting he goes and has rubbed a lot of his fellow colleagues up the wrong way by not being able to know when it is more politic to be silent. That said, he has a political cache, and would be a credible candidate for Fianna Fáil in the European elections. If he won, the party would have a fighting chance of winning the bye-election.

Donnelly is a very bright and articulate Deputy – and, yes, he’s not shy about letting you know about that – but he would be a big prize for Fianna Fáil who would elevate him immediately. The party has no seat in Wicklow at present and that would be an extra bonus.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune

The fine art of good timing when it comes to elections

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Charlie Haughey...snap election backfired on him.

World of Politics with Harry McGee

Academically, politics is described as a science. But in the real world, it’s more of an art – and one of the big decisions a Government has to make is to decide when to call an election.

Will they see out the full term, or will they go early – either to mitigate the damage they will ship, or to secure a victory before things go awry, or the economy takes a dip, or some kind of controversy erupts?

Timing is everything.

And there’s a bit of art to that – not to mention a lot of luck. If you call it early and win big, you’re a genius. If you call it early and lose, you are the political version of the village fool.

Charlie Haughey was a poor judge of the public mood. Twice he called snap elections and on both occasions they backfired. Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in late 1979 and did not – technically – have his own mandate. He tried to remedy that by calling an election in 1981. But it recoiled. Ray MacSharry warned him not to hold it during the H Block hunger strikes when republican prisoners were dying each day. He did not listen to the advice and found himself out of office.

After his return to power in 1987, Haughey tired of presiding over a minority government that kept on losing votes in the Oireachtas (the opposition won nine private members motions).

So he called a snap general election and it backfired. Fianna Fáil lost seats and had to broker a coalition deal with the Progressive Democrats and his long-standing political adversary Dessie O’Malley.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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Inch protest arguments are more subtle than Oughterard

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Minister Roderic O’Gorman: promise of more emergency beds.

World of Politics with Harry McGee

I was cycling down Mount Street in Dublin on Tuesday. It’s a wide esplanade that links the Grand Canal with Merrion Square. The street is a mixture of fine Georgian buildings and modern office blocks.

About half-way down is the office of the International Protection Office, which deals with asylum seekers who have arrived in the country.

Needless to say, the office has been overwhelmed in the past year. Besides an estimated 80,000 refugees who have arrived from Ukraine, there have been about 20,000 people from other parts of the world who have arrived into Dublin (mostly) claiming asylum.

The numbers peaked around Christmas, but they have been falling a little. In January, more than 1,300 people arrived seeking asylum but the numbers fell back to 831 and 858, in February and March respectively.

They are still huge numbers in a historical context.

So back to my cycle on Tuesday. I knew that some asylum seekers were camping outside the International Protection Office, but I was taken aback by how many. There were six tents lined up on the pavement directly outside. Then on the ramp that led down to the basement carpark on the side of the building, there were about another 20 tents.

It looked like what it was, a refugee camp in the middle of Dublin’s business district. If you pan out from Mount Street, you will find tents here and there in nearby streets and alleys. There were a good few tents in an alleyway off Sandwith Street about 500 metres away.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite  HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

 

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Sinn Féin hunt for seats in ‘locals’ across Galway

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Sinn Féin's Cathal Ó Conchúir, Mairéad Farrell and Mark Lohan all lost their seats in Galway City in 2019

World of Politics with Harry McGee

God that was a dramatic and historic weekend in England, wasn’t it? So much excitement, so much change, so much hype, so much out with the old and in with the new, and what looks like the coronation of a new leader. Yes, the local elections in Britain were something else weren’t they!

Apologies for not going on about King Charles III but the contract I signed when I became a lifelong republican forbids me to discuss the topic!

I know the British local elections sound a bit boring by comparison, but the results were stunning.

The Conservatives lost nearly 1,000 seats, the British Labour Party gained almost 500 and both the Lib Dems (with 350 gains) and the Greens (gaining over 200) also had amazing days at the polls.

It was Labour’s best day since 2002 but its victory was only partial. The Greens and the Lib Dems actually made gains at the expense of Labour in more affluent areas, and in parts of Britain where there were high numbers of graduates.

It was in the Red Wall constituencies in the North of England where the Labour recovery was strongest. These are working class constituencies with pockets of deprivation where people voted for the Labour Party forever. But all of those constituencies voted for Brexit and then voted for the Tories in the next general election. Labour is now winning back some of those votes.

Local elections are classified as second-tier elections which essentially means – from a national perspective – they are not life-or-death affairs, and not everything turns on them. Of course, it’s really important to have good local representation. But they are not an amazing weather vane for who rules the country.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite  HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

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