Why is the Irish Labour party such a failure ?

I disagree with you.

They have had that opportunity before and haven't and it goes back to the falling out back in the late 90s after they were in the Rainbow government.

Goes deeper than ' a place at the trough'.

So you think it's a lie that O'Reilly was parachuted into Fingal or that there was a SF councillor topping the polls there?

I assume you don't vote ?

You keep banging on about the fact that SF are moving their candidates to constituencies where they can pick up most votes.

What is wrong with that? If people want to vote for a candidate they will vote or not. That is good sense and good politics and maybe labour could get a few more if they did the same.

Its not parish pump politics, no... is that what concerns you?

Do you think that everybody should stay in the area they were born in / live in and never move away to work or be successful elsewhere?

I thought the Indo was a FF paper ?

Strange. That is an article from a local regional paper. They must also have infiltrated the official election results because if you look them up, you will see that a SF councillor topped the polls in Swords in the local elections the previous year (2014). Strange that O'Reilly let them get away with printing that she was from Crumlin when she wasn't.

I don't think anyone who votes FF can be fooling themselves into thinking they have a social conscience. Definitely not since the times of the private island owning French suit wearing leader with the finance minister who didn't know how to open a bank account.

Well you see, that was not the original point. The original point, which appears to have gone above the heads of many, probably more self-imposed blindness in refusing to accept the point, was in response to someone sneering about "smoked-salmon socialists". I merely pointed out that most of the high profile "harder" left were actually far more likely to have been brought up on smoked salmon. Another poster expressed confusion at why some politicians were picked for parachuting themselves into constituencies.

If a wealthy and priviliged person cannot get elected in their own locality where people know them, they are of course full well entitled to get themselves into a plum job by targeting another area, finding out what crap the people there will lap up,and parachute in and just say whatever the local idiots will lap up. That is allowed.

Maybe I want a handy job and decide that I want to get myself on the county council. Nobody in my own town will vote for me. But there are two towns up the road, both of which are classified as deprived with high unemployment. Town A has a very large population of African immigrants (say 50%) whereas B is an older town which regularly has protests against any proposed facility for immigrants there and burned out a few old hotels listed for asylum centres. Now, in this story, I don't really care about immigrants, but I just want to be elected. So I'll crunch the numbers. If it turns out I might have more of a chance to get the cushy number in A, I'll land up there telling them that the government shouldn't be holding them back and needs to provide more facilities and houses and jobs for immigrants and tell the population that it is racism that is holding them back and that we need more immigrants and that if I get elected I will use the platform to call for easier reunification of families. Whereas if it seems like I might have a better chance of getting elected in B, I'll go there instead and tell them that the reason their area is bad is because all the resources are going to immigrants and that that should be stopped and we have too many immigrants already and that if I get elected I will use the platform to call for increased deportations and an end to family reunification. Either way, I just want to get elected and won't actually do anything for the people.

(I also think you don't understand the meaning of "parish pump politics" if you think it is solved just by having candidates born outside the area .......)

I am not banging on about SF moving candiates to other areas anyway. I am talking about individual politicians who allow themselves to be moved to increase their personal chance of getting the juicy role. In the example, O'Reilly was parachuted in on top of another candidate who was favourite to get elected anyway. Either way, SF would have gotten a TD. But they chose to give that role to O'Reilly. Why not "parachute" O'Reilly into MLM's home constituency (where she was born and grew up) the next time and try to gain an additional seat where they might not have otherwise had had a chance? That would effect change........it just might knock O'Reilly herself off the gravy train. But her seat in Fingal would probably still be as likely to go to SF if they had the local man there.

There were two points in that article.

1) The local SF councillor was topping the poll before O'Reilly was announced

2) O'Reilly is from Crumlin.

Which of those, or is it both, do you think is lies?

It is getting a bit like you see in the US where a person refuses to believe that anything that does not come from their own source of "news" is not lies. "Fake news" so to speak.

It was not a serious comment.

Was always a labour voter too if there was a decent candidate in my area but am disillusioned after their increasingly dismal performances in government.

Yes I know they are usually the junior party in government but to abandon all their ideals just to remain in government is not good for any party.

Yes, while not at the start of my life, I would be one of the university educated middle class voters who strives for as much as possible for her family, but also have worked all my life, and am a strong union member . I always believed maybe naively that this country could do well under a Labour government

I find your ' smug middle class looking for a veneer of social conscience' comment very lazy tbh.

There are many who would prefer to vote for a good Labour candidate but cannot afford to waste their vote on a party with no clear policy or mandate.

We would all like to think we live in a world where social conscience was not just available to one particular group of people, I think.

yes I agree..I encountered the guy at a health charity event years ago and I was less than impressed with his arrogant attitude and lack of manners that day…

as Labour leader, he didn’t have the personality, guile or overt intelligence to oversee a halt to the massive decline in support for labour here.. his party have 7 TDs now less then a quarter of what they had in the early ‘90’s.

Gilmore, Rabbite, Bruton, Howlin and Quinn…. Biggest problem was choosing leaders who were both ineffectual and un-relatable as regards the electorate…that’s been a huge issue.

Explain to me how Gilmore was ineffectual with the electorate ?

Rabbite and Quinn were well respected in Labour and perfectly capable of fitting for Labour issues. Neither were gonna win Spring/Gilmore numbers but Labour were not really aiming for those either as they came during seismic periods.

Burton was useless and Howlin seemed to know his stuff but didn't have the charisma to lead a party never mind a struggling one

Respected in labour ? There is the problem… they wernt respected or rated by the wider electorate… they did nothing to further labour in the eyes of the electorate…

Labour lost 26 seats at the election after Gilmore resigned… he left Labour worse off for his time there,