Gazing into the Christmas crystal ball to see who finds a Euro seat under the tree

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

It’s that time of year again when the Christmas lights are switched on in Shop Street, that Ryan Tubridy hosts the annual toy show on the Late Late…..and the Connacht Tribune political columnist turns his attention to, erm, next year’s European elections.

Because even the excitement of Christmas cannot overshadow our unbridled joy at finding ourselves in the new, beautifully named Midlands North-West. I, for one, really feel I belong in a logical constituency that takes in Laois, Kildare, Meath, Westmeath and County Louth (hello Gerry Adams – we’re all fellow constituents now).

It takes in counties from three different provinces – and it’s just as well that Clare has been taken away because then we would have had the truly ludicrous situation of all four provinces in the one constituency.

The constituency redraw is meaningless down to its silly name. The sense of a geographical entity is, well, nonexistent. It’s not partition. It’s a partition of a partition that’s been diced up and then spat out. It’s ridiculous.

The only constituency that still feels like one is Dublin. They’ve made a hames of South and East though, although it doesn’t seem as bad as the scrambled mess that is the northern half of the country.

And so we have a four-seater, with four sitting MEPs – Pat the Cope Gallagher; Jim Higgins; Marian Harkin; and Mairéad McGuinness – all likely to go again. There have been rumours that Fine Gael has been trying to get Higgins off the pitch but it looks like he’s going to dig his heels in.

And there is precedent for this. Twice in the recent past parties have tried to push out incumbents. Not only did they fail but the MEP they tried to ditch went on to retain the seat, for no other reason than the attempt to push them out garnered them a huge amount of publicity and sympathy.

The two victim-winners were Labour’s Bernie Malone in Dublin (Labour tried to impose Orla Guerin on her) and the An Spidéal man Seán Ó Neachtain who successfully resisted Fianna Fáil’s headquarters attempts to make him walk the plank and make way for Frank Fahey.

The election is still over six months away and not all candidates are known or declared. There is always an opportunity for strong independents in European elections – going back to the unassailable TJ Maher in Munster two decades and more ago.

Profile is also important. European elections are the Rose of Tralee of Irish politics. People vote on personality and superficial likeability rather than for ideology or politics. There are so many precedents of a well-known household name entering the field.

Look at Dana in the early 1990s and former GAA president Sean Kelly and TV personality Mairead McGuinness in more recent elections. No wonder Fianna Fáil (or was it Fine Gael) was trying to court Anne Doyle recently.

So what about the new constituency taking in the northern half of the country? Well if The Cope and Mairead McGuinness run, you can be sure they will both win seats. I’m not so sure of Jim Higgins – it would be a lot to get Fine Gael to win two seats out of four.

They did it in 2004 when McGuinness and Avril Doyle both won, but that was because their fight to the death struggle against each other raised their profiles so much that both were made electable.

There’s definitely an independent seat too but I sense Marian Harkin will have some competition for it this time around. Two Galway-based independents may stand. The first is Colm Keaveney, former chair of the Labour Party. He has a high profile but is it enough and is he popular or well-known enough to get enough votes across the constituency? I just think the odds are too long on him ousting Harkin.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.