Political World
Labour demise and Sinn Fein rise tells poll story
World of Politics with Harry McGee
The weekend was, as they say, a target-rich environment when it came to politics. For political junkies, elections are like All-Irelands. At every other time, you are mainly talking about possibilities, maybes and humming and hawing. But with elections you have only definitives.
And so this weekend, without equivocation, we knew who was up and who was down – a massive victory for Sinn Féin; a meltdown for Labour; Fine Gael in the relegation zone; Fianna Fáil and the Greens out of the naughty corner.
And the smaller parties and independents are all winning the junior and intermediate finals.
The picture was slightly complicated by the fact that there were three elections – the Europeans; the locals; and the by-elections.
With so many contests, parties can usually find a little consolation elsewhere – if you did badly in the locals as Fine Gael did, you can always point to the solid success of Gabrielle McFadden easily getting across the line in Longford/Westmeath.
But you would have had to have been an anchorite living on Oileán Mhic Dara for the last month to have avoided the two big narratives – the rise of Sinn Féin and the demise of Labour.
To reinforce the woes of the junior coalition partner, Eamon Gilmore surprised everybody by announcing on Monday that he was standing down. The last person to do that was Michael Noonan who resigned in 2002.
Let’s look at the Labour crisis first. The letter from the youth brigade of the parliamentary party did not trigger Gilmore’s decision to step down but I’m sure he was aware that something was in the offing. He had essentially made up his mind some 24 hours before the letter was conceived by the group of eight.
The composition of the group was interesting. Only one of the party’s awkward squad was among the signatories and it excluded others like Senators John Kelly and John Whelan. What was interesting is that many of the younger TDs who put their name to it were among Gilmore’s strongest defenders since 2011.
They included some of its brightest, like Galway West TD Derek Nolan, Aodhan Ó Ríordáin, Ciara Conway, and Gerald Nash.
It’s clear that they had become disillusioned with Gilmore’s style and manner of leadership and the roots of the discontent were probably apparent since the debacle surrounding the Meath East by-election last year.
That gave the party a clear shot across the bows that a change of style, direction and awkwardness was needed. The tail needed to be shown wagging the dog. Gilmore had to hand back his Aer Lingus frequent miles cards and concentrate on home. More Labour messages; more darned Labour-backed policies had to get through the door.
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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