Political World
Can the Canadian experience help to ease Labour’s pains?
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
There was a reader’s letter on the Canadian election in The Irish Times last week and it noted how the Liberal Party – in third position coming into the vote – ended up taking all the spoils.
The letter writer was Pat Carroll, a name that would have washed over most people – except those working around politics or involved with the Labour Party it was instantly familiar.
Carroll just happens to be the husband of Tánaiste Joan Burton, equally known for his political skills and his aversion to publicity.
The political point he was making was as plain as a pikestaff, as the late editor of this newspaper John Cunningham was wont to say.
His message was – write off Labour at your peril. The party may be lagging behind at this moment of time.
But between now and the end of February we can buck the trend and do a kind of Irish version of what Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party did in Canada.
The great Theodore Roosevelt once said that “comparison is the thief of joy”. And Carroll’s sentiments are particularly apt for Galway West where we have a Derek Nolan conundrum. Is it just wishful thinking or is Labour’s goose well and truly cooked this time around?
I think there was a lot of wishful thinking on the party of Carroll. The Liberals were in opposition, not in government, and the Canadian system is the winner-take-all one of first past the post.
Thus the party on 34 per cent can take an overall majority while the party on 31 per cent can take a drubbing.
One thing is sure about Galway West – it’s a difficult constituency to predict. There’s a big field of candidates in this five seater and there’s also a massive sleám of South Mayo including Cong, the Neale and Ballinrobe now in play.
There are only two certainties here. The first is that Éamon Ó Cuív will take a seat and top the poll. Even with Fianna Fáil in meltdown in 2011 he came within a few dozen votes of poll topper Nolan.
Now with all the extra Mayo votes coming in around his own turf of Corrnamona, you can expect that he will get around the 17.5 per cent he got in 2007.
The second certainty is that Fine Gael will take a seat. The identity of that person is hard to predict. The party is strongest in the city, particularly on its eastern side. There’s was a lot of uncertainty around Brian Walsh and whether or not he would be standing this time around. He scotched rumours that he would be standing down in The Connacht Tribune a few weeks ago but they have still persisted – with a lot of ‘will-he, won’t he’ stuff doing the rounds.
In the normal run of events he would be expected to be his party’s top poller. But that and the arrival of John O’Mahony, an outgoing Deputy for Mayo, has complicated matters a bit.
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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