Fine Gael positioning for the next election May 26, 2023
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
I’ve been hearing talk, not a lot but some, that there’s a mood in Government for an election soon after the Budget takes effect. Now who does that benefit more, Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael? And does that fit in with the current machinations around tax reductions for the ‘middle-income earners’? Certainly this solo run by Fine Gael, as Tomboktu noted in comments, raises questions:
“FG ministers didn’t intend ‘to upset anyone’ – Coveney”
What did he think the three Ministers were doing? One of them is a minister in the department of finance. They’re not stupid people.
So this was deliberate, and coordinated. Interesting that the Green Party is being very vocal with its displeasure of these goings on.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Yeah, real sense of battle lines being drawn. They won’t be going to the people on a formalised common platform anyway.
Greens probably desperate to avoid an election for as long as possible, more desperate than FF or FG.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very true re GP. So no common platform. I wonder how does that work for them?
LikeLike
I would have thought a common election platform by FG/FF might be considered as a bulwark against the SF ‘Marxist, loony-left barbarians at the gate’.
It’s not like the old days when FF could point at FG and vice versa that they’ll be better than the last lot in power.
As for the Greens, they’re desperately gasping for political survival as they’re being thrown under the power-driven expediency bus by FG/FF.
LikeLike
How does the constituency boundary review play into this? If there is an election before the commission does its work, does it delay implementation to the next election after the upcoming one? Any sense that particular parties believe that the changes are likely to be god or bad for them and that it could influence their tactics re timing of an election?
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a really spot on question. Anything I’ve read seems to be along the lines they assume that since it’ll be proportionate they’ll still be okay. But does that fully hold up at a micro level? I mean I live in MLM’s constituency. Say there was an extra seat – hypothetically, would that go to SF? As it stands are they likely to get two seats? According to Irish Election Projections they should, and the SDs and FG take up the other two. But say there were five?
LikeLike
The IT political podcast is on this topic this week.
There will be a significant number of additional seats and they will be spread unevenly because population growth has not been evenly dispersed. A lot of talk about splitting counties with five-seat constituencies (e.g., Wexford) into two three-seaters. What implications that would have for parties who might have hoped for the 4th or 5th seat in the current configuration?
It seemed like Dublin was unlikely to get many three-seaters and that it would be more prevalent in non-urban areas.
Does this suggest a significant reduction in Independents, for instance?
LikeLike
Hah, just started listening to that. If they do go that two three seater route that’s got to impact on Independents.
LikeLike
There’s also a good lot of Fine Gael TDs not running again. Presumably their replacements may not hold the seat.
Varadkar is also a brutal election campaigner.
The 2016 and 2020 campaigns were poor for them. They focused on the wrong things. I might be wrong but I don’t think tax cuts will appeal when so much else is in bits.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yeah, agree completely.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That – about Varadkar being a poor campaigner – really seems to have been forgotten. The 2020 election was disastrous for FG, and I’m pretty sure Leo would have gone soon after if it wasn’t for Covid. A counter argument might be that its not so much his campaigning as his politics. As IeL says, his brand of neo-liberalism is increasingly unfashionable and may well represent an idea whose time has gone.
But either way, anybody in FG expecting a surge in support approaching the next election is likely to be disappointed.
Though I’m not so sure about FF,
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah imo Varadkar is actually a terrible politician. He comes across as so smug and he can barely contain his sometimes very right wing opinions.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Funny, isn’t it about how that’s forgotten as you both say. BTW, 6to5, you suggest perhaps an FF surge. What makes you think that? It does feel like it could happen even a very small one.
LMS, very true. He is clearly instinctively and ideologically a good way right of where he usually tries to present himself.
LikeLike
“I don’t think tax cuts will appeal when so much else is in bits.”
Yes. Tax cuts would take two or three months to feed through to purses, wallets and tap cards, and for them to be noticed and appreciated, inflation would need to be much lower.
The real target for the cuts isn’t the squeezed middle but the stokable upper – the directors and self-employed professionals whose income is in six figures that doesn’t start with a 1. The USC has been a sore point with them, and Paschal Donohoe, whatever criticism may be made of him as finance minister, left it alone when they had expected a Fine Gael finance minister to cut it. The old system of PRSI stopped at a certain level and they could dodge passing tax on a lot of their income but USC is applied across all of their income and it guest the egos of many of them. MacNeill and her two amigos are striking them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Michael Taft has crunched the numbers: “The big winners would be higher earners – those that have a better capacity to absorb the current cost-of-living crisis.”
https://notesonthefront.typepad.com/politicaleconomy/2023/05/most-middle-income-earners-wont-benefit.html
LikeLiked by 1 person