Another Election? To be sure, to be sure!

Only in Ireland would it happen that parties that win an election tell you that they don’t want to go into government.  One wonders what the men and women of 1916 would think ? In 1916 Irish men couldn’t elect their own government. Irish women of course were not allowed vote until 1918 and when they voted they spoke with a clear voice. 

100 years on those who lay claim most to the heritage of 1916 are first to tell the electorate the day after we’ve voted that they’re more interested in their parties and protecting their political position than the country they claim to love.  Today the centenary has become an embarrassing reminder of how the vision of the proclamation has been discarded in favour of political expediency and short term political advantage.

I’d an inkling what was about to happen yesterday at the count.  During a long conversation with a candidate whose posters called for transparency in government he told me he was opposed to his party entering government and that it was Fianna Fail and Fine Gaels job to govern.  The Social Democrats never told the electorate that on the doorsteps when they were collecting an impressive vote of over 2,000. 

You see this wasn’t a snap election, it’s been flagged for years.  Opinions have been well formed Suggestions now that we should have another in the next few months and that somehow there will be a different result with one party getting an overall majority are unrealistic.  This is the result whether we like it or not.  Fine Gael and Labour lost 50 seats.  An opinion poll showed 60% want a change of government.  In anyone’s language that means those who won have to form the government.  That’s how a democracy works.  It is time to give the people the change they want.

Anything else is farce and will rapidly wind up the electorate the wrong way.  The mistakes that undermined Labour in the last government were made before they entered office.  History is now repeating itself in the case of Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein, AAA and Social Democrats.

When you organise under the banner of Right to  Change you either keep that promise and deliver change or you let down people.  All these parties shared policies on water charges and property tax before the election. Why now are they finding even the thought of forming a government impossible? 

If 100 years ago a Scottish Socialist who didn't speak Irish could see common ground with a conservative Gaelgoir school teacher in developing a fledgling state, what's the real problem now

?

Against the tide

One Summer’s evening in 1916, William Martin Murphy was sipping from a drink as he looked out over the 18^th hole of a South Dublin golf course.  Weeks before had seen the execution of James Connolly and the destruction of Liberty Hall by a gunboat. The ITGWU funds were down to about £8,000 and membership was in decline.  James Larkin was in exile in the US and the bosses had beaten the union in the lock out.  He could afford to smile as he remarked to one of his buddies; “Well that’s the last we’ll hear from the Labour Party”.

Nothing in politics is inevitable.  5 years ago the conventional wisdom was that Fianna Fail were heading for the knackers yard.  If you drove from Wexford to the border you could pass through just 3 constituencies where FF had Dail representatives. Make no mistake about it.  Today’s drubbing is not the end of Labour. An end of an era, yes but not the end of a party.  Labour retains the number of seats after a hammering that the Greens had when they entered office.

There appears to have been 2 elections.  One for government but another for opposition.  I’m amazed that so many on the left are not interested in forming a government despite a mandate.  What was the point in asking people to vote for you and telling people you’d represent them before an election and after the election turn around and say to the 2 main parties, work away? 

Be careful for what you wish for.  A grand coalition with grand ego’s?  No thanks!  There are 3 blocs. Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Right to Change.  It’s clear that people don’t want either Labour or Fine Gael in office.  That’s the result of today’s verdict from the polls.  Enda Kenny will not hang in as Fine Gael party leader and Taosieach for too long more.  Fine Gael may justifiably replace him with Frances Fitzgerald and commence negotiations with Fianna Fail.  Michéal Martin has his own issues.  One wing of FF wants to embrace SF while the other wing prefers FG.  Frances Fitzgerald might be a more awkward and unpredictable customer for FF than Enda Kenny.  Gerry Adams will continue to dominate SF.  FF and FG backed themselves into corners on coalition.  Right to Change may horse trade with some independents and the trots to build up a bloc of TD’s that is greater than FF.   

I suspect that if the Dail refuses to elect a Taoiseach and the President is asked to dissolve and call elections that he will refuse unless it is clear that another election will produce a decisive result.  We’re heading for either a constitutional crisis or a democratic vacuum.  In that context which house of the Oireachtas has the greatest credibility?   

So where to now for Labour? The party may well be bloodied not beyond repair.  It’s back to the drawing boards and just as 100 years ago the Labour movement had to knuckle down and rebuild on the landscape it found itself on, so too will todays party.  Time to surprise the chattering classes in their golf clubs!

Confused by the polls? Take a chill pill

4 days left.  With the finishing line in sight. Some are already calling the result in Wexford; Browne, Byrne, Howlin, Kehoe and Wallace. That’s the result alphabetically, if you believe the polls! Lets get back to that later on.

Aoife Byrne from FF seems to be running a great campaign judging by her facebook and twitter feed. In a week when Deirdre Wadding quoted Father Ted, It seems Aoife herself had a Bishop Brennan moment when he gave her a blessing outside Wexford Park.  Unfortunately that spiritual fervour was absent from the pitch as Wexford came up short against Clare.  GAA stalwart and the man who delivered each pitch development in the county, Ger Carthy, or Mayor Ger Carthy as he now likes to be known on his posters, left the game as soon as it started.  Seems he had to rush to a nearby housing estate to move his van as the vehicle was causing a nuisance to local residents.  Good to see Cllr Fergie Kehoe back in action.  I was inclined to visit him in hospital but didn’t as I felt he wanted to get better!

It’s been a low key campaign in Wexford with few issues.  Mick Wallace has yet to visit many of the town’s doors.  The absence of any clear boundary on FG has seen FG candidates travel everywhere and yet nowhere.  Paul Kehoe and Michael D’arcy were both in Rosslare in the last few days and yet nobody from FG has been in my estate.  The absence of live issues may damage the chances of a minor candidate springing a surprise but it may also mean that national issues are more likely to dominate.  This plays into the hands of Wallace and the main political parties.  But it’s not all over, not by a long shot.

5 years ago in the presidential election at the same point Fianna Fail didn’t have the balls to officially run a candidate but hid behind someone who was, well, Fianna Fail to his fingertips.  He was ahead by a mile and thought that nothing could go wrong.  History tells us something else. Believe nothing until the votes are counted.

For the first 2 weeks of the campaign polls tell us there was little change in opinion. Now they tell us something different.  I’ve always put more trust on constituency polls than national polls.  When faced with a name there is often a sense of either a record or a geographical need for a TD.  People will vote for a name regardless of the party.

I head a story about one local woman who was read the poll options by phone from a UK based market research company who were outsourced the work from Ireland and they admitted Labour until the woman asked if Labour was an option? “Oh Yeah” was the response.

The only question is now what the turnout will be.  A high turnout will favour a change of government, a low turn out will favour Labour and Fine Gael.  While national polls on party support are unreliable, the most interesting figure of any poll I’ve seen is a poll from about 2 weeks ago where 60% said they want to see a change of government.  When 60% of people come to that conclusion it’s hard to argue.  The people always get what they want at election time, not necessarily what they need.

Many have remarked that this election is a lot like the 1980’s.  Certainly it is, but which part of the 1980’s is what I’d like to know? The early part with instability and 3 elections within 18 months or the later part with a Tallaght Strategy with FF & FG cosying up to impose fiscal rectitude when Labour won just 6.5% and 12 seats? After that came the coalition where FF ditched a core value, single party government.  So whose core value is facing the chop now? FG not accepting FF or FF not accepting SF?  Political heaves and intrigue were part and parcel of that power play.  We may be on the cusp of something dramatic.

For Enda Kenny or Michéal Martin something has to give.  My guess is that a battered FG will swop Kenny for Frances Fitzgerald who will do the deal that needs to be done with Michéal Martin who will face his own internal critics.  Remember he has never replaced his deputy leader who walked out the door as he was opposed to the Stability and Growth Pact.  O’Cuiv was, to quote PJ Mara, nibbling at the leaders bum. 

Labour will have a long look at itself and see where it wants to go in the future with a new leader while SF will ask themselves what went wrong once more.  They dropped by 10% in opinion polls in opposition. That mirrors Labour 6 years ago.  Will SF members give Gerry Adams his long service award and dispatch him back to his summer home in Donegal to write his memoires of the long war which he never took part in?

For Trotskyites, they’ve had an open goal to kick into for 8 years and still have not made the break through while a Healy Rae can pop up at a fortnights notice and win a seat in Kerry?  What does that say about the opposition and more importantly the voters? Once the ballots are counted, its then that the real questions will be asked. But will we get answers?

Things are getting curiouser and curiouser

The latest candidate to declare for the election is John Dwyer.  A veteran who has been in and out of Sinn Fein and lately Éirigí is now running as an independent.  John points to the absence of a local candidate in New Ross town as his main reason for running. By all accounts Éirigí are not completely behind John on this as some Éirigí members are helping the Wallace campaign thence the independent tag.  Wallace recently offered to lodge bail for a republican on remand in prison facing serious charges.  Presumably he is regarded by Éirigí who are happy to see Wallace prosper at Sinn Fein’s expense in Wexford.  Wallace is a shoe in and the only question is how big his surplus will be.  This suits many parties since it reduces the vote that is available for other independents and Sinn Fein on all counts in the election.

Elsewhere former Labour Mayor and Democratic Left man Davy Hynes has stepped in to fill Padge Reck’s shoes in Mayor Ger Carthy’s camp. A fine picture is going viral online of Hynes signing Carthy’s nomination papers at County Hall.  Fianna Fail threw the kitchen sink at Carthy’s local election campaign bringing in troops to help Carthy triumph 2 years ago.  Padge Reck paid back the Carthy family for his close and long friendship with Ger’s late father Leo by endorsing Ger to voters. 

However Padge is politically joined at the hip to the Browne camp and is supporting James Browne in his bid to replace his own father.  A political endorsement in Wexford town would be of enormous advantage to any outside candidate hoping to win.  In 2014, Ger Carthy won significant support in the town in areas he barely recognises due to an endorsement among Reck supporters. The absence of a political endorsement in Wexford town for Carthy has been solved by Davy Hynes.  Although who’d have thought that it’d ever come to this that a serving Mayor of Wexford as a candidate in a General Election would actually need an endorsement in Wexford town from a past Mayor?  We live in interesting times!

This endorsement may raise more than a few political eyebrows in Wexford politics as Davy had spent a considerable amount of time campaigning against Water charges, property tax, USC, Susi etc alongside Deirdre Wadding and more recently working as part of “Friends of Its Good to talk” Chairperson alongside Social Democrat Candidate Leonard Kelly.  Supporting one of that pair may have been a more logical fit for someone whose dislike of Labour has grown since he left over 4 years ago.

Carthy on the other hand commits to little of national relevance in his campaign, preferring to focus instead on local issues.  A general election is about national issues.  It is enormously ironic that the councillor who most used his local council to oppose national issues now sees the Dail as a national forum to resolve mere local concerns.  Further support by Mary Farrell in Kilmuckridge will further cement the Carthy campaign and Hynes’ standing among Fianna Fail gene pool independents.  The Bromance between Carthy and the Wexford Chronicle took another step along the yellow brick road with a 4 page wrap around highlighting the Mayor’s work in this week’s issue.

However there is no place in politics for sentiment.  In his personal message to voters, Mayor Carthy effectively throws his new found comrade in arms Cllr Hynes under a political bus when he promises to offer “an alternative to the populist and in many respects irresponsible policies of those who are on the far left of Irish and Wexford politics.  Few councillors fit that description better than Davy Hynes.

Elsewhere if you need further evidence of economic pick up and more disposable income, look no further than Deirdre Wadding’s facebook page where the good news is that her online appeal for a €5K war chest to run as a People Before Profit Anti Austerity Alliance candidate has turned up the readies.

Nominations will close by the end of the week and we’ll have a full line up of candidates soon.

Garda Patrol.

All elections are unpredictable.  Sometimes it can be that unpredicted events during a campaign change the outcome.  The shocking and graphic attack on the Regency Airport Hotel has the potential to bring crime centre stage.  In short the call by the Taoiseach for a second Special Criminal Court to deal with gangland criminals became one such topic earlier this week-end. The usual suspects on the far left lined up on radio to defend open trials and transparency.  Within hours their supporters were chasing round the streets of Dublin kicking seven shades of sugar out of a few xenophobes who don’t understand the irony of establishing a Pan-Europe anti immigrant organisation.  Trotskyites don’t do irony or due process either, well perhaps in the radio studio but not on the streets.  So let’s look seriously at some reasons why these gougers think they own the place, (the so called Gangland figures, not the AAA!)

We have a Special Criminal Court which is not working flat out at the minute.  I’m not so sure there is a need for a second one.  It is not so much that either the Central or Special Criminal Court aren’t convicting, it is that they aren’t getting the cases.  Garda aren’t nailing them in sufficient numbers.  It is harder to get evidence where those planning attacks can slip out of the state to hide away in Spain at the drop of the hat.  Garda get one chance only to interview a suspect and it is time limited.  A huge amount of preparation goes on before the person is arrested.  Questions prepared and teams organised.  Perhaps there is enough evidence to get a person charged and possibly convicted.

But there is another grim reality and it is this; No sooner is one thug locked away behind bars than another hood sees an opportunity and tries to fill the criminal void left behind. When Darwin coined the phrase the survival of the fittest, he could never have dreamt that Dublin’s thugs would have embraced it to their hearts.

Criminals like the one executed in cold blood on Friday show nothing but contempt for the democratic process. Far left concerns at protecting transparency or due process in an open trial are notions these gangster dismiss out of hand.  Their predecessors shot Veronica Guerrn dead. They sneer at those they do not control and they laugh most of all at those of us bleeding hearts who value human rights.  So called Gangland figures exploited a disconnect to create an aura that they are some sort of local cult figure who benignly runs their area.

The last person murdered by the IRA before the 1994 ceasefire was Martin Cahill the self styled General. He wasn’t interested in showing the Republican Movement the respect they felt entitled to.  Showing respect is not in the DNA of these thugs. 

Perhaps the focus of concern in relation to Gangland Criminality should be why they exist in the first place.  These thugs fill a need to many in modern Ireland.  They keep the coke lines running and feed the heroin and marijuana demand among many young and not so young Irish people. Nobody gets into drugs with a view of developing an addiction.  But that’s how it turns out. And if it’s not an addiction well a drugs habit will certainly set you back a few bob.

Often the debate about gangland and drugs becomes one as to whether you decriminalise a drug or not and ergo the problems of gangland criminals disappear. The reality is that they don’t.  Gangland Criminals will morph into some other area of criminality.  These guys have a taste for the lifestyle that feeds their egos.  Decriminalising or changing the framework by which drugs are regarded is a legal matter that may possibly help addicts and how they are treated before the law.  Let’s not confuse how you deal with a victim to how you deal with criminality.

The communities that they come from are often marginalised with high historic levels of reliance on the state for income and housing, low levels of educational progression, high levels of becoming a parent early in life, lower life expectancy and poorer health than in wealthier communities. 

So when a general election candidate tells you that closing garda stations in some way has an impact on serious crimes, they are talking nonsense. In fact the more specialised that these type of criminals get, the more special units are needed to collect evidence to convict them and help the communities these guys damaged  for years. Specialised units need to be based in large stations where they have the resources to do their job.  Many of the EU treaties provide for intelligence sharing between EU member states, these treaties were of course opposed at referendum here by many on the left.

Working class drugs barons exemplify most the Thatcherite credo of self-reliance and hard work to acquire wealth regardless of any consequences. They protect ruthlessly what they have built up.  They didn’t need the support of ordinary people to get where they are now.