Sunday and other stupid statements from this week: Elections special!

All contributions welcome.

From this morning’s Sunday Independent:

Parties of the left need to face their fears and get into government

Because that worked so well the last time there was a chance to do so. 

A former political correspondent writes:

Sinn Féin’s problem, though, is that anti-establishment voters now have a range of options who are expressing their frustrations with more vehemence than Sinn Féin. The so-called hard right is fractured and incoherent but it took votes from the Sinn Féin base last weekend and is likely to do so again.

It’s another reason why the Coalition parties need to catch the tide of public opinion soon, before it inevitably ebbs.

‘So-called’?

A former TD writes:

Simon Harris and Fine Gael were rewarded for responding to changing public mood on migration in recent weeks

Someone with a similar problem writes here:

Finn McRedmond leaves out the word ‘far’ in the following analysis, right the way through her article.

The headline story – general to Europe – from this weekend’s elections has been the rise of the right. Marine Le Pen had such a good showing that she has all but bounced Emmanuel Macron into an early election. The Alternative fur Deutschland – so right-wing that even Le Pen finds it unpalatable – has grown and consolidated support across Germany. Even in Ireland, where the establishment centre emerged as the clear winners, the right still made modest progress.

The ‘right’ – eh?

A day after multiple Sinn Féin councillors are quoted in the Irish Times as criticising the election strategy of their party, guess who wrote this:

Sinn Féin’s collapse in support over the last year from opinion poll levels in the low to mid-30s to just below 12 per cent in the local elections is dramatic. Explanations are probably as diverse as they are difficult. And the party will not permit any public postmortem or inquest. No elected representative is allowed to criticise the party’s strategy or leadership. It appears to have lost the protest vote – even if the twin topics of housing and health on which it waged political war since 2020 have not “gone away”.

Tuesday morning the Irish Independent had this round up of party strengths as the Local Election counts continued (still on the linked thread at 8.17am) :

26 minutes ago

Tale of the tape: how each party fares so far, with 937/949 local election seats filled

Fianna Fáil – 244

Fine Gael – 242

Sinn Féin – 99

Labour – 56

SocDems – 35

Greens – 34

PBPS – 13

Aontú – 8

Ind/Other – 216

Actually, as RTÉ noted at the time 8.17, Sinn Féin was on 100. Old habits, etc.