Will FF have sufficient numbers to take over after 9 years effectively in opposition.

Will a coalition be formed with SF?

Will Labour lose more seats?

Martin currently 4/6 fav with Leo 11/10

There won’t be a clear winning party anyway so it all depends on who the smaller parties will do business with, and there’s always a smaller party ready to sell their soul to get in 

I would spoil my vote if I was at home. There is parties here and in France I could vote for with a clear conscience.

I think that will be evaluated and that annoying phrase “the National Interest” will be invoked. Either to explain the reasoning for staying together or splitting up.

It suited FF and FG last time. It kept Kenny as Taoiseach and it out FF back in a position of influence within a single electoral cycle. This time FF stand to gain more seats and FG lose Government. I’m not sure FG will play the “national interest” card to prop up FF, especially if the election is dirty.

I’m not sure a coalition is possible simply as there is no interest. Back in the day the centre left Labour Party and centre right PDs made ideal coalition partners. But the latter doesn’t exist and the former remains so badly burnt that they won’t do it again. Ditto the Greens who were chastened by the experience. Sinn Fein will undoubtedly want bigger numbers and influence before they do it. And the freak show parties are just perma opposition who won’t discuss it. That leaves the Independent Alliance and the SDs and FG/FF sympathetic TDS to do the business.

I would fully agree PR being far better. 

You can be a member of a small party which has a Parliamentary Party and a councillors forum. You can hamstring major parties via coalition. You can influence the debate as a legitimate player in the debate. 

The Irish system, while locked to an extent is not closed off like it is in the UK.

PM why couldn’t you vote for the Socialist Party, the Workers Party, People Before Profit, Solidarity, Rise it some of the left wing Independents.  

Don't think any of them would be left wing enough for him!!

Rubbish the only reason there was no coalition the last time and again may not be this time is the numbers and the FF AND FG do not want to go in with sin Fein or with each other’s.  

If the numbers allow it the larger party of FG and FF will lead a coalition with a mix of greens labour and social Democrats and or independents. 

Whatever about any misgivings I might have about any of them, none of them have are likely to stand in my home constituency, apart from the independents, who are usually diabolical.

The numbers existed to prop up parties, but nobody wanted to write their own death note, and it would have required mass cooperation. The lack of interest came first which gave rise to the lack of numbers.

There was no numbers to form a coalition without ff and fg joining each other or Sinn Fein.   The smaller centre  parties such as greens labour and social democrats were only going to go into government rather than support a minority gov.  They will all go back in again if numbers suit.  

I’m honestly not sure. With SF covering certain common ground the LP could be absolutely dispensed with and the rebuilding job would be almost unworkable. The GP are also going to be wary, and there is this “anti capitalist” wing that to me seems more suitable to Solidarity or RISE, and they’ll be consulted.

I could see the SD’s though. Especially as Murphy is an excellent yet pragmatic politician who I feel would see government as the way to get things done.

Are you proposing a FG/FF/GP/LP administration? Or one with confidence and supply from one of the big parties?

Don't buy the notion Greens or Lab won't go into government either, Green supporters would be voting for them with the intention they try to get into government in order to set an agenda around the Environment/Climate change, and preferably have an immediate effect, while there's so few Labour TD's actually left (ha, unintentional wordplay there)  the odds are that they won't give a single bollix about the longer term aim of rebuilding the party, just get one or 2 of them into Mercs in the short term and take what they can get out of it. 

If they chose the right Minister(s) to represent Labour in a Government and get a suitable portfolio to match (Housing be a good one, difficult enough, but probably not too difficult to improve on the current bunch)- that's probably as good a way for them to return to the public political consciousness over the next few years as mouthing some oul guff from the other side of the Dáil that we've all heard before anyway. 

When ya look at the personal success (to their pensions) of Ross, Halligan & Boxer Moran from a very small pool (all became Ministers/Mins of State) of Independent Alliance TD's, it isn't too difficult to see a similar group forming once elections are completed, and likewise, the SD's might expand at that stage without getting any of their actual candidates elected. 

 

I am not proposing anything.

I am saying it will either be a min gov with ff or fg in power or it will be a coalition.led by ff or fg backed up by greens labour and social Democrats and maybe some independents.  

That's my reading of what I think is likely. 

Okay. I guess it is possible.

Can't disagree with that. FF have been able to stand back and watch FG mess up time and time again over the last 2 years with the housing, healthcare and homelessness situation. 

I don't for one second believe that FF will do any better in relation to those matters but FG have done such a poor job that I'd be shocked if they are the majority party going forward.
 

FF were supporting FG in government the entire time. They literally couldn't have done it without them. 

This will then create an opposition which is one of the major players, and will expect more from the Me Feiners. The Independents could form a powerful block too, which might be influential in creating a government. Hopefully all the Trots get bumped out.

That will f**k up the blue shirts, surely?

Heino is one reason.

The only people it may affect is people travelling 3-5 hours for the match, and there will be f**k all of those anyways.

So it will make zero impact in my view. 

However small numbers do make a difference in an irish election.  The last seat in a constituency can be determined by what people have put on their 5th or 6th preference. Those final seats could determine whether ff or fg are the largest party or if a coalition us possible or not.  So every vote will count on this as its not like the UK where first past the votes means many votes are meaningless. 

Very.

Saw Emmet Kirwan on Twitter saying that the number of people who didn't vote in the last election was greater than the number who voted for FG. Now that is depressing.

Definitely need the sarcasm font!

At this stage id take a coalition of anyone except FF/FG/Lab just to see what happens. Be nice to get screwed over by someone new

Up until recently ff and fg got 80 % of the vote. They now get about 50%.   That's a huge reduction. 

A coalition of anyone but ff and fg and lab is extremely unlikely as those.3 parties will get about 60%

But it would depend on how much one party might get to be able to cobble something together.

You make an interesting point about the reduction in the vote share. Even now, you couldn’t promote a Mullingar Accord like in 2007 as you couldn’t even be sure a basic threshold would be reached to make it worth discussing.

Your first point doesnt make sense.  Currently ff and fg and labour have about 60% share of vote.   As a result it's impossible to form a gov without them or their support like sham wishes for above  

My point is it depends on how much of the 60% they get.

If one party gets 40% that will make a major difference.

That is true regardless how that 60% is split.

Sorry, what I read was that you’d need a form of coalition between FF/FG/Lab. your post seemed to suggest that. Especially with the reference to Lab, whose vote share is small and will undoubtedly stagnate at its current low level.

The is no doubt that FF and/or FG will lead a Government. However, the split of the vote would determine who might be able to go in with them. A large enough share of the 60 % could necessitate cooperation with less coalition components or reliance on a single coalition partner and sympathetic independents.

I was replying to Sham it was obvious. Sham said he wanted a gov without any of those three parties 

Not from what I was reading. But anyway. I didn’t actually read Sham’s Post.

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

Until recently, we had that problem in Scotland for decades with people blindly voting Labour - "I dunno anything about politics mate but I'll probably just vote fir Labour cos ma Maw and Da always vote for them and so did ma Granny and Granda ..." which consequently resulted in meatheads like Ian Davidson, Brian Donohoe, Anas Sarwar and John Robertson among many others getting elected. It was feckin depressing. 

I hope you lads don't mind but as an outsider I have a few questions about the upcoming election which interest me. 

What parties tend to appeal most to voters who may be say for example - a small business owner, a teacher, a farmer or a nurse ?

Are there any Eurosceptics in FF or FG or the other parties ? I realise of course that the "Irexit" movement in Ireland is very weak.

Are the Healy-Rae's likely to be re-elected ? (I saw that video of them having a screaming contest with MacSharry in the Dáil )

I wish you all well for your election 

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.  

SF have tried to portray a reformed side for the EU. That’s based on Brexit, so total Johnny Come Lately to any sort of pro-eu rhetoric.

They’ve opposed everything that involved Irish integration within the EU. I’d be interested to know what the Shinner approach would have been had it been a “Lexit” led approach. The vast majority of the Irish left, apart from Labour would be Eurosceptic.

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" rel="nofollow - 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.

Well aware of it! The worst thing the Brits ever did was push the church underground, we will be ripping the roots out for generations while the other two keep planting them. Gombeen ****s.

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. 

And no parts of FF have ever been within a country mile of it! The broadchurch nationalism if SF is a mixture of all from left to right and there isn’t much I could agree with the SDs on. The Overton window has shifted so far right that it confuses people as to what the centre-left actually is. When you have people throwing out ‘Trots’ as an insult in 2020 you know there is a problem.

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  

The classic social democratic model is socialism. The classic parties have, mostly, moved away from it in Europe.

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.

Contact your council's franchise section.  Whatever you local county council is. 

Such hassle

If you’re referring to my post mentioning the Trots, that wasn’t meant as an insult. The history of the Socialist Party and SWP, which was the original home for some of these people were certainly Trotskyite. And the Irish hard left spends most of its time calling each other Trotskyites.

I dont think I am.  key difference as I see it is who owns and controls the means of production.  In socialism the key industries are owned by the state. 

The social democratic parties are not trying to change this on a large scale, but instead use the tax system to transfer the wealth.  

I think some parts of FF, SF and Labour and Greens are fishing in a similar pool which is where many Irish people are which is that the state does not control the means of production but distributes it via the tax system.  

There is probably 15% max support for socialist policies in Ireland. 

What's your alternative in someone registering to vote.

Online form here, takes a minute.

I have no problem with that term, I have a lot of respect for it. ‘Trots’ is most definitely a tabloid insult.

That was how it read. I’m not going to drag this into a debate on ideology, as it is pointless in Ireland. Until we fully remove the grip of the Vatican anyway. 

I think Corbyn had a socialist manifesto not a social democratic one.  I think Blair had a centre right manifesto like Macron in France and not Social Democratic ones which you see in Denmark and Finland and Germany etc.

Ultimately, Ireland is a small enough country that “centrist” parties can raise spending or shift to the left fiscally on an election by election basis. 2007 was a year of auction politics. Bertie’s speech at the FF Ard Fheis made numerous promises. The metric was spending and who could outspend the other.

Nationalism in the country is revolutionary as opposed to reactionary, hence the far right make little or no inroads save for occasional noteworthy electoral performances.

The smaller the country within the EU the easier it is for the established parties to blow the right way.

Well, i didn’t mean it that way. It was a statement rather than an insult.

Spending money while having low taxes is not left wing its populist. 

Corbyn’s position was very much to the right of the Norwegian and Danish parties of similar view and history. I’m not sure about Finland.

Calling the likes of Corbyn etc “Trots” would definitely be derogatory and tabloidy. But the Irish left (SP/SWP) was all of the Trotskyite mindset. I can remember which one, but one or the other was affiliated to and international Trotskyite group.

True, but it depends on what you mean by low taxes. When you actually look at the Irish taxation system, personal taxes are actually quite high and we confuse it with the corporation tax rate.

Yes but to the left of their government policies over last 25 years or so. 

Again, I have no problem with the term ‘Trotskyite’. Calling anyone who subscribes to such a view, and in many ways I would include myself, a ‘Trot’ is meant as dismissive and belittling. Given your obvious contempt of the left, I assumed that’s what you meant. I apologise if I was wrong.

Taxes in Ireland are low for corporations.  In 2007 we had transational taxes such as stamp duty, rather than property tax or rates which are far more predictable.  

In addition in 2007 if you earned under 30k you paid very little income tax which is unusual in europe.  

This is offset that out of your post tax income you have to pay childcare etc etc.  

10% of workers pay 60% of the income tax.  (Does  not count VAT etc)  

In ireland you hit the high rate of tax quite early, 35K I believe   

Not the Labour governments, that’s the point. That’s why it has all gone silly now.Obviously, Corbyn would be to the left of the current government in Norway and would share a lot of common ground with Frederiksen in Denmark.

Also, the introduction of things like USC was another tax which contributed to earnings returning to the public coffers. In Ireland it is possible at a certain level to return more than 50% of your pay packet to the Government.

In fairness, my views on the Irish left are somewhat at odds. Ireland has had and has some fantastic left wing politicians. Christy Burke, Tony Gregory, Joe Higgins and Catherine Murphy were and are outstanding politicians. But I’d probably dislike the Irish SP and SWP and their various umbrella organisations more than any other elected left wing group in Europe.

Thata not true.  Break that down.  How would you pay more than 50% when a portion of your salary is not taxable and another portion is 20% and then goes up and usc added on brings the marginal rate to low 50%.  

So how would 50% of your overall salary be gone in taxes unless you were on savage money 

As I said, “at a certain level”. It’s high, but it does happen.

Of a complex tax calculation? You hit the nail on the head when you said “savage mone.