FF/FG/Green Government - Part 3 - Threadbanned User List in OP

What do labour stand for anyway? i mean whatsdiffeeent about them vs the current govt.

Painting labour as right wing is complete wishcasting. Most leftist governments have a user pays principle where the biggest users are also the wealthiest, our left doesn't and wants nobody to pay regardless of where they are on the wealth scale (and I mean serious left not the Marxist yahoos who want everyone to work for free in exchange for state defined vouchers).

"Gleefully" stuck out to me as someone with an agenda or an extremely short memory.

Though, if I was a libertarian, my goal would be to get SF into power and have them muck things up so badly that there's a big swing to libertarianism, it's unlikely to occur any other way.

Interesting survey, 86% of people in Ireland are satisfied with the way that democracy works in their country, the third highest proportion in the EU.

You may not have noticed but SF has been shifting to the centre. It began when MLMcD replaced Gerry Adams as leader. SF had already taken over much of the Left of the political spectrum that had been abandoned by Labour. FF had abandoned much of the centre ground under Martin and his aim to be the best FGer ever. The only option now is for FF and FG to merge because if they leave too late, there will be a Reunited Ireland and SF's representation will have increased. Labour's current problem is that it is becoming FG-lite with student union overtones. The soft floating vote that would have given FF a first preference and a lower preference to a Labour candidate has much more choice.

The next GE is going to be a major battle for transfers between FF and FG. If both parties make a mess of it, they are looking at seat counts in the low to mid twenties. The opinion polls don't show this yet because they are focused on being small sample first preference national polls. If those lower FF and FG transfers become siloed (staying within the respective parties) then the damage to FF and FG could be worse than if FF and FG at least had an electoral pact and a joint candidate selection strategy. A selected FF/FG candidate might have the votes for a seat but an FF candidate and FG candidate might end up fratriciding and letting a candidate who was slightly ahead of both win without having reached the quota.

Regards...jmcc

FF and FG merging is just a wet dream of Sinn Fein supporters who cannot see an alternative way into government. Unless and until Sinn Fein are able to face a single entity, they will have to share power, and that is anathema to them.

I don't think it will take until 2029 to see a collapse of a FF/SF government.

Exactly this.

Have a read of this from Shane Coleman in the Business Post on Sunday analysing SF's slip in the polls.

"Has the Sinn Féin bandwagon stalled? For the past two years, it has been regarded as a de facto truism in political and media circles that Mary Lou McDonald will be Taoiseach after the next general election. But two well-regarded polls, including one in this newspaper last weekend, have seen the party drop 4-5 points to hit its lowest level of support since 2021.

This isn’t crisis territory for the party – not close. The Red C and Irish Times polls show Sinn Féin is still, by some distance, the most popular party in the state. It is between 7 and 10 points ahead of its closest rival.

But it is also clear from analysis of all opinion polls that the party’s seemingly irresistible rise peaked last July at around 36 per cent. That heady level of support put the party close to overall majority territory: in the 2011 election, Fine Gael was just three seats off a majority with 36.1 per cent. But the more recent poll puts Sinn Féin closer to 30 per cent support (29 per cent in the case of Red C). That’s also well off the very high levels some internal, private polling was showing the party at a while back.

Sinn Féin don’t do panic. They will rightly argue that even 30 per cent would secure them at least a third of the seats in the next Dáil – which, given the likely 20 extra seats on offer due to population growth, would translate into 60-plus seats. That’s up from the 37 they won in 2020.

But this would still leave the party potentially 30 seats shy of the number required to form a government. This plateauing of support must be slightly concerning for party strategists.

What’s behind it? Nobody around politics is quite sure. Some put it down to the party’s habit of exponentially dipping a bit in support and then shooting up again. But a year is a long time to be dropping/plateauing.

Another glass-half-full take is that, similar to the autumn of 2019 when it was struggling in the polls but busy looking after the party engine, Sinn Féin is now concentrating on party organisation rather than day-to-day politics. The word is, it is lining up impressive new candidates for next year’s local elections across the country. And that’s the current focus.

That makes sense, but are there are other factors behind the slump? One view is that the party put huge energy and resources into opposing the repeal of the eviction ban and got no traction out of it (although that could change if the impact of the removal starts to bite). The party has been very low key since then.

There is also a sense that Sinn Féin is struggling to find a balance between its leftist, radical roots and the more centrist perspective it knows it needs to adopt if it is to go into government. It seems a given that Sinn Féin will crush the smaller parties and independents on the left in the next election.

If it had run enough candidates in 2020, the likes of Bríd Smith, Joan Collins, Paul Murphy, plus many Social Democrat and Labour TDs, probably wouldn’t be in the Dáil today. But Sinn Féin always think long term – two elections ahead, rather than one – and they are still warily keeping one eye on their left flank to ensure their rivals there don’t come back to bite them.

Perhaps efforts to be all things to all voters have left the party stretched too thin. Can the party continue to make soothing noises to corporate Ireland that it will be business as usual if and when it is in government, and still seek to present itself as an anti-establishment antidote to the insider club that has run the country for the past century? Trying to have their cake and eat it is apparent, too, on environmental policy. Sinn Féin lack any credibility on green issues and appear to be making it up as they go along.

The party is also walking a fine line in its approach to the retention of the Special Criminal Court. While it has softened its outright opposition, the Republican movement’s historical antipathy to the court means it still has to adopt a more nuanced approach. One wonders how that plays in working-class areas where community activists – who see first-hand the intimidatory tactics adopted by criminal gangs – have little time for esoteric and philosophical opposition to non-jury trials.

Meanwhile, some speculate that the publicity surrounding gangland figure Jonathan Dowdall’s time in the party has been a factor in the curiously low profile of senior figures in recent months. The recent front bench reshuffle, which saw the demotion of a number of previously well-regarded figures and the promotion of the likes of Rose Conway-Walsh to the important public expenditure portfolio, also suggests those at the top feel they are not making the most of highlighting the government’s shortcomings.

There is no doubt the party is overly dependent on a small number of that frontbench – McDonald, Eoin Ó Broin, Pearse Doherty, Louise O’Reilly and David Cullinane – to push the party line. Against that, those five are hugely impressive, and the absence of any public backbiting or bitching from the other 30-plus sidelined TDs shows how strong party discipline remains – in sharp contrast to all other political parties.

Sinn Féin enjoys many other advantages over its rivals – huge financial resources, a grassroots activism and hunger for power long diminished in the traditional parties, plus the fact that it is untainted by having been in government south of the border. The return of power-sharing in the North, with a Sinn Féin First Minister, will also give the party a boost – if and when it happens.

So, the latest polls notwithstanding, it remains impossible to imagine Sinn Féin not being the biggest party in the next Dáil. It is also still too early to conclusively determine whether those polls are part of a downward trend or a levelling off in support (and perhaps a temporary one at that).

But the big fear for Sinn Féin’s leadership is that after the next election, they will be left with no partner to go into government with. A vote north of 30 per cent reduces the odds of a government being formed without Sinn Féin.

But if Sinn Féin support slides down below 30 per cent, then the chances of the current coalition being returned inevitably rise. With the economy and public finances going well and the cost of living crisis, if not gone, then perhaps abating, there is cautious but increased optimism among ministers that they can be re-elected. The odds still favour Sinn Féin, but the polls over the next six months will tell a lot."

The Greens are polling at 2%, lower than Aontu.

The Irish electorate cares about climate change in theory, and so long as the measures to mitigate it are painless or positive - electric buses, solar panel grants etc.

But as soon as theres talk of actual pain - things like reducing the dairy herd or additional consumption taxes - theres almost no electoral support for doing anything. As the Greens are now finding out.

Yes, that is why I said "for 40 years". The 1980s are 40 years ago now you realise?

3 years 5 months is also stretching the "short term" definition rather a lot, generally speaking once a government serves multiple years its not regarded as having been short term. The 1982 government that only lasted 241 days, and the 1981 government that lasted 212 days, are the most recent truly short term government we've had.

We've never had a party that is populist, slightly left of center economically, that claims its the most republican party in the state, and has a history of supporting armed conflict a few decades previously?

How exactly are SF in 2024 going to be different from FF in 1974?

1987 and 1989 are not 40 years ago. You chose to double down...

No please let this be a joke. The thought of seeing him more on TV is nauseating to say the least.