Irish Politics Thread

I got what I got from what I read. Simple as that.

No.euro sceptics as far as I know. Fine gael are very pro eu.  Sinn fein would be eu critical. 

Healy raes will be re elected and could probably get a 3rd seat.  

FF always pushed itself as the party of small businesspeople (usually men). After multiple electoral successes from the mid/late 90's to middle of the 2000's, they forgot about those lads and went after the big businesspeople, who of course, have fcuk all affiliation to anything or anyone bar their bank balances when it comes down to it. They got on famously for a long time, and ordinary Joes didn't really mind as FF were cute enough to give a bit back to them too. This was more by accident than design. Then they managed to ruin the entire country for decades when it all went belly up. 

Teachers, feck knows what they think about anything, but they'll be definite about it, even in the face of overwhelming conflicting evidence. Very dogmatic individuals. It's probably an even enough split to be honest.

FG was traditionally the party of farmers, especially the bigger ones. Actually, that's after reminding me of something, Apres Match did a whole show on Election 1982, with real footage interspersed with their dubbing of political figures of the day, and political commentators now. There's one excellent line in it (inserted by Barry Murphy & Risteard Cooper as spoof political commentators) explaining the difference between FG & FF. 

''FF were fellas from the farm who put on suits and went into the city looking for votes, FG were lads from the city who went out into the country wearing suits looking for votes'' There's more than a grain of truth in it. Worth a watch aside from any election. https://youtu.be/ZuH_rZFGFXo

That aside, near enough any farmer who isn't FG is FF, it is more or less that simple. 

Eurosceptics in main parties yes, I'd imagine there are, but they tend to keep the head down generally. If something or other happened that they thought euroscepticsm was something they could exploit to their advantage, they'd do it tomorrow. Generally, Irish politicians don't really believe in anything much though, the main parties are all essentially centre-ish, and they'll move a little right or left depending on the prevailing mood of the electorate without any great difficulty and how the all important numbers stack up in the Dáil. 

Not too many far right candidates thankfully, I used to think until quite recently that a far right party would never achieve any great success here due to us being ruled by possibly the largest far right party in the world for decades, up until quite recently (albeit not necessarily from the Dáil) , but with the sheer amount of binary positions on fcukin everything been taken on social meeja, and the recent experiences of our neighbours, the Tans, ya couldn't rule it out completely in the future.

No they are still centre left in the classic European social democratic mode.  

It's a crowded field with greens and the Social Democrats there and parts of FF wanting to be in that space and Sinn Fein. 

I would say centre left in the classic social democratic model. They are in opposition so probably a little more left than they were in gov but that’s really nuance. 

There isn’t really a socialist party in Ireland that wants to go into government  

We can agree that’s Labour are not socialists and are a centre left party and not a left wing party. I don’t believe SF are either.   The centre left is a crowded field and it comes down culture and trust rather than policy really.