Ireland General Discussion

[ObserverIE]

Very interesting points! I should clarify, I meant no real reference to deep ideology in the comparison. And I’d agree that Eamonn Gilmore and Joan Burton compare similarly well.

I merely meant in the sense of “third party leader joins right-leaning/neoliberal coalition, betrays voters, senior coalition partner blames literally everything that goes wrong on them, party and leader’s popularity collapses as a result.

The way Eamon Ryan seems to carry the can for every unpopular coalition policy makes me think of Clegg.

The thing is that they haven't betrayed their own voters so much as p*ssed off everyone else's.

[ObserverIE]

No, not really. The Irish Clegg was Éamonn Gilmore.

And the Irish Labour Party hasn't really recovered, and quite possibly never will.

Kelly was inching - well kind of inching - towards refocussing on economic issues, but the problems were a) that he's still remembered and disliked by the general public for his role in the coalition, and b) he lacks even basic manners and thereby antagonised his party colleagues (having met him briefly at the famous long count in Longford-Westmeath in 2016 I can confirm the latter personally).

The Dublin Bay South by-election was an absolutely Pyrrhic victory for them. It's a very demographically odd constituency; a quite deprived working-class minority in council estates in the city centre, a large and very affluent Old Money majority once you travel beyond the canals, and very little in between (and much of what middle-to-lower-income demographic there is is not franchised because they're not Irish or UK citizens). It's rather like Richmond Park or possibly Wentworth (Australian readers can correct me here). It has a self-image (at least in the western parts of the constituency in Rathmines and Ranelagh and the area between the South Circular Road and the canal) of being "progressive" and it suited Bacik down to the ground once she was first mover for the by-election. But the south-eastern quadrant of Dublin is a complete demographic outlier in the 26 counties and Bacik would be absolutely unelectable anywhere else. The by-election gave her an image as a "winner" and the fact that she's personally personable meant that she was then in a prime position to take over when Kelly was ousted, but she has zero, zilch, nada appeal to anyone outside that "progressive" middle-class academic/media/NGO bubble.

PS: And the boundary changes absolutely screw them in that Duncan Smith, who is the only figure young enough not to be associated with the Gilmore years and grounded enough to have possible wider appeal, sees his constituency split in half and redrawn as a 3-seater where his vote last time was about 8%.

[ObserverIE]

No, not really. The Irish Clegg was Éamonn Gilmore.

And the Irish Labour Party hasn't really recovered, and quite possibly never will.

Kelly was inching - well kind of inching - towards refocussing on economic issues, but the problems were a) that he's still remembered and disliked by the general public for his role in the coalition, and b) he lacks even basic manners and thereby antagonised his party colleagues (having met him briefly at the famous long count in Longford-Westmeath in 2016 I can confirm the latter personally).

The Dublin Bay South by-election was an absolutely Pyrrhic victory for them. It's a very demographically odd constituency; a quite deprived working-class minority in council estates in the city centre, a large and very affluent Old Money majority once you travel beyond the canals, and very little in between (and much of what middle-to-lower-income demographic there is is not franchised because they're not Irish or UK citizens). It's rather like Richmond Park or possibly Wentworth (Australian readers can correct me here). It has a self-image (at least in the western parts of the constituency in Rathmines and Ranelagh and the area between the South Circular Road and the canal) of being "progressive" and it suited Bacik down to the ground once she was first mover for the by-election. But the south-eastern quadrant of Dublin is a complete demographic outlier in the 26 counties and Bacik would be absolutely unelectable anywhere else. The by-election gave her an image as a "winner" and the fact that she's personally personable meant that she was then in a prime position to take over when Kelly was ousted, but she has zero, zilch, nada appeal to anyone outside that "progressive" middle-class academic/media/NGO bubble.

PS: And the boundary changes absolutely screw them in that Duncan Smith, who is the only figure young enough not to be associated with the Gilmore years and grounded enough to have possible wider appeal, sees his constituency split in half and redrawn as a 3-seater where his vote last time was about 8%.

How do you see the differences (such as they are) between Labour and the Social Democrats?

Principally, age (SocDems are a much younger demographic) and idealism untempered by reality versus a reputation for cynicism. The SocDems have if anything even less of a residual working-class vote.

[ObserverIE]

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.

[ObserverIE]

Any chance Varadkar is planning to run for President either in 2025 or at a later date?

More likely to be eyeing up a position in Brussels or in California.

[ObserverIE]

Inevitably talk has already turned to who will succeed Varadkar and the big favourite is Simon Harris, the current Minister for Higher Education and previously Minister for Health. Simon Coveney, who lost the 2017 leadership election to Varadkar has already counted himself out.

A college dropout (after one year..) as Minister for Higher Education.

Very "anglo" name. I know many Irish Catholics have stereotypically English names, but is a Protestant?

No, a Catholic (at least nominally so) who is, I think, from what was originally a Dublin family that moved out to the exurbs of Greystones.

A hyper-ambitious empty suit and a perpetual plotter and leaker of material from Cabinet to his favourites in the media (the cultivation of the media, along with an obsession with social media, has been a consistent theme of his political career).

Was an absolute disaster as Minister of Health but was rescued from the point of view of the national media by his championing of REPEAL in the 2018 referendum which cemented his appeal to a heavily female and socially-liberal polcorr class.

Has spent his time since his appointment as Minister for Higher and Further Education (arguably not deserving in itself of a separate Cabinet position) making feel-good announcements (often the same announcements on multiple occasions) but without much in the way of delivery. Stepped in as Minister of Justice (Home/Interior Minister) when the incumbent was out on her second maternity leave and was seen as an improvement but that was a very low bar to cross.

In brief, not a fan.

[ObserverIE]

Harris is primarily/historically a surname of the West Country and South Wales, which is why it's also common in Leinster. Consider also e.g. Morgan and so on.

Harris:



Morgan:



One complication is that many "English" names can often be anglicisations of underlying Gaelic names and in the case of Morgan it's frequently an anglicisation of Ó Muireagáin (principally based in the Louth/Armagh/Down area and otherwise anglicised as Merrigan).

[ObserverIE]

Harris hasn't even declared, but already several senators and backbench TD's have coalesced around Harris, and it's expected more (including some ministers) will follow today. Some believe it's going to be a coronation as things stand but there's seemingly some interest from Pascal Donohue and Heather Humphreys in running. Donohue previously looked set to go for IMF Chair after a widely-praised spell as president of the Eurogroup (the confederation of EU Finance Ministers) but incumbent Kristalina Georgieva has decided to run for a second term, ending his chances.

In terms of how FG electoral's system works by the way, TD's and Senators counts for 65% of the vote, the party membership is 25% and local representatives (e.g councillors) are 10%. Last time round, Simon Coveney actually had almost double the votes of Varadkar among the membership (7,051 to 3,772), lost narrowly out with local representatives (100 to Leo's 123) but got trumped amongst the parliamentary party (Leo 51, Coveney 22).

It looks to be a replay of Varadkar's strategy from last time - get an avalanche of endorsements from the PP early on so as to render the contest moot.

[ObserverIE]

Post-defenestration polling, x-posted from the Other Place:

RedC for the Business Post:

SF 25 (-3)
FG 19 (-1)
Ind/Oth 19 (+3)
FF 16 (-)
SD 6 (-1)
Aontú 5 (+2)
GP 4 (+1)
Lab 3 (-1)
SWP/SP 3 (-)

Post-referendum bounce for Aontú at the expense of SF, perhaps, although this is tempered by RedC having been the one pollster which not only showed the doomed referendums passing, but also displayed absolutely no doubt about their outcome. Polling ended on Wednesday, so probably just too late to catch Varadkar's resignation.

IrelandThinks, for the Sunday Independent:

SF 27 (-)
FG 22 (+2)
FF 17 (-1)
Ind/Oth 14 (-3)
SD 6 (-1)
GP 4 (-)
Lab 4 (-)
Aontú 4 (+2)
SWP/SP 2 (-)

IrelandThinks, who also polled the referendum wrong but who at least showed it on a downward trajectory beforehand, poll after Varadkar's resignation and when it was clear that Harris would be succeeding him.

Both of these poll via online panels, which in the past, when we had a monthly face-to-face pollster to compare them with, tended to produce overly-good results for Online parties (the SocDems above all, but Aontú might also be benefiting here) and overly-bad results for those parties which are not at all Online (the most obvious here being FF). I am skeptical if FG are ahead of FF much if at all.

[ObserverIE]

He's not even the most famous Irish Harris, that would be Richard Harris who was a Catholic. As far as I know Simon Harris is also one, though he is from Greystones, the town with the highest proportion of Protestants in the south (10%). Heather Humphreys, who's also mentioned in that article I linked, is a Presbyterian who's father was in the Orange Order.

But yeah, lot of Irish Catholics will have English/Norman surnames. Case in point - Gerry Adams. Honorable mention goes to Sean Lemass though who has a surname of Huguenot origin.

Learning that a member of the Republic of Ireland's Cabinet is a Presbyterian with family in the Orange Order is... quite the surprise to me.

Irish politics is a lot more complicated than one would think!

There's a sizeable Protestant population in Cavan-Monaghan, especially in Monaghan (more Presbyterians there than in Fermanagh), and there has usually been a "Protestant" slot on the FG ticket in the constituency - Robert Faussett from Cavan in the 1980s, succeeded by Seymour Crawford from Monaghan in the 1990s, who was in turn succeeded by Humphreys.

[ObserverIE]

https://twitter.com/AmandaFBelfast/status/1773695210242945121

[ObserverIE]

Behold the Harris Hurricane:

IrelandThinks, for the Sunday Independent:

SF 26 (-1)
FG 21 (-1)
Ind/Oth 18 (+4)
FF 16 (-1)
SD 6 (-)
GP 4 (-)
Aontú 4 (-)
Lab 3 (-1)
SWP/SP 2 (-)

It's a complete mystery why replacing one weird and offputting leader who'd been around forever with another (differently) weird and offputting leader who's been around forever has not boosted FG's poll ratings into the stratosphere.

[ObserverIE]

And again, why are parties so fond of coronations when they very often don't work that well.

The words "hospital pass" come to mind here, given that the recipient of the pass is both transparently ambitious and transparently without any principles other than his own advancement and that this is a party that would be seeking nineteen consecutive years in office.

On reflection, Harris had all his ducks in a row beforehand and the relative heavyweights (Donohoe and Humphreys) recognised that early on. The only other person to have made an attempt to round up the necessary nominations was hyper-ambitious junior minister and walking SoCoDu stereotype Jennifer Carroll-MacNeill and even she had acknowledged defeat by the Wednesday morning and endorsed the inevitable.

[ObserverIE]

The Sunday Times have got themselves a new pollster, called Opinions, of whom I've never heard but who conducted what seems to have been face-to-face polls for the last two months and are now releasing the April poll. Update: No, they seem to be an offshoot of RedC and we can take it that this is yet another panel poll with all the issues associated with that.

Opinions, for the Sunday Times (comparisons with the "benchmark" poll in March):

SF 27 (+1)
FG 20 (+3)
FF 16 (-)
Ind/Oth 16 (-1)
GP 6 (+1)
Lab 5 (-)
SD 4 (-3)
SWP/SP 3 (-)
Aontú 3 (-1)

I know nothing about this company and some of the results - particularly the high votes for the Greens and the decaying husk officially referred to as the Irish Labour Party - I am extremely skeptical about. It doesn't help that almost all the "broadsheet" newspapers are by this stage fluffers for FG.

[ObserverIE]

Does FF have any support base these days beyond Old Dears who have stood by the party in times good and times bad (I try to follow Irish politics but it’s a Byzantine business)?

It is disproportionately dependent on the support bases of individual TDs and councillors, although it is probably the least aggravating of the three coalition parties from the POV of the normie voter (FG having been there for far too long now, and the Greens being seen as a set of preachy incompetent meddlers).

[ObserverIE]

I know nothing about this company and some of the results - particularly the high votes for the Greens and the decaying husk officially referred to as the Irish Labour Party - I am extremely skeptical about. It doesn't help that almost all the "broadsheet" newspapers are by this stage fluffers for FG.

And any reason why support for the SD's should have almost halved?

They seem to be weighing by recall of past vote which might explain that people might forget or be unwilling to admit that they voted for the Greens or Labour, thereby inflating their vote now, and might have an opposite effect for the SocDems, but as I said, there's no past form for this pollster other than the fact that its leading figures seem to have come from RedC (which I don't rate especially highly).

[ObserverIE]

Our tinpot Nazis are having a normal one:

https://twitter.com/JohnOBrennan2/status/1782151303168151880

Disclaimer: I went to school with Reynolds and while he is undoubtedly an idiot, he was still able to outsmart Littler here.

[ObserverIE]

RedC for the Business Post:

SF 27 (+2)
Ind/Oth 21 (+2)
FG 20 (+1)
FF 14 (-2)
SD 6 (-)
Aontú 4 (-1)
GP 3 (-1)
Lab 3 (-)
SWP/SP 2 (-1)

The International Protection cluster**** seems to be helping the Independent/RON surge to the point where they're now ahead of both government parties (I am skeptical that FF are *quite* as low as this - panel polls traditionally underestimate them - but it's not a good look).

[ObserverIE]

RedC for the Business Post:

SF 27 (+2)
Ind/Oth 21 (+2)
FG 20 (+1)
FF 14 (-2)
SD 6 (-)
Aontú 4 (-1)
GP 3 (-1)
Lab 3 (-)
SWP/SP 2 (-1)

The International Protection cluster**** seems to be helping the Independent/RON surge to the point where they're now ahead of both government parties (I am skeptical that FF are *quite* as low as this - panel polls traditionally underestimate them - but it's not a good look).

Getting below 17.5 percent (2011's result) would be pretty devastating for FF, wouldn't it? Especially since they seem to be the Irish version of a "natural party of government" a la the Canadian Liberals

This is an unpopular government which largely hasn't realized it is unpopular, partly because of a friendly mainstream media that views it as the Last Bastion Of All That Is Good And Wholesome Against The Shinner Scum and partly because there have been no electoral tests since the 2020 election barring a bye-election in the wealthiest and most atypical constituency in the country in the summer of 2021 which resulted in a Pyrrhic victory for an otherwise moribund Labour Party.

The FG component has borked housing through five years of complete inactivity between 2011 and 2016 as a result of listening to media and academic commentary at the time that told them that the ghost estates after the 2008 crash meant that we would never need to build any housing ever again. The loss of their majority after 2016 and the need for FF support/tolerance to continue in government meant that housing did resume but everything that is being done is being done about five years too late and, as in Canada, large-scale labour immigration means that the official housing targets are way behind what's actually needed. And housing is either the cause of every other problem or is exacerbating it.

While not on the same scale as the UK, wages have not kept pace with inflation over the last couple of years and people who continually hear about massive economic growth but see none of its fruits in their own living standards become dissatisfied. And while public services and infrastructure have not been gutted as they have been in the UK (we were not fool enough to give FG a majority in 2016) they have struggled to keep pace with the population increase.

The Greens have been given pretty much all they wanted on their pet areas of government and have proceeded to do things that make very little difference in the grand scheme of things but which do succeed in antagonising normie voters.

On top of labour immigration, we've had a proportionately large number of Ukrainian refugees (now about 2% of the population) but what has lit the spark has been a post-Covid boom in International Protection applicants, most of whom are coming from countries such as Algeria, Georgia, Nigeria, and South Africa which are not generally considered war zones or hell-holes. The IP system has long been slow and inefficient, with an appeal process meaning that most applicants are able to continue living in the country long enough to attain leave to remain. Any deportation mechanism for people finally refused asylum is equally as dilatory as the appeals process. In addition, there were a number of well-intentioned decisions (allowing asylum applicants to work after six months, a well-publicised amnesty for existing illegal immigrants, a well-publicised promise of own-door accommodation rather than direct provision - which has now had to be long-fingered because of pressure on housing) which have become pull factors.

The ministers in charge are a doe-eyed but ideological innocent from the Green Party and a complete incompetent from FG who has been given a pass from the (supportive) media up until now because she is blonde and proves that she is a Girl Boss by spending most of her time on maternity leave. The numbers coming mean that there is no longer any space in the official reception centres so hotels (mostly but not always disused), office blocks, and factories are being called into service and most of these are either in - often quite isolated - rural areas or in working-class inner-city areas or industrial suburbs.

It's essentially a cocktail of the same mistakes that have been made in Canada, Sweden and the UK and it has finally produced the same sort of backlash that has occurred in those countries. Thankfully our would-be far-right are either too weird or too obviously scumbaggish to be an electoral (as opposed to a security) threat but there's no guarantee that that (relatively) happy situation will continue.

FF are in some ways the fall-guys in all of this - they're arguably the least aggravating component of the current coalition in that they haven't been there for thirteen years unlike FG and they're not preachy and incompetent meddlers like the Greens but they're also the least defined component. The rebrand by Martin tried to detoxify FF by making it as different as possible from pre-2008 FF (socially-liberal, economically centre-left, agnostic on UI) but it has also removed the feeling that FF Got Things Done (even if they had to cut ethical corners to do so). Being beige is not a positive, at least not now.

[ObserverIE]

So how much of the sizeable current "Independent" support in polls is actually far/populist right?

A lot of it is proxy for p***ed-off (with things in general) and populist independents of various degrees of rightness are the natural beneficiaries of that given that the various left parties have gone down assorted rabbit-holes rather than dealing with issues that the voters are actually concerned with. I remain hopeful that the actual far right (actual, as opposed to a label that the Trot and Yank-brained left slap on anyone who disagrees with them) are too weird and offputting to gain traction.

[ObserverIE]

So how much of the sizeable current "Independent" support in polls is actually far/populist right?

A lot of it is proxy for p***ed-off (with things in general) and populist independents of various degrees of rightness are the natural beneficiaries of that given that the various left parties have gone down assorted rabbit-holes rather than dealing with issues that the voters are actually concerned with. I remain hopeful that the actual far right (actual, as opposed to a label that the Trot and Yank-brained left slap on anyone who disagrees with them) are too weird and offputting to gain traction.

So the independent polling is still more parish pumpers like the Healy-Rae's than ideologues?

That would be my guess, yes; the loudest voices on the immigration issue are still obvious weirdos and low-lifes.

[ObserverIE]

Harris Hurricane blown off course by the cluster**** in Mount Street:

IrelandThinks, for the Sunday Independent:

SF 29 (+3)
FG 19 (-2)
Ind/Oth 19 (+1)
FF 16 (-)
SD 6 (-)
GP 4 (-)
Lab 3 (-)
Aontú 3 (-1)
SWP/SP 2 (-)

[ObserverIE]

Ipsos/MRBIB&A for the Irish Times (changes since September February):

SF 23 (-5)
FG 23 (+4)
FF 20 (-)
Ind/Oth 17 (-)
Lab 5 (+1)
GP 4 (-1)
SD 3 (-1)
SWP/SP 2 (-)
Aontú 1 (-)

Colour me extremely skeptical about the FG figure in particular when the same poll gives the government's approval rating as being four points down to 31% and when only 33% want a continuation of the current coalition after the next election.

[ObserverIE]

And changes since *September*? I know some pollsters report less frequently than others, but still.

Should have been February; copy-and-paste error on my part. Apologies. But it is still a three-month gap.

The Irish Times only does intermittent polling with Ipsos/(what was)MRBI; of the other pollsters, the Business Post now owns RedC and the Sunday Independent and Sunday Times may have deeper pockets and their less-established pollsters may be cheaper.

FWIW, my guess is that there's something wrong with the allocation of undecided voters on this one, particularly given that the face-to-face pollsters tend to produce slightly lower figures for FG and higher for SF than the panel pollsters; not on the scale of the under/overestimation of FF, the SocDems and Aontú, but still enough to be noticeable. If this poll does reflect reality, which I doubt, you'd expect FG to be ahead of SF in either Opinions this weekend or RedC the weekend after that, both of which had a SF lead over FG of 7% last month.

The dubious quality of the polling hasn't prevented the newspaper political commentators (who are, almost to a man, desperate to get the current arrangement back in at the next election or at worst to replace/supplement the Greens with "Labour") from building some very impressive edifices on shaky foundations.

[ObserverIE]

Opinions, for the Sunday Times (changes since April):

SF 27 (-)
FG 19 (-1)
Ind/Oth 18 (+2)
FF 16 (-)
SD 6 (+2)
GP 5 (-1)
Lab 3 (-2)
SWP/SP 3 (-)
Aontú 3 (-)

Scarleh for Ipsos, the Irish Times, and the Irish political commentariat more generally.