Ireland General Discussion

[CumbrianLefty]

Must admit I hadn't even noticed these referendums were happening until very recently.

Which may tell its own story, of course.

[YL]

RTE have found somewhere where one of the referendums is winning:

Elsewhere in Dublin South Central, tallying of boxes in the Kilmainham area has shown 98 votes in favour of 'Yes' and 60 votes in favour of 'No' in the Family referendum.

In the Care referendum, for the same area, tallies show 73 votes in favour of 'Yes' and 78 votes in favour of 'No', making this one of the closest margins of any tally in the Dublin South Central count.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

The first government minister sent out to address the media was Eamon Ryan... as it always seems to be. FF/FG do seem to love him as a shield for literally anything unpopular.

[YL]

With 10 constituencies having declared the Family referendum is losing 66.3% to 33.7%. 9 of the constituencies have voted No, with Dún Laoghaire voting Yes by 50.3% to 49.7%.

Tallying made it clear that the Care referendum did worse.

[oldtimer]

"Unpopular government loses referendum" generic headline.

[LabourJersey]

How does this referendum loss affect FG/FF's decision for when to hold the next election?

Will this persuade them to wait until March 2025 to hang on, or would this encourage the need for a "reset" that only an election can provide?

[TheTide]

All of the polls seem to have had Yes comfortably ahead on both questions, albeit with a big undecided vote. Presumably their methodologies didn't account for the low turnout.

[JimJamUK]

All of the polls seem to have had Yes comfortably ahead on both questions, albeit with a big undecided vote. Presumably their methodologies didn't account for the low turnout.

The fact the polls had a very large pool of undecided voters should have indicated how low the core Yes vote actually was (helped by the fact the referendum had no direct stakes for actual policy like the abortion or gay marriage ones did).

[YL]

Final result on the "Family" referendum: No 67.7%, Yes 32.3%, turnout 44.4%. Dún Laoghaire was the only constituency to vote Yes.

[rc18]

"Unpopular government loses referendum" generic headline.

The 'popular opposition' also lost the referendums...

[ObserverIE]

RTE have found somewhere where one of the referendums is winning:

Elsewhere in Dublin South Central, tallying of boxes in the Kilmainham area has shown 98 votes in favour of 'Yes' and 60 votes in favour of 'No' in the Family referendum.

In the Care referendum, for the same area, tallies show 73 votes in favour of 'Yes' and 78 votes in favour of 'No', making this one of the closest margins of any tally in the Dublin South Central count.

Gentrification Central.

[Skill and Chance]

"All the undecideds are actually secret social conservatives" comes to Ireland?

[JimJamUK]

"All the undecideds are actually secret social conservatives" comes to Ireland?

That wasn’t the case in the abortion referendum, but it was certainly so in the gay marriage referendum. Given those 2 votes still resulted in a clear victory for the ‘progressive’ side, it seems yesterdays votes were more to do with the public being asked to vote on purely symbolic changes while an unpopular government refuses to tackle the issues they actually care about.

[brucejoel99]

"All the undecideds are actually secret social conservatives" comes to Ireland?

That wasn’t the case in the abortion referendum, but it was certainly so in the gay marriage referendum. Given those 2 votes still resulted in a clear victory for the ‘progressive’ side, it seems yesterdays votes were more to do with the public being asked to vote on purely symbolic changes while an unpopular government refuses to tackle the issues they actually care about.

Not just purely symbolic, but literally codifying that unpopular refusal to actually meaningfully tackle this issue with an explicitly neoliberal & pro-privatization emphasis that the state lacks social-care responsibilities.. Classic Leo Varadkar!

[YL]

And the final results on the "Care" referendum: No 73.9%, Yes 26.1%. Even Dún Laoghaire was nearly 58% No.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

"All the undecideds are actually secret social conservatives" comes to Ireland?

That wasn’t the case in the abortion referendum, but it was certainly so in the gay marriage referendum. Given those 2 votes still resulted in a clear victory for the ‘progressive’ side, it seems yesterdays votes were more to do with the public being asked to vote on purely symbolic changes while an unpopular government refuses to tackle the issues they actually care about.

Not just purely symbolic, but literally codifying that unpopular refusal to actually meaningfully tackle this issue with an explicitly neoliberal & pro-privatization emphasis that the state lacks social-care responsibilities.. Classic Leo Varadkar!

I found out that these referenda were taking place to begin with through seeing genuine anger at the wording of, and thus opposition to, the care amendment from people very interested in disability issues. That, and related motivations like personally knowing people who require (or even simply benefit from) social care that's not entirely restricted to the family unit, might account for the ~6% of voters who voted for the family amendment but against the care amendment. This is probably how I would have voted if I were Irish.

Varadkar is David Cameron for people who dislike the word "conservative," Exhibit I've-lost-count.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Varadkar is David Cameron for people who dislike the word "conservative," Exhibit I've-lost-count.

Eamon Ryan makes for a perfect Nick Clegg in this analogy.

[MayorCarcetti]

And the final results on the "Care" referendum: No 73.9%, Yes 26.1%. Even Dún Laoghaire was nearly 58% No.

The care referendum has actually took the record for biggest no vote percentage in a Irish referendum, just beating out the 73.1% against lowering the age to be eligible to run for president to 21 back in 2015 (ran at the same time as the marriage equality referendum). The family referendum meanwhile is 3rd on the list.

Here's the total list of rejected referendums and the percent of no votes.

[CumbrianLefty]

Holding referendums on things both profoundly vague and largely meaningless backfired, who knew?

[ObserverIE]

Varadkar is David Cameron for people who dislike the word "conservative," Exhibit I've-lost-count.

Eamon Ryan makes for a perfect Nick Clegg in this analogy.

No, not really. The Irish Clegg was Éamonn Gilmore.

Clegg took over a party which might not have been particularly internally-coherent but all the various strands (rural-dwellers in the Scottish Highlands, mid-Wales, and the west of England; young and ethnic minority voters disenchanted with Labour over Iraq and student fees; suburbanites with a social conscience) had one thing in common - they were "not Tory". Clegg consciously decided to explode that coalition in the delusionbelief that it could be replaced by a clone of the FDP.

You can argue that the Greens cover part of the old Lib Dem coalition, but only one part - upper middle-class urban voters who consider themselves "progressive". The Greens have never been a sizeable party in the way that the Lib Dems were and they have always been quite ideologically-coherent; they are essentially a "fundi" Green party choc-a-bloc with cranks of all stripes but one not much if at all concerned with economic equality or redistribution. They were carried into government more by Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough than by their own inherent appeal. Unlike Clegg, they haven't done a U-turn on their core policies; instead they have been largely indulged by the two larger parties on the Green Party activists' priorities in exchange for support on other issues.

The problems are that:

a) the Greens' priorities are massively unpopular beyond the "progressive" middle class and are especially so with rural and working-class voters;
b) the three Green ministers are seen as detached from reality and incompetent.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Varadkar is David Cameron for people who dislike the word "conservative," Exhibit I've-lost-count.

Eamon Ryan makes for a perfect Nick Clegg in this analogy.

No, not really. The Irish Clegg was Éamonn Gilmore.

Clegg took over a party which might not have been particularly internally-coherent but all the various strands (rural-dwellers in the Scottish Highlands, mid-Wales, and the west of England; young and ethnic minority voters disenchanted with Labour over Iraq and student fees; suburbanites with a social conscience) had one thing in common - they were "not Tory". Clegg consciously decided to explode that coalition in the delusionbelief that it could be replaced by a clone of the FDP.

You can argue that the Greens cover part of the old Lib Dem coalition, but only one part - upper middle-class urban voters who consider themselves "progressive". The Greens have never been a sizeable party in the way that the Lib Dems were and they have always been quite ideologically-coherent; they are essentially a "fundi" Green party choc-a-bloc with cranks of all stripes but one not much if at all concerned with economic equality or redistribution. They were carried into government more by Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough than by their own inherent appeal. Unlike Clegg, they haven't done a U-turn on their core policies; instead they have been largely indulged by the two larger parties on the Green Party activists' priorities in exchange for support on other issues.

The problems are that:

a) the Greens' priorities are massively unpopular beyond the "progressive" middle class and are especially so with rural and working-class voters;
b) the three Green ministers are seen as detached from reality and incompetent.

Very interesting points! I should clarify, I meant no real reference to deep ideology in the comparison. And I’d agree that Eamonn Gilmore and Joan Burton compare similarly well.

I merely meant in the sense of “third party leader joins right-leaning/neoliberal coalition, betrays voters, senior coalition partner blames literally everything that goes wrong on them, party and leader’s popularity collapses as a result.

The way Eamon Ryan seems to carry the can for every unpopular coalition policy makes me think of Clegg.

[ObserverIE]

Very interesting points! I should clarify, I meant no real reference to deep ideology in the comparison. And I’d agree that Eamonn Gilmore and Joan Burton compare similarly well.

I merely meant in the sense of “third party leader joins right-leaning/neoliberal coalition, betrays voters, senior coalition partner blames literally everything that goes wrong on them, party and leader’s popularity collapses as a result.

The way Eamon Ryan seems to carry the can for every unpopular coalition policy makes me think of Clegg.

The thing is that they haven't betrayed their own voters so much as p*ssed off everyone else's.

[CumbrianLefty]

No, not really. The Irish Clegg was Éamonn Gilmore.

And the Irish Labour Party hasn't really recovered, and quite possibly never will.

[ObserverIE]

No, not really. The Irish Clegg was Éamonn Gilmore.

And the Irish Labour Party hasn't really recovered, and quite possibly never will.

Kelly was inching - well kind of inching - towards refocussing on economic issues, but the problems were a) that he's still remembered and disliked by the general public for his role in the coalition, and b) he lacks even basic manners and thereby antagonised his party colleagues (having met him briefly at the famous long count in Longford-Westmeath in 2016 I can confirm the latter personally).

The Dublin Bay South by-election was an absolutely Pyrrhic victory for them. It's a very demographically odd constituency; a quite deprived working-class minority in council estates in the city centre, a large and very affluent Old Money majority once you travel beyond the canals, and very little in between (and much of what middle-to-lower-income demographic there is is not franchised because they're not Irish or UK citizens). It's rather like Richmond Park or possibly Wentworth (Australian readers can correct me here). It has a self-image (at least in the western parts of the constituency in Rathmines and Ranelagh and the area between the South Circular Road and the canal) of being "progressive" and it suited Bacik down to the ground once she was first mover for the by-election. But the south-eastern quadrant of Dublin is a complete demographic outlier in the 26 counties and Bacik would be absolutely unelectable anywhere else. The by-election gave her an image as a "winner" and the fact that she's personally personable meant that she was then in a prime position to take over when Kelly was ousted, but she has zero, zilch, nada appeal to anyone outside that "progressive" middle-class academic/media/NGO bubble.

PS: And the boundary changes absolutely screw them in that Duncan Smith, who is the only figure young enough not to be associated with the Gilmore years and grounded enough to have possible wider appeal, sees his constituency split in half and redrawn as a 3-seater where his vote last time was about 8%.

[YL]

No, not really. The Irish Clegg was Éamonn Gilmore.

And the Irish Labour Party hasn't really recovered, and quite possibly never will.

Kelly was inching - well kind of inching - towards refocussing on economic issues, but the problems were a) that he's still remembered and disliked by the general public for his role in the coalition, and b) he lacks even basic manners and thereby antagonised his party colleagues (having met him briefly at the famous long count in Longford-Westmeath in 2016 I can confirm the latter personally).

The Dublin Bay South by-election was an absolutely Pyrrhic victory for them. It's a very demographically odd constituency; a quite deprived working-class minority in council estates in the city centre, a large and very affluent Old Money majority once you travel beyond the canals, and very little in between (and much of what middle-to-lower-income demographic there is is not franchised because they're not Irish or UK citizens). It's rather like Richmond Park or possibly Wentworth (Australian readers can correct me here). It has a self-image (at least in the western parts of the constituency in Rathmines and Ranelagh and the area between the South Circular Road and the canal) of being "progressive" and it suited Bacik down to the ground once she was first mover for the by-election. But the south-eastern quadrant of Dublin is a complete demographic outlier in the 26 counties and Bacik would be absolutely unelectable anywhere else. The by-election gave her an image as a "winner" and the fact that she's personally personable meant that she was then in a prime position to take over when Kelly was ousted, but she has zero, zilch, nada appeal to anyone outside that "progressive" middle-class academic/media/NGO bubble.

PS: And the boundary changes absolutely screw them in that Duncan Smith, who is the only figure young enough not to be associated with the Gilmore years and grounded enough to have possible wider appeal, sees his constituency split in half and redrawn as a 3-seater where his vote last time was about 8%.

How do you see the differences (such as they are) between Labour and the Social Democrats?