Irish Times

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Sindo poll:

FF 33% (+6)
FG 25% (-4)
SF 20% (-)
Lab 6% (-2)
IA 5% (-)
Ind 4% (-2)
AAA/PBP 3%
Soc Dems 2% (+1)
Greens 2% (-)

Satisfaction with:

Government: -37% (27-64)
Kenny: -35% (27-62)
Howlin: -22% (26-48)
Martin: +4% (44-40)
Adams: -24% (30-54)

Should Enda go?

Yes: 53%
No: 25%
Don't know: 14%
It depends: 8%

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

It's that "not voting for him, he's from the next townland over/is from the other county in the constituency" that most gets me about culchiestas here. Why the fuck should it matter unless it's to sustain a broken system where you're ignored in the council chamber/cabinet if you don't have your own parish pump rep. But I guess clientelism is how we want it, and we want it good and hard. I'm sure it's the same in Teuchter Scotland (Where a weel kent surname and a LibDem rosette used to get your votes weighed and not counted) but being from Coruscant's outer rim it's another world to me.

I think it's less about that, and more about how it's harder to break into irish politics because there are a lot of candidates who are already plugged into large family or social groups over decades and centuries even. There are pre-existing "machines" in virtually every constituency, and even local election ward.

There surely can be nothing more boring, or embarrassing than a Fine Gael leadership struggle. it's like watching neutered tomcats fighting for dominance. They're not sure why they're doing this, and their heart is not in it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Diable Rouge wrote: The key difference here is that the likely suspects - Áine Ní Chonaill, Justin Barrett, Ian O'Doherty, John McGuirk have had an open media platform on the topic for the last two decades, so an Irish UKIP should have emerged after the '04 migration influx if voters were going to move in that direction.

UKIP weren't always so much about immigration. Their founder, Alan Sked, has been quite vocal about the racism of the Farage era party. It was, IIRC, pretty much focussed on "sovereignty" and the restrictions it might place on being properly right wing.

Obviously, you can have anti-immigration parties that accept EU membership (even Le Pen made a nod in that direction recently), but they got a very good synergy out of it. I think that it's much harder to make that fly in Ireland than England/Wales.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

As I always said, annoying Analogue Bubblebath, Fine Gael would be on about 50% here. They'd just have to say "clearing up Fianna Fail's mess".

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Meanwhile, it seems Little Simon Harris, Richard Bruton (yet again), and Frances Fitzgerald will enter the slow bicycle race once Enda finally concedes a timetable on Wednesday.

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Just fuck off ya Big House Weirdos. Wee Thimon is a fucking TINA 30 going on smelling of piss elderly disgrace that could only come from Wicklow (and of course ex ogra Fianna Fáil), squeaker Bruton giggled himself out of being Taoiseach 6 years ago, Fitz is a busted flush along with the laughable Zappone and Inda. Why the fuck would they bother? And as for the two neutered tomcats, you've got a safe pair of hands barely sentient Merchant Prince who might just shore up the big farmer vote, or a total cunt who can tap into the Sindo demographics' id but alienates anyone with a barely functioning conscience. They're maybe just better of with the old wandering hands Mayo buffoon.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

That's beautiful. It's a great pity that only about five people on this site will be able to understand it, but it's just perfect.

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Inda is a thick as pigshit dimwit who only got into politics on account of his father dying. So, it can only be the Merchant Prince to follow him. I can actually see Merchant Prince being elected Taoiseach and then losing his seat thanks to some very efficient local politics by Mehole and the ginger foot soldier.

You have to give it to Fianna Fail. They mastered all this shit long before Karl Rove could even pee standing up.

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Christ, you can get 18/1 on FF majority government after next election. Like printing money.

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: I think it's less about that, and more about how it's harder to break into irish politics because there are a lot of candidates who are already plugged into large family or social groups over decades and centuries even. There are pre-existing "machines" in virtually every constituency, and even local election ward.

The Cork SC 1998 by-election is fascinating in this regard. Hugh Coveney dies, so there is a by-election for just the one seat. When there's only the one seat up for grabs, FG should have no hope of winning it. But FF couldn't find a fourth local candidate with the right connections, and sure isn't it only fair that Coveney jr. gets the gig. So a load of people who had voted FF Martin or FF O'Keefe just a year earlier go out and vote FG Coveney, and he fucking tops the poll.

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Aye McGrath may look like a Gestapo extra in fucking Inglorious Basterds (or some shite) and his Neu-Thatcherite black soul might hate Soggy Wet FF Mehole and wish him to choke on his Statesmanlike self-importance. But that would be classic (typical) FF evil genius to unseat a Taoiseach and break STV again. Almost tempted to put a bet on.

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Their vote management is up there with the Healy-Raes. They managed to get themselves both elected on the first count in Cork SC in 2016. There's no telling what they could do to Coveney.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Tubby Isaacs wrote:

The key difference here is that the likely suspects - Áine Ní Chonaill, Justin Barrett, Ian O'Doherty, John McGuirk have had an open media platform on the topic for the last two decades, so an Irish UKIP should have emerged after the '04 migration influx if voters were going to move in that direction.

UKIP weren't always so much about immigration. Their founder, Alan Sked, has been quite vocal about the racism of the Farage era party. It was, IIRC, pretty much focussed on "sovereignty" and the restrictions it might place on being properly right wing.

Obviously, you can have anti-immigration parties that accept EU membership (even Le Pen made a nod in that direction recently), but they got a very good synergy out of it. I think that it's much harder to make that fly in Ireland than England/Wales.

I think it's important to remember that free movement is traditionally one of the key things that Irish people like about the EU. in the last eurobarometer poll, 90% of Irish people were in favour of free movement. You had to have a border with Russia to be more into free movement than Ireland. Irish people were more into free movement, than they were into the EU.

81% of irish people had a positive attitude towards migrants with most of the rest neutral. 85% of irish people are in favour of the Euro, with only luxembourg with more. Actually the weird thing about the euro is that the slovakians are also 85% in favour, while the czechs are 25% in favour.

But basically I just don't think that Irish people are very interested in this sort of thing. Basically we associate inward migration with a massive expansion in the economy, and we know far too well that it wasn't migrants that fucked things up.

If we were going to be into this sort of thing, it would have already happened. Ireland went from being the country with the lowest proportion of foreign nationals in the OECD to one of the highest in about 10 years. Then the economy completely fell apart truly bigly, the country went bankrupt, and there was mass unemployment and a return to emigration. If it was going to happen it would have happened then. But most migrants to Ireland kept their jobs and stayed, and no-one seemed to mind. I think that people seem to understand that your child didn't emigrate because there's a pole working in the petrol station. they emigrated because they didn't want to work in a petrol station.

Ireland is a migrant society. between 1841 and 1991 one in two born here emigrated. A lot of people here have lived abroad for a while, or have relatives abroad. We're familiar with the idea that people migrate to build a better life for themselves. I mean there's no point otherwise. So Ireland isn't exactly fertile ground for the spongers narrative. Why the fuck would you leave your friends and family to be on the dole? We're not freaked out by migrants, and there are enough irish community centres in england and america and GAA clubs in asia for us to not get freaked out with people hanging onto chunks of their culture. It adds to the general gaiety of nations.

Also it helps that poles are almost culturally indistinguishable from Irish people, some even going so far as to help keep a lot of our rural churches open. It's also difficult to understate the role of the cult of John Paul II in ensuring that Ireland's catholic right can't really get an anti-immigration coalition together. The other main group of migrants are either the children of irish migrants to england, and english-english people. And quite frankly there are far too many Irish people in England for us to start complaining about them.

We're not that fussed about muslims. They're either Medical students or professionals, Important parts of the Beef export industry, or they provide delicious food to drunk irish people, or work in late night shops, so quite frankly they're grand. In general Irish people have a sympathy for Palestinians, in the way they weren't particularly keen on apartheid south africa, and to be honest, even fairly religious muslims aren't much more religious than Irish people were in the 1950s. We're also not particularly excited by the UK media banging on about muslims being terrorists, because they only stopped talking about us in those terms 20 years ago. Also, they have a long way to go before they blow up the prime minister's hotel bedroom during conference season, or demolish the erotic gherkin, so lets not tear up the fabric of society just yet.

It also helps that we're not particularly worried about a muslim invasion threatening our traditional catholic values. Any politician trying to push that line would probably get called a paedophile apologist before long. We know that Osama Bin Laden killed a lot of people on september 11th, but he didn't ruin more lives than artane industrial school. Then coming from the other side, People who attack it from the side of secularism, quickly fall foul of religious people in general, so it doesn't really get anywhere.

Then if you come at it from the point of view of nationalism, Irish nationalism is geographically defined, rather than ethnically defined because it was invented by presbyterians, and the Fenians, the IRB and basically much of the Gaelic revival were run by protestants. They were very careful to define it in terms of independence for all the people of Ireland. I mean look at our flag. Now while attitudes fluctuate over time and it takes on the attitudes of the time, there is still a fundamental problem in couching anti-migrant sentiment in nationalist terms, when so much of the rhetoric of Irish nationalism is structured in entirely the opposite direction. Also that whole million refugees from the famine thing is a big part of our national story, so that kind of makes it tricky.

Also it's really important to remember that most of Ireland is terrified of rural depopulation and the loss of services, and most of the country couldn't give a fuck if you were a radioactive space monkey, or a slavering zombie, as long as you send your kid to the local primary school and help hang onto the teacher.

So all in all, a series of appalling historical factors have come together to ensure that we are now the major English speaking nation in the world not to have completely lost its shit over migration, to a potentially economically crippling degree. Come On Scotland. There's room in this fucking Cavernous economic niche for two.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Indo publish a bizarre article on Varadkar's partner (wouldn't dignify it with a link), even though the piece itself states "The pair have so far shunned the spotlight" - well, privacy considerations are surely paramount here, regardless of his sexuality? Tellingly, the reporter wouldn't sign their byline to the piece.

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

They've said publically they are a couple, how much more spotlight should they have anyways? One's a cunty Minister an the other somehow hasn't stabbed Ivan Yates live on air yet. I wasn't aware of many other Ministers showing off their lovely home and fragrant partner to VIP or some Indo lifestyle supplement bollocks. And who gives a fuck about a radio sidekick?

Maybe Denis has given the nod for Simple Jack to be continuity Taioseach till the water rates report is published/someone calls John Halligan a Chuckle Brother To his face and he walks from Cabinet. I'm Sure the Merchant Prince is more.. pliable.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Chris O Donoghue has moved on to better things both professionally and perhaps personally.

I just read that article, and it's hardly a case of "the people will want to know where the taoiseach sleeps at night." Getting weird about a gay couple would be a bad move for the independent.

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Did anyone know where CJ was sleeping?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

No but at least he had a house. That comment was what prompted one of the Dig outs to help Bertie have a house, so the minister for finance wasn't sleeping on the couch of his constituency office.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Kenny says he'll make a definitive announcement after Patrick's Day - there'll be some meltdown if he says he's going nowhere.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Labour record a 4% rating in the latest opinion poll - they could recover in alliance with the Greens and Soc Dems, who both record similar scores, but neither particularly want to talk to Howlin or Kelly. Elsewhere on the left, AAA-PBP are on 6%, and SF are on 19%.

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Now that loathsome possibly sociopathic bastard Kelly has no more Ministerial toys to dole out among the rural Tipp pork barrel royalty, his bad self is hopefully vulnerable to a FF squeeze in the impending election cull.

It's a fucking state of affairs when whatever stuffed Dunnes shirt eats his ear-pickings FF is preferable to a so-called Labour man, but fuckface AK is a shitty farmer placating climate change bill, couldn't give a fuck about pissy urban issues like the fuckton of homeless folk in Dublin under his remit as Env Minsiter, one man and his black souled ego band that he doesn't even qualify for the most right wing closet reactionary Willie Penrose wing friendly definition of Social democrat.

He's some cunt alright. Fuck knows what Labour does now. Howlin and Burton and the comically self important O'Sullivan really ought just to fuck off (and the electorate may well make that decision for them) but where is the new breed?

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Seán Sherlock is about the furthest left of the current seven, but yes, most Labour Youth types eventually drift off elsewhere.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Ireland on a par with rest of Europe, judging by a Millward Brown poll on immigration - 62% worried about terrorists arriving with genuine migrants, 53% feel Muslim leaders are failing in integrating their community, and the same percentage believe that immigrants are disproportionately claiming social welfare. Just 52% value the contribution of immigrants to Irish society (29% respond negatively), while 24% would object to the location of a refugee centre in their community (though 54% would approve).

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

The obstinate cuntiness of successive Irish Govts on Direct Provision makes me think there's a lot of TDs out there anxiously Listening to Concerns of their not bigoted honest constituents.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

It's amazing what results you can get in opinion polls if you ask the right questions. Ask in the Eurobarometer polls about whether or not you think migration is going well, then over 80% say yess. But if you ask a question about whether or not you think migrants are claiming too much social welfare, and you get a different answer altogether.