Political World
Triangulation to ensure FG gets the angles right
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
Triangulation – it sounds like something to do with the boy scouts or orienteering instead of what is now accepted as a standard political strategy.
The former US President Bill Clinton did not invent it but he perfected it. So did Tony Blair who used it expertly when creating the hybrid beast known as New Labour.
Now, in the Irish situation, there is clear evidence that Fine Gael’s strategists have decided to sprinkle it liberally over their concoction of policies.
So, how does the technique work? Well, firstly, it relies a lot on focus groups.
These are smallish groups of people selected by polling companies. They are representative of wider society so you get young, old, country, city, poor, rich, well-educated, poorly educated.
They are brought into a room and they talk about a range of issues, usually steered by a professional pollster. Those issues can range from immigration, to tax, to crime, to public services, to health. The name of the game is to tease out what the prevailing sentiment is on those key issues.
The second leg to the school is to scavenge your opponent’s policies. When the New Labour project was in full flow, the party essentially appropriated Tory Party policy on issues like, say immigration or crime. It would take the Tory policy, take on board what had been said by the focus groups, water it down a bit to make it more palatable to Labour supporters, and then sell it as New Labour.
New Labour was in many ways old Tory but with a nod to its own socialist background.
Thus its policies on crime (tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime etc) were almost indistinguishable from those of the Conservatives. As was its relatively hardline stance on immigration.
For Fine Gael in this context, it’s been a multi-pronged approach.
The first element is its relationship with Labour. The parties have been in coalition and both say they wish to go into government again. That said, they are not campaigning on a united front but as individual parties. So while they are partners they are also opponents in that sense.
And this is where you can see the triangulation and focus groups kicking in.
The funny thing is that both parties use almost exactly the same arguments when talking of the Opposition. Both present the choice as one of stability and continuing the recovery versus instability and chaos.
But each knows that they will be competing with each other too. Fine Gael has a sniff of an overall majority. People say it doesn’t have a hope of getting there. Perhaps that’s true.
Nonetheless, you have to factor in the following. The reality is that Enda Kenny is the only possible Taoiseach and Fine Gael is the only party big enough to bid for power. All other possible combinations just don’t seem to work (unless Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin do the unthinkable).
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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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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.
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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