Political World
Governments know that by-elections invariably bring a bout of the blues!
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
I met Noel Treacy at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis at the weekend and he was in his usual ebullient form. The former Galway East Deputy shares on characteristic with PC Dixon of Dock Green – he never forgets a face (or a name) and it was instructive to see him work the crowd.
Little did we know that later that night the one political statistic which will be forever associated with Treacy would get a re-airing that night.
In July 1982 Treacy contested the by-election in Galway East for Fianna Fáil following the death of Johnny Callanan. A Fianna Fáil government was in power and there was nothing altogether unusual about a Government TD winning a seat in a stronghold for his own party. Had not Enda Kenny did the same in 1975 when succeeding his late father in a by-election, when a Fine Gael-Labour coalition was in power?
But Treacy’s victory came to be marked out – because for almost three decades afterwards, no Government candidate won a by-election.
The duck was broken, ironically, by Patrick Nulty’s victory for the Labour Party in the October 2011 when he won the seat left vacant by the death of Brian Lenihan junior.
There might have been particular reasons for that. Most of the Deputies who died in office were in opposition at the time. Brian Lenihan’s senior’s death in 1996 is a good example: Fianna Fáil was not in Government at the time. When a child or close relation of a deceased politician runs in a by-election the sympathy factor will be, naturally, very high.
That would have had some bearing for example, in Helen McEntee’s success in Meath East last year, when she won the contest for the seat left vacant by the death of her father. In doing so, she also broke the pattern.
However, it’s not always a given. Galway-born TD Seamus Brennan died in 2008 after a battle with cancer. Inexplicably the government of the day did its usual foostering job and delayed the by-election until the following year. By that stage a narrative of annoyance had built up about the delay.
Even though Brennan’s son Shay agreed to run (reluctantly) it did the party little good. A combination of the delay, growing antipathy to the Government and the arrival of a bona fide celebrity candidate worked. George Lee romped up.
The pattern did show up a political reality that different rules apply to by-elections. The rules are not iron-cast (I think the 30 year period when the opposition always won was partly down to chance) but they do apply and parties ignore them at their peril.
The rules are:
Oppositions have a strong chance of taking the seat unless it’s immediately after a byelection.
Being the son, daughter or spouse of a deceased politician has the potential to out-trump every other consideration.
The ploy of parachuting in a celebrity may be the most cynical in the rulebook but it works more often than it backfires. George Lee’s spectacular success in 2009 is the best example – but his resignation less than a year later shows that voters get wise to it.
The reasons for backing a candidate in a by-election often have little to do with national issues. People are not deciding who is best to run the country. The might want to send a sharp reminder to the government of the day, safe in the knowledge it will continue in power. Or else they go colour-blind in terms of their own party allegiance to vote for a candidate they consider to be particularly deserving.
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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