Irish Election
stonespring
Shipmate
in Purgatory
Could the election happening today in the Republic of Ireland be one of the few in any country in the past few years in which governing parties are not severely punished for the post-pandemic cost of living crisis? The Irish government is flush with revenue, not least because a court ruled that Apple must pay 13 billion Euro in back taxes, and the current Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil-Greens coalition has been spending much more than more cash-strapped governments elsewhere. If Trump enters a trade war with the EU, helps bring about another global wave of inflation, or cuts the US corporate income tax to be competitive with Ireland's (which is why Apple's and so many other corporations' profits are parked there), the good times for the budget may be nearing an end.
2020 was supposed to be Sinn Féin's year but they didn't run enough candidates to take full advantage of their votes, and former arch-rivals Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil were able to form a grand coalition together with the Greens. Now multiple scandals have placed Sinn Féin and its leader Mary Lou McDonald on the back foot, although still in a dead heat with FG and FF. Housing was a key issue four years ago and remains so today. After an influx of Ukrainian and other asylum seekers (relative to what Ireland is used to) there has been a rise in public xenophobia (also unusual for Ireland), evidenced in riots in Dublin last year.
Going into this election, many poll-watchers were predicting a continuation of the FF-FG grand coalition, perhaps with a different third party or independents as their partner(s). The new young FG Taoiseach (PM) Simon Harris came under fire only days before the election for appearing callous when talking to a carer for the disabled who confronted him saying the government was doing nothing for the disability sector in the budget.
Will this election result in a government largely like the current one (FG has lead the government or rotated Taoisigh with FF since 2011), or will there be enough of an anti-establishment vote to make this impossible? If so, will the establishment vote go largely to independents, other small parties, or Sinn Féin? If this is the "year of the independent" as I heard one RTÉ reporter muse, will that mean that Harris or Micheál Martin of FF will have to make concessions to a large number of independents that could bring the government down at any time, or would they partner up with two or even three small left-wing parties (and their frenemies on the center-right) to avoid that?
Will the stirrings of xenophobia and a small but much-more-visible far right manifest at the ballot box? Will small parties to FF and FG's right such as Aontú and Independent Ireland (or right-wing independents) that have taken an anti-immigration stance gain a platform for nativism in a highly-divided Dáil?
Will Ireland ever see a government lead by a party from the left? If MaryLou McDonald is unlikely to become Taoiseach, could a Labour, Green, Social Democrat, or further left Taoiseach take office with the backing if not presence in government of Sinn Féin? Or is it more likely that, if SF ever comes close to power, it is by propping up a FF-led government from the outside and wining concessions on legislation (FG is even less likely to allow this to happen than FF if they come in first place, but you never know)?
Lastly, could anyone with an understanding of Irish politics and STV voting tell me why FF and FG (the parties with the most candidates) are only fielding about 80 candidates each when there are 174 seats in the Dáil and 88 required for a majority?
2020 was supposed to be Sinn Féin's year but they didn't run enough candidates to take full advantage of their votes, and former arch-rivals Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil were able to form a grand coalition together with the Greens. Now multiple scandals have placed Sinn Féin and its leader Mary Lou McDonald on the back foot, although still in a dead heat with FG and FF. Housing was a key issue four years ago and remains so today. After an influx of Ukrainian and other asylum seekers (relative to what Ireland is used to) there has been a rise in public xenophobia (also unusual for Ireland), evidenced in riots in Dublin last year.
Going into this election, many poll-watchers were predicting a continuation of the FF-FG grand coalition, perhaps with a different third party or independents as their partner(s). The new young FG Taoiseach (PM) Simon Harris came under fire only days before the election for appearing callous when talking to a carer for the disabled who confronted him saying the government was doing nothing for the disability sector in the budget.
Will this election result in a government largely like the current one (FG has lead the government or rotated Taoisigh with FF since 2011), or will there be enough of an anti-establishment vote to make this impossible? If so, will the establishment vote go largely to independents, other small parties, or Sinn Féin? If this is the "year of the independent" as I heard one RTÉ reporter muse, will that mean that Harris or Micheál Martin of FF will have to make concessions to a large number of independents that could bring the government down at any time, or would they partner up with two or even three small left-wing parties (and their frenemies on the center-right) to avoid that?
Will the stirrings of xenophobia and a small but much-more-visible far right manifest at the ballot box? Will small parties to FF and FG's right such as Aontú and Independent Ireland (or right-wing independents) that have taken an anti-immigration stance gain a platform for nativism in a highly-divided Dáil?
Will Ireland ever see a government lead by a party from the left? If MaryLou McDonald is unlikely to become Taoiseach, could a Labour, Green, Social Democrat, or further left Taoiseach take office with the backing if not presence in government of Sinn Féin? Or is it more likely that, if SF ever comes close to power, it is by propping up a FF-led government from the outside and wining concessions on legislation (FG is even less likely to allow this to happen than FF if they come in first place, but you never know)?
Lastly, could anyone with an understanding of Irish politics and STV voting tell me why FF and FG (the parties with the most candidates) are only fielding about 80 candidates each when there are 174 seats in the Dáil and 88 required for a majority?
Comments
Parties try to cover the constituency's regions, ensure that there are women candidates, and in areas where there are any minorities (e.g., where there are Protestants), ensure that they have candidates present on their list. They may throw in an ethnic or visible minority candidate to show how inclusive they are.
At the last election, SF underestimated their vote, so ran fewer candidates than they need have done. They might have been able to elect a dozen more if they had been more optimistic.
The Guardian reports that the three main parties (FG, FF, SF) are getting about 20% each. The results will also show us how the 13% vote going to independents will manifest itself in a seat count. Counting begins Saturday morning and most seats will be decided by Sunday night.
The fortunes of SF are probably of most interest, since they have members in the NI Assembly.
Presumably some of that would be to keep Sinn Fein out?
But I'm not an expert on this. Just an interested observer who wants to learn more.
Sorry, but what's a TD?
Okay, thanks.
I'm also curious about the Social Democrats in Ireland. They were formed in 2015 by three independent TDs, two who were formerly in the Labour Party (but one of whom came into Labour from its merger with Democratic Left (itself a split from the Worker's Party, which was formerly the Official Sinn Féin - which had embraced Marxism-Leninism and class struggle as the way to Irish unification, leading Provisional Sinn Féin (which is what is called Sinn Féin today) to split off along with its then paramilitary wing the Provisional IRA). Democratic Left, though, formed by a split in the Worker's Party after the collapse of the Soviet Union, was much less radical by the time it entered government alongside Fine Gael and Labour in the 90's. The third founding TD in the Social Democrats later left and joined Fianna Fáil (!) and is the Minister for Health in the outgoing (potentially ongoing?) government.
I'm not sure whether or not the Social Democrats are to the left or right of Labour on economic or social issues. One of the quirks of the Irish party system is that before the vote share of the two main (both center-right) parties (FF and FG) began to decline, for decades the only way that FG could form a government was in coalition with Labour, which is ironic because FG has historically been slightly to the right of FF economically. More recently, since the libertarian Progressive Democrats have no longer been a political force and with Sinn Féin having been ruled out as a coalition partner, neither FF or FG have been able to form a majority government without at least one center-left party (either the Greens or Labour), and whatever center-left party enters government with one or both of FF or FG has tended to be punished at the ballot box a the next election.
The Social Democrats, who are new and have not been in a position to enter government until now, are wary of the same fate befalling them, and know that many of their voters are center-left voters angry at the compromises that Labour and the Greens have made in government with center-right parties in the past.
However, with Ireland's STV voting system, it is also true that whenever one of the center-left parties does well in an election, it is because center-right voters who listed a FG or FF candidate as their first preference also decided to rank their party above the other center left parties (and many TDs are not elected until after the 8th or higher count and redistribution of preferences, so those lower rankings matter). Having just been in government not only made center-left voters less likely to rank the Greens first, but it also made the Greens less transfer-friendly to FF and FG voters who probably blame the Greens for whatever they didn't like about the outgoing government. Since the Social Democrats were the newest center-left party with no government experience (and the baggage that comes with it), they seem to have been the most transfer-friendly even for voters that are not center-left voters. Labour has also performed well after two terms out of government. The Greens have lost a lot of seats.
All that said, if anyone could explain more about the Social Democrats, I'd love to read it.
(my bold)
Goodness - a lot of ink was spilled / air-time used up, back in the day, claiming that that link was not a link at all. People of a certain age will remember that voice-actors who could do a credible Irish accent made careers out of it.
I preferred the (satire) Day Today version, where their words had to be spoken by someone who had just ingested helium.
Anyway, apologies -back south of the Border….
Does anyone know more about the differences between the Social Democrats and Labour?
As for @TurquoiseTastic's question, I don't believe there is any relationship between the Social Democrats in the Republic of Ireland and the SDLP in Northern Ireland.
I'm curious - does anyone know what relationship if any exists now and has existed in the past between the Labour Party in the Republic of Ireland and the Northern Irish SDLP and its predecessor parties?