Ireland General Discussion

[ObserverIE]

Now is a time when we really could do with a strong and credible Irish Labour party. Which just makes what has actually happened there all the more tragic.

That ship arguably already sailed in 2011, but Dublin Bay South was a disaster disguised as a triumph. Bacik, who has spent her entire adult life ensconced in the bubble that is Trinity, has absolutely no idea how to connect with voters beyond Portobello and Ranelagh or even with her own councillor base.

Are there any working class/kitchen table issue focused politicians left in the party? From the outside they seem to basically be a scattering of de facto independents and the woke middle class who are too establishment/power hungry to vote Social Democrat (and at a guess presumably arrived in politics at the wrong time to join the Greens).

Alan Kelly is/was relatively kitchen-table focussed but the problem was that his personal abrasiveness made his relations with the rest of the party hierarchy terminally dire. Ivana, on the other hand, as a product of Alexandra College (Ireland's Roedean) has impeccable manners even if she has no idea how to relate to the Common People.

Of the remaining TDs, Ged Nash (Louth), Duncan Smith (Fingal), and Seán Sherlock (Cork East) represent the medium-to-small-town traditional Labour base, but the boundary changes have already doomed Sherlock who's standing down as a result, and make it very difficult to see Smith (the only senior figure young enough not to have the stench of 2011-16 attached to him and sensible enough not to be normie-repellent) get back in, as well as not helping Nash. Aodhán Ó Ríordáin is on the same wing as Ivana only more so and is running for the European Parliament and may get in as a result of the transfer Battle Royale on the bourgeois left, in which case that would be another Dáil seat irretrievably lost. Howlin retiring in Wexford leaves the seat there in peril, although the boundary change and reduction in seats doesn't actually damage Labour very much there as the area removed is a wasteland for the party. The only likely gain I could see at the moment is Kildare South and I don't see it as being even 50:50. The Seanad team are either based in gentrified inner Dublin (Kilmainham or Stoneybatter) or are terminally Yank-brained (yes, walking packet of fruit pastilles Annie Hoey, I'm looking at you).

The really hilarious thing is that the current leadership of the SDLP (Eastwood, Hanna, O'Toole) seem to be looking at this spectacle and viewing it as a model to be emulated.

[Estrella]

So when are Shinners renaming themselves to, I don’t know, Fidesz?

https://twitter.com/tullmcadoo/status/1792838727150207385

Continues with a whole thread of calling the Skripal poisoning a US false flag, denying Russian war crimes and calling all Ukrainians fascists.

[CumbrianLefty]

Is it too late for them to ditch him for someone else?

[ObserverIE]

Yes, ballot papers have already been printed

SF would have been Western-skeptical over Russia but did pivot and pivot hard to a strongly anti-Putin position on the day of the Russian invasion and I'm not sure how old the tweets are (McAdoo aka Paul Duggan is a hyper-partisan FG shill who spends as much time attacking his coalition partners in FF and the Greens as he does on attacking the opposition parties).

[ObserverIE]

RedC for the Business Post:

SF 23 (-4)
FG 22 (+2)
Ind/Oth 21 (+2)
FF 15 (+1)
SD 5 (-1)
GP 4 (+1)
Lab 4 (+1)
SWP/SP 3 (+1)
Aontú 3 (-1)

[Estrella]

You’ve heard about West Brits, how about West Russians?

https://twitter.com/st__ireland/status/1794505397677736105

Daly has unsurprisingly also repeatedly met with Tatjana Ždanoka, another MEP and Russian agent.

[Zinneke]

You’ve heard about West Brits, how about West Russians?

https://twitter.com/st__ireland/status/1794505397677736105

Daly has unsurprisingly also repeatedly met with Tatjana Ždanoka, another MEP and Russian agent.

You're opening doors that have already been blown apart years ago. It's obvious that her and Mick or whatever his name is are your standard Tankies but guess what, nobody seems to mind Sikorski when he was an MEP being an asset for the UAE. The whole point of Qatarigate is that it symptomatic of the EP being full of the worst kind of politicians.

[ObserverIE]

Daly's problem, tragedy, whatever you want to call it, is that despite being essentially intelligent and capable and despite having managed to disentangle herself from the more bovine of the two Trot cults (the CWI/SP), she then leapt into both personal and political entanglements with Wallace who:

a) is as thick as pigs**t,
b) is also as lazy as sin, and
c) has been a sucker for every anti-western conspiracy theory for the last three decades going back to the fall of the Wall.

[Storr]

Politico EU published an opinion article today titled "Ireland’s the ultimate defense freeloader".

Basically it argues that Ireland is defenseless, relies completely on its neighbor for security, and "defenseless neutrality" is so entrenched in the country's political decision making "no major shift in policy is possible".

Honestly, I don't really care that much. If Ireland is blessed by geography so that the nation's external threats are minimal enough that the country's leaders do not feel the need to spend more than 0.2% of GDP on defense; good for them I guess?

At least the article reminded me of this episode: "when Russian navy ships conducted drills near Irish waters three weeks before their invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it was a fleet of Irish commercial fisherman who confronted them." (The opinion article doesn't mention that the fishermen actually got the Russians to cancel the drills.)

[Zinneke]

Ireland isn't a defence freeloader, it's neutral status allows it to get into places other NATO countries can't, and then there is it's stance on EU defence . All in all, considering its acute history that makes its anti-NATO stance understandable, it actually plays a useful role and I consider Switzerland and Austria to be much much bigger freeloading fifth column scum that the European powers should have blockaded by now and forced into a bondage system with the EU if it weren't for the fact half of Europe's industrial and political elites probably have bank accounts in one country and many spies trading info in the other.

[ObserverIE]

IrelandThinks, for the Sunday Independent:

Ind/Oth 23 (+4)
SF 22 (-7)
FG 22 (+3)
FF 17 (+1)
SD 5 (-1)
GP 4 (-)
Lab 3 (-)
Aontú 3 (-)
SWP/SP 2 (-)