Political World
Independents aren’t top dogs in Connacht / Ulster
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
There was what you’d call a turn-up for the books in last week’s Irish Times IPSOSO MRBI opinion poll. For the first time ever in Irish polling history, the dominant group attracting support from voters wasn’t a political party but the crowd collectively known as ‘none of the above’.
Nearly one third of voters said that if an election were held tomorrow they would vote for a non-party candidate or one that belonged to a smaller party. There was a gap of a full ten percentage points between the independents and the nearest political party.
In a week during which a famous independent TD, Jackie Healy-Rae, was buried, it seemed his tradition will live on. In many ways Healy-Rae provided a template for aspiring non-party candidates. Rejected by Fianna Fáil in 1997, he ran as a candidate and won a seat in South Kerry that he probably would not have won as a party candidate. Holding the balance of power, he and three other independents were able to set out a shopping list of demands for constituency goodies.
I was down for Healy-Rae’s funeral in Kilgarvan on Sunday and could see evidence of his success everywhere – wide smooth roads, pristine bridges, shining new facilities. Other aspirants could point to Healy-Rae’s success and say ‘vote for me as an independent and I could have huge influence’. It worked at the next election five years later but then Fianna Fáil was so strong after 2002 that independents fell right back.
But now their stock has risen completely since the recession has hit, with a sense of deep disillusionment taking hold when it comes to all the traditional political parties (and it seems Sinn Féin is also beginning to be dragged into that group).
So does that mean that any aspiring independent in the West can hop on the bandwagon sure of getting elected?
Well, not so fast there buster! There are a couple of things I need to point out first.
If you start looking at the detail of the ipsos poll, the findings are interesting especially for Connacht /Ulster. The picture for independents here is still good but not quite as good as the national figures.
Indeed, they are not the biggest grouping along the western seaboard. The regional figures show that Fianna Fáil is attracting most support at 28 per cent with Fine Gael at 24 per cent. Sinn Féin at 18 per cent is four points down on its national total – a bit of a worry for the likes of Trevor Ó Clochartaigh given that the party is very very strong in Donegal and Sligo/Leitrim and will hoover up a lot of support there.
Another straw in the wind that might affect the Sinn Féin vote is that more in the west, 40 per cent, say they are less likely to vote for the party after the Maíria Cahill affair. That compares to a national figure of 32 per cent.
Independents are still taking a respectable 26 per cent of the vote in the West. In the normal course of events, that might translate into them taking between one in three, or one in four seats. But that supposes that their support levels will remain high.
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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