Ireland General Discussion

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Leo Varadkar has been elected as the new Taoiseach, following the 2020 FG-FF agreement. Micheál Martin is now the Tánaiste.

https://twitter.com/PresidentIRL/status/1604116515564945408

How tall is Higgins? He looks like a hobbit.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Leo Varadkar has been elected as the new Taoiseach, following the 2020 FG-FF agreement. Micheál Martin is now the Tánaiste.

https://twitter.com/PresidentIRL/status/1604116515564945408

How tall is Higgins? He looks like a hobbit.

5’4 according to Google.

Huh, so it's Varadkar who's quite tall, then.

Anyway, I don't like Varadkar but after the tragic farce of the last four years of Israeli politics it's kind of refreshing to see one of these rotation agreements actually pan out for once.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

https://twitter.com/culladgh/status/1764450387837210929

I see Varadkar hasn't changed his approach...

Yeah, I had just come to this thread to say that I haven't really been following this particular referendum campaign but I had heard that the proposed text was, uh, lackluster from a left-rather-than-liberal perspective.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

https://twitter.com/culladgh/status/1764450387837210929
I see Varadkar hasn't changed his approach...

Yeah, I had just come to this thread to say that I haven't really been following this particular referendum campaign but I had heard that the proposed text was, uh, lackluster from a left-rather-than-liberal perspective.

Amazes me how much they've messed up during this referendum. Seemed once it was just a formality to pass both of these, but through their vagueness and Leo's words this weeks, feels like they might just be about to snatch defeat from the jaws of defeat (the care one absolutely seems like it's in danger)

You'd think just striking John Charles McQuaid's hot takes on "woman" without this whole new paragraph of neoliberal mush (that manages to still be creepily familialist at the same time!) would have been an incredibly easy layup, especially for the sorts of identity-affirmation purposes for which Irish governments have started using these referenda.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

"All the undecideds are actually secret social conservatives" comes to Ireland?

That wasn’t the case in the abortion referendum, but it was certainly so in the gay marriage referendum. Given those 2 votes still resulted in a clear victory for the ‘progressive’ side, it seems yesterdays votes were more to do with the public being asked to vote on purely symbolic changes while an unpopular government refuses to tackle the issues they actually care about.

Not just purely symbolic, but literally codifying that unpopular refusal to actually meaningfully tackle this issue with an explicitly neoliberal & pro-privatization emphasis that the state lacks social-care responsibilities.. Classic Leo Varadkar!

I found out that these referenda were taking place to begin with through seeing genuine anger at the wording of, and thus opposition to, the care amendment from people very interested in disability issues. That, and related motivations like personally knowing people who require (or even simply benefit from) social care that's not entirely restricted to the family unit, might account for the ~6% of voters who voted for the family amendment but against the care amendment. This is probably how I would have voted if I were Irish.

Varadkar is David Cameron for people who dislike the word "conservative," Exhibit I've-lost-count.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Aren't the SocDems (their name notwithstanding) clearly to the left of Labour economically?

Yes, although that may mainly be due to not having been in government. It is very much a Student Left "we like nice things and don't like horrible ones" party.

That sort of milquetoast attitude seems like a good idea considering the major parties descend from warlord cliques and the other parties are granola neolibs, abortion haters, blairites, and a Trotskyist coalition.

Calling FF and FG "descendants of warlord cliques" makes them much cooler than they actually are.

To be fair, 1920s Ireland had a pretty uncool class of warlord.