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New politics does not embrace Renua

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New politics spells the end for Renua. Eddie Hobbs & Lucinda Creighton in happier times

Political parties must spend their time these days trying to second-guess what the other parties might like.

Sinn Féin’s Private Members Bill on rent certainty (linking increases to the consumer index) launced this week was designed to look attractive to Fianna Fáil.

We are going to see a lot of this as ‘new politics’ becomes ‘old politics’: tick-tacking between two or three parties with a mutual interest to undermine another party.

These will be temporary little arrangements done on a week-by-week and day-by-day basis.

Some of it will be guess-work. Sinn Féin, for example, might pore through Fianna Fáil policy papers to see if they can find common ground on, say, a health policy. The private members motion will be framed in language that is uncannily similar to Fianna Fáil.

I would not be surprised if there are informal communications happening between the two main opposition parties to finesse their private members business to cause the maximum embarrassment to the Government when it suits.

New politics has become a cliche already but it does reflect that lots of things will be different.

 

Sometimes new politics just doesn’t work out how people want it to be. The public astounds the best-intentioned politicians with their ingratitude.

It looks like barely a year and a bit after its formation Renua is also facing the axe.

When Lucinda Creighton organised a public meeting in the RDS in the winter of 2014, she seemed to have captured a zeitgeist.

Creighton’s political outlook would not be everybody’s cup of lemon tea but unlike many others she managed to form a party. To its credit it also tried to develop a deep policy platform, with radical ideas.

But many of the ideas were more suited to the more partisan and divided world of US politics than to Ireland, where the gravitational pull of the centre is overpowering.

The idea of a flat tax was a good example. It was very different. But if you were mega wealthy you would be on a big winner with this with a much smaller percentage of your income going to the Revenue. At the other end of the scale those with very modest incomes would find themselves paying more tax.

While Renua included some correctives to this, it could not overcome the sense that it was deeply unfair to little people.

The party had other disadvantages. It grew out of the anti-abortion rump in Fine Gael and no amount of slick marketing could disguise that.

It also had difficulty finding the right calibre of candidate. It was a niche party and that niche was a small one. Indeed none of the new alliances made much ground, despite all the brave new world rhetoric.

The Social Democrats remained as they were; Shane Ross’s crowd gained one, and the Alphabet Alliance did best of all adding three (Joe Higgins, who was retiring, could not be counted).

As for Renua, Creighton, in particular, was a politician of great ability and will be a loss to Irish politics. I actually thought Renua had collapsed with Creighton’s loss. It had no national politicians, just a handful of councillors, the best known of which was John Leahy in Offaly.

But it’s a truth of Irish politics that the smaller the party the bigger the split. There are apparently two wings in the party – one Christian Democrat, the other Social Democrat.

The latter wanted the party to rebrand as a liberal democratic party and was fishing for a recently elected senator (un-named but obviously Michael McDowell) to become its leader. That effort seems to have been thwarted.

The chief mover among the modernisers was party president Eddie Hobbs. He resigned last night. That indicated the other side had prevailed.

Will this micro-party survive? Absolutely not. In fact, the only groups that have made real gains against the traditional forces are Sinn Féin and the Independents.

The latter group for everything, and nothing. They could not be said to be left, as some claim. If anything they are a little to the right.

For more onf Harry McGee’s thoughts on the ‘New Politics’ see this week’s digital edition here or download the Connacht Tribune App

Connacht Tribune

The fine art of good timing when it comes to elections

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Charlie Haughey...snap election backfired on him.

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.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

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Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite  HERE.

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Inch protest arguments are more subtle than Oughterard

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Minister Roderic O’Gorman: promise of more emergency beds.

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.

 

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Sinn Féin hunt for seats in ‘locals’ across Galway

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Sinn Féin's Cathal Ó Conchúir, Mairéad Farrell and Mark Lohan all lost their seats in Galway City in 2019

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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