Political World
Who can breathe new life in the old Fianna Fáil dog?
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
A little like the Irish language, most discussion on Fianna Fáil these days tends to be the existential question about its survival prospects.
The party may have been on life support in early 2011, but four years later you would have expected it to have finished its convalescence and thrown away the crutches.
Instead, it finds itself still struggling to garner the kind of level of public support it needs to re-establish it firmly as one of the big two.
It is true opinion polls give relatively crude indications of real support levels but as they are the only indicators besides elections, everybody relies on them including the political parties themselves, most of which conduct private polls.
Over a long period of time, if a party’s support level isn’t budging or is slipping, it is inevitable that alarm bells will ring.
Fianna Fáil’s showing of 17 per cent in the latest Irish Times/Ipsos mrbi polls reflects a pattern that has been evident for a year – that the party does not seem to be going anywhere.
Since May 2014, the polls have consistently shown the party at around this level – a trend that suggests inertia, or to use Eamon Ó Cuív’s term, a party that is “becalmed”.
Invariably, new questions have arisen surrounding Micheál Martin authority, given extra urgency by recent criticisms of his leadership and the party’s direction by John McGuinness and – over the weekend – Ó Cuív.
The latter said the party’s morale was on the floor. He also argued it needs to be more radical, in taking on not only the government but also the emerging threat of Sinn Féin.
Is there an immediate threat to Martin’s leadership? The indications are no. He leads a much enfeebled predominantly male parliamentary party and as Willie O’Dea noted recently, he sees no Messiah when he looks around the party rooms, including when he looks in the mirror.
Last Saturday week on Claire Byrne’s show on RTE Radio One, McGuinness said he would like to lead Fianna Fáil but he is unlikely to garner significant support.
Two events in coming months will become critical for Martin. The first is his need for a strong and buoyant Árd Fheis in Dublin at the end of April. The party needs to come out of it with significant eye-catching policies, and also demonstrate that it can offer the electorate different choices and real alternative in terms of policy positions.
It is just not doing that at the moment. It has published around 20 policy papers. Some are worthy – suicide prevention; mental health; youth unemployment; solutions to help those in mortgage arrears – but the party needs to deal with the big bests (health and education, the future of the economy) in a meaningful way.
Secondly, the party badly needs a morale-boosting win in the Carlow-Kilkenny by-election the following month.
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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