Irish politics discussion thread

he must be fairly edging it by now

How is everyone in Wicklow not dead by now, how how howwwwww

factor in the commute

theyll be dead in another 40 mins

According to political pollster, Sean Donnelly, the shortest ever sitting TD was Sinn Féin TD Pierce McCann. He was a TD for Tipperary East from 21 January 1919 to 6 March 1919 - a total of 44 days. He never sat in Dáil Éireann as he was in jail and died aged 36 in prison from the flu.

Wicklow's going to a 15th count, but this one should be quicker - just the surplus from the SD candidate going in. The Green got boosted back to 5th, so it's just not losing the lead of 400 votes over the lesser FG.

So is it all handcounts for every iteration

Or hand-sorts more to the point

Yes

SD winner is Greystones, as are Donnelly and Harris. Green candidate is from Bray. Other FGer is from down-county. But at this stage in proceedings who knows.

There's probably some electoral strategy in play here but why didn't SF field more candidates than they did?

they thought they were defending seats, since this is unprecedented they don't have the backing to finance all the campaigns they want to just on the off-chance

their last showing (euro/locals) wasnt great, nobody had a notion this was coming.

lol @ that pallid tory boy on the bbc with middle class geordie accent saying the housing crisis in ireland is all because of rent controls, that'll be news to millions

jesus

anyroad, we have pretty much results, last two seats look FF bound

FF 38
SF 37
FG 35
IND 19
GP 12
LAB 6
SD 6
PBP 5
AON 1
OTH 1

those of you still getting used to the system will note that transfers are pretty influential, looking at that

FF as a party will go with SF but they might well lose TDs

Greens and SF "ought" to be included in any new govt, if that matters, but would the Greens be prone to flake a bit at compromise?

FF, minus ten odd meatloafs, plus SF, plus Greens, still calls for another 7 or 8 that might be got from INDS?

Better to go for LAB/SD than that latter?

questions questions questions

Green got the last seat in Wicklow, good stuff.

How do SF feel about the Trots

Have we any recounts yet? Feels unusual to wrap everything up in two days.

SF's former acquaintances commonly derided as Trots by the theoretically-orthodox Official IRA iirc

FF will win the last two I think but they’ll just be one seat ahead of SF. FG are two behind. 12 for the greens is incredible

theres a lot of good stuff happening

lets hope the govt formed wont stymie all enthusiasm

Slight double take in seeing my brother announced as a Fianna Fail TD for Wicklow. I must tell him in the morning

twas a fuckin major shock to the sd voters last time around when he announced it himself after a few months

ok i think this is a good space and time to check something

having reaffirmed that our process is the best in the world, and the thread having by and large been a real cracker, and lookit still having a good deal of craic to go, and possibly even a government out of it

can we think about how we can assist and advise our cousins

or does our mishmash of a system allow us buffers that let things breathe that may not be the case in the polthreads of less civilised countries

even fred can behave himself in here, like. we def have something here.

Well here’s the thing, until, minimally, the Democratic presidential nomination process becomes a national primary w ranked choice voting the system guarantees constant screaming, hectoring, Morbs being Morbs, shakes being shakes, etc.

ok good, good

how do we get from *here*, ok, to *there*, hmm?

It’s one of those things I think where the ppl benefitting from the system in place are the ones wielding the power required to change it and so I really don’t know.

ok.

can you leave it with me, we'll get some very good people on it first thing.

Good breakdown of those SF surpluses and the boost to left candidates.

Yeah, that's good - my ascendancy friend is wary of them, and not without some justification, but they will need to keep up the leftism for a while in this three party state holy shit.

2020. bernie sanders party is the biggest of the now three significant parties in america, despite not running in all the states due to a clerical error. figures show that without this error he would dominate whatever ridiculous setup ye have that controls the money and the power. he might agree to a programme of govt with hilarys dems for stabilitys stake, but he wants to see if he can form one with the communist party of america firstx just for the lols.

in this scenario, bernie sanders party were killing nypd in the 90s and defend it today.

maybe that clarifies the kind of shift we're talking, idk

― BSC Joan Baez (darraghmac)

checked into this thread to see how 2020 ilx could get 420 new answers in an irish politics thread, was not disappointed

deems you're such a fascinating person, the soul of ilx in so many ways and in other ways so utterly exceptional and sui generis, i know nothing at all about irish politics (they had some sort of election i gather?) but i love reading how you view american politics

if we accept a three-party system, the issue with hillary's party - which is a party i used to belong to - is that they have in the end no policy and no principles other than compromise, which happens to be a principle that both bernie's party and trump's party both categorically reject - bernie stands for principle for its own sake, and trump stands for power for its own sake, with all other considerations being secondary.

there's my crackpot view of american politics, no fucking clue how this relates to irish politics, sorry for intruding

He had to go eat after posting that

It struck me after a few chats in the count centre that nobody in FF/FG really understands what just happened. Their narrative is still "idiots with unrealistic ideas". I know a 22 year old who voted SF after losing friends to suicide. What did you think he'd do?

— Colin McGovern (@cmcgovern) February 10, 2020

fg in particular have top-to-bottom been public and explicit in their disappointment with the impatience of the electorate, theyre going into "unpopular parent" mode

rush, the post was to try to impress to aimless the structural changes in Irish politics, i couldn't stand over the comparison at all really but it was a long weekend and ...i was hungry, also in the middle of a fight about ramekins

xp this is very true in my experience of that age group, they are much more political than my age group (understandably, and thankfully). Deems, any thoughts?

I was looking at photos of my old pair when they had me last week, and they looked like babies to me. They had me and a house of their own at an age that seems unreachable now, and it’s happened so fast that it’s no wonder people are voting the way they are. Yes, the young have always emigrated, but the ones who stay in the country have usually been able to afford housing and to send their children to local schools and stay part of the community. It’s one of the things I really took for granted about home, and I didn’t miss it when I left, but it’s an anchor the country needs.

And yeah, as long as FF/FG keep telling the young (and not-so-young) that the things their parents achieved without working themselves to the bone, with a normal income and even in many cases with one parent working are fantasies and they just need to shtop with the notions? This trend will continue.

i think that they are, following a worldwide trend, enabled pretty clearly by the politicisation of youth spaces online, much more *theoretically* politically interested.

i think theres a danger of handwaving upwards chronologically to other generations, as much as the generation im at the tailend of (in some ways, in some ways not) is prone to handwaving down.

the stuff you're hitting there in yr post, it runs deep. the pace of change has been enormous. no small country in europe has stood still, but yeah the differences in what our parents (im not that much fuckin older u chancer) *expected* and what we did, then what we didnt, is enormous. an enormously unsettled time with huge lack of empathy and understanding between successive generations and in that i think some of the 50s/60s/70-80s parallels with the states do ring true as set againt ireland 80s/90s/00s-now

the ireland that afforded family living on a single wage with the father securing steady work at 16 had so much wrong with it, and im not going to say baby out with bathwater, and for sure i know that you in particular would never idyllise what we were back then!

i think that- and we all may look the same to you- the leaving cert years (imo, right off the pan hot, this to me is our divider, not age, tbh) of the end of 80s and through the early 90s found that the world was good, that they were raised expecting to be able to make their mark on their own lives but not have it easy- london called, merikay called, aiming for rich was a mugs game (tho if it came, it came, it certainly wasnt prohibited) but middle class anywhere was in their sights and falling short of that would be a process or gradation not disaster

they did what they had been told and theyd been warned that the brits would be against them, that the yanks would work them hard but pay them well, that keeping yr head down, following the rules would keep you safe as long as you were known at the church and the club.

there were shibboleths and associations and sins of transgression and civil war politics were a huge feature of life but theyd learned to exist, grandad was dead or old.

that was the politics as they stepped into the age of discussing politics, and instead of the above payoff, the rules fell to pieces as the world fell before them unexpectedly.

right i better post this, i do all this on a temperamental phone yknow

this is blather off the cuff obv, david mcwilliams im not, thank fuck, so i havent sat down and put a cute sticker over any one suffering group like the mother's prodigy he is

Explain?

i think that- and we all may look the same to you- the leaving cert years (imo, right off the pan hot, this to me is our divider, not age, tbh) of the end of 80s and through the early 90s

ha

im only saying that the subdivisions in generations get relevant imo, the 25 year grading falls apart, every generation is reacting to the seismic events as affect them in a wide enough swathe

and

im not that fuckin old

and

imo the way (well, one way that im not sure ive seen) to most interestingly break things up for random musings like this is your era as a school leaver

i may have to read it all again in order to capture my own thread before moving on to the ireland online leaving cert years, as well as reminding everyone of how the goodfellas energy of the "fuckin hell getting rich is *easy*" LC89 crew went

I heard when you did it, it was called the Inter Cert.

Ok, I’m really going now.

firstly fp

secondly inter cert was the junior cert you fuckin tadpole

what do they be bloody teaching ye

lol am not gonna get near spitting out the remainder of most of this today, but cmere

golly what a day of politics we have planned for you, folks

xp in most of the country you do both state exams, maybe not in the wesht though

I look forward to yr response

when twas the inter cert, boys would be on the boat to london the next day, bedad

yerra youd be lucky man to do your inter cert

my aul fella had to be compelled to sit even the inter cert with promises he could go out on the fishing boats if he did his best

he landed up to the house with the results, second in the school, "chrisht" his aul man exclaims, "you'll be a priesht!"

he ran away that night to dublin, hopped aboard the first vessel that would take a 15 year old on and spent two years in norway on the boats.

he had made peace over the phone with the parents in the intervening, but hadn't returned until his 18th just in case

en route down the island home he spotted that it was biker's weekend, says jaysus ill have a look, spent from friday thru sunday night on the piss down the sandybanks and passed the house on the back of a harley wavin hallooo to the mother cos he was late to get back to dublin, disnt see them again another two years

thats my inter cert story now. an awful man.

explains a lot