Polling and polls

Paul Hosford had a good piece at the weekend in the Examiner where he argued that polling and polls are deceptive.

Just over a year after the Government was formed, the polls once again have Sinn Féin leading, with alarm bells being sounded about Fianna Fáil’s sluggish performance.

It’s deja vú all over again, as the great Yogi Berra once said. Part of this is simply frequency. Since the last general election, there have been 28 published opinion polls. That’s roughly one every two weeks.

Does the public mood swing to any great extent fortnight to fortnight? Is anyone, really, that mindful of a general election when the coalition looks solid, an election is four years away, and the country has had every type of poll it could have in the last two years? All debatable.

He’s right too that we’ve been here before. 2020 onwards saw a huge peak in SF’s nominal ‘support’ in poll after poll, only to be eaten away as the election drew closer. But let’s not overstate that peak. SF made it to the 30s, still well below FF in its heyday.

That said I’d be a bit sceptical of this:

Sinn Féin has spent much of the past five years looking like a party on the brink of power. 

It topped the popular vote in 2020, regularly polls near the top, and has successfully branded itself as the voice of voters  angry about housing,healthcare, and the cost of living. 

And yet, in general election terms, its path to government remains stubbornly uncertain.

Has it though? I think that’s an overstatement. It has looked like a party that might gain power, that has polled respectably given it had in 1997 just one TD elected. But however well many of us recall that election – and I do, that’s 30 years ago. And the political landscape is completely different now.

Hosford is correct that the arithmetic doesn’t quite stack up for SF, or indeed the left more broadly.

Irish elections are not winner-takes-all affairs, and governments are made in the space between parties rather than at the ballot box. 

Sinn Féin could again emerge with the highest vote share and still find itself locked out of power if Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael choose to do another deal — something both parties have shown they are perfectly willing to do, turning a once unthinkable coalition into a go-to centre holding option. Unless one of the Civil War parties blinks, Sinn Féin needs a crowded and potentially ideologically messy coalition to reach the magic number and that’s assuming that it can carry a large number of those seats.

Then there’s the question of whether there is a ceiling on its support and where it might be. 

That said something else is happening too. The Independent bloc seems to be subsiding somewhat, the ‘centre-left’ parties increasing their support somewhat, or at least moving back to the sort of vote share the LP used to have. And SF’s vote is ticking upwards slowly. Add to that the fact these parties are acting somewhat in concert – again let’s not overstate it, this isn’t the socialist millennia, but it’s not nothing either.

The context has changed. Does this mean FF and FG couldn’t cobble together another administration? Absolutely not, they are still at this point in a more favourable position all things considered than their opponents. But this isn’t 2022 or 2024.

As to the polls? Think numerous people have said it on this site over the years, best seen as potential indications of the direction of travel, not the destination.

Brian Hanley on: Ed Moloney, ‘truth’ and the Troubles

From Brian Hanley’s website – ‘Ed Moloney, ‘truth’ and the Troubles’.

That TINA theory about British Labour is looking pretty thin these days

To lose one aide is bad, to lose two? To have an ally in Scotland call for a resignation is dismal. But that’s the situation facing Starmer now.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is not resigning and will be “concentrating on the job in hand”, Downing Street has said.

Asked if Mr Starmer was going to resign today, the British Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “No. The Prime Minister is concentrating on the job in hand. He is getting on with the job of delivering change across the country.”

He described his mood this morning as “upbeat” and “confident” as he gave a speech to No 10 staff.

The remarks were before Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar called on Mr Starmer to resign at a press conference this afternoon.

Mr Sarwar is the most senior member of the Labour Party to call for Mr Starmer to go.

“The distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street has to change,” Mr Sarwar said.

Will he go? Have to suspect not. The Guardian noted that:

Starmer receives public statements of support from every member of his cabinet.

But why and to what purpose? That’s worth returning to in a moment.

The Guardian noted this:

Rob Ford, professor of political science at Manchester University, said: “McSweeney’s influence on the election strategy in 2024 was profound, for good and ill.

“He deserves a lot of credit for the exceptional efficiency of the vote and the strong performance in marginal areas. But he also played a big role in the neglect of safe Labour areas and a leadership which seemed to make a virtue of antagonising the progressives whose support Labour also needed.”

That, in a nutshell, encapsulates the idiocy of McSweeney and those like him who have driven the Labour Party ever rightward in the absurd belief that Labour voters will always stick with them come what may. The rise of the Green Party demonstrates the exact of opposite, as indeed does the precipitous fall of the Labour Party share of the vote in polls.

Still, the sheer lack of ability in government has been breath-taking:

Such was McSweeney’s influence on Starmer that one Labour source was quoted in the recent book Get In saying: “Keir’s not driving the train. He thinks he’s driving the train, but we’ve sat him at the front of the [driverless] DLR.”

Is Starmer not aware of this? Does he simply not care?

McSweeney proved to be a far less efficient government official than campaign mastermind, however. He was accused of presiding over a toxic culture in Downing Street, initiating vicious briefing wars against anyone who looked like a leadership challenge – including the health secretary, Wes Streeting, a former ally.

Far less efficient is a kind way to put it. Amateurish ineptitude would be a better term.

As the following makes clear:

Some say he was so fixated on strategising for the 2029 election that he forgot his role was to help Starmer govern. During his tenure, Labour seemed unsure of what it stood for. It U-turned on everything from the two-child benefit limit to inheritance tax paid by farmers. The support McSweeney had fought so hard to cultivate quickly bled away and Labour MPs became mutinous, blaming him for what they see as impending electoral disaster.

Truly it is not exaggerating matters to suggest that this Labour government has been catastrophically poor in office – but then what is the thread that runs through it? What is the vision, what is the element or elements that tie it together as a governing project? No one seems to know, now those involved and clearly not the voters who are voting with their feet. Which makes those Cabinet member’s messages of support seem, frankly, daft.

Many in Labour circles blamed him for running what they saw as a “boys’ club” in No 10 which rode roughshod over the party’s own MPs and obsessed about keeping their allies in place and their enemies out. The decision to appoint Mandelson in Washington was the ultimate example of that, his critics say.

Now, the party is haemorrhaging support on the left and right. McSweeney was said to have been obsessed with winning back voters who are now backing Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, while paying little heed to its core left vote who are increasingly attracted by the Green party under its new leader, Zack Polanski.

And there it is again. This idea that there can only be leakage to the right, not the left (few here are likely to be fans of Blair, but it’s notable how he was comfortable with a broader Labour Party, perhaps he recognised that given the chance left Labour voters might indeed decamp elsewhere). To then bring Mandleson back in was never a mark of genius but yet further idiocy, an inability to read the room, to see the broader picture, perhaps most fundamental of all to do what is right as against what appeared expedient given the seriousness of what Epstein et al represented, or indeed Mandelson’s own track record.

Far from McSweeney being an éminence grise, he has turned out to be a factional organiser pushed into an environment he simply did not appear to understand.

If ever there was a disastrous approach this is it.

The last line in the Guardian piece is telling:

May’s local elections could sound the death knell for Starmer. It remains to be seen how he fares without his most trusted aide, who installed him in Downing Street in a seismic victory but leaves him as the most unpopular prime minister in history.

He’s been two years in the job. That’s all. He had Sunak, Truss and Johnson as his predecessors. How on earth does one squander the opportunity that that represents? Many of us, I suspect, would argue that it was his wholesale trashing of the platform he was elected on that was the first and deepest error, one that meant that whatever his protestations he could never be a credible figure. After all, if he was willing to turn his back on those who had voted for him in the Labour Party, why would anything be different further down the line with the British electorate?

Ironically, or not, the polls suggest Labour’s descent has flattened out. This isn’t good news, not when the polls suggest its support is somewhere between 16% and 23%. It’s simply that there’s not much lower for it to go.

Is anything that happened this weekend going to improve that poll rating? Doesn’t seem like it does it?

If I was a Labour MP or representative or member I’d be eyeing those figures and wondering what it would take to change the situation around. Most unpopular prime minister in history. A raft of broken promises and u-turns. HIs chief of staff just resigned. His communications person likewise. Yes, what would it take to change matters?

Socialist Voice: February edition

The February issue Socialist Voice available online https://socialistvoice.ie

Billionaires Are Not Wealth Creators. They Are Poverty Creators: Eoghan O’Neill

In December, I argued that calls to “tax the billionaires” stop well short of the real problem. The billionaire is not a moral aberration or a failure of regulation. The billionaire is the logical outcome of capitalism itself. That argument dealt with redistribution and its limits. This article follows directly […]

US Empire Graham Harrington

We are now at a critical point in the history of imperialism. The US-led imperialist bloc is facing a challenge with the emergence of a more multi-polar world, led by the rise of China and alternative institutions such as the BRICS and the Belt and Road Initiative. However, imperialism is […]

The Transatlantic Alliance Is Alive and Kicking Fionn Wallace

Again, there is a lot of noise about the imminent end of the transatlantic alliance. ‘NATO may not survive the Trump era,’ reads a recent Time Magazine piece. ‘US intentions towards Greenland threaten NATO’s future. But European countries are not helpless,’ we are told in an expert comment for Chatham […]

The Limits of Charity Richard Mullen

The unprecedented real-time broadcast of genocide we witnessed on our phones for two years brought many new faces out onto the streets in protest against the extermination of Palestinians. “Politics aside”, some would say, “the suffering of civilians, of women and children, is heartbreaking, and it needs to stop.” This […]

Capitalism: An Inhuman System of Exploitation Tommy Mc Kearney

With Donald Trump drawing so much attention to his outrageous demands and acts of international piracy, it is hardly surprising that, with notable exceptions, little attention is paid in Ireland to problems caused by the European Union. One exception is the CPI. Opposition to the European Union has been party […]

Geo-Political Rivalry and Working-Class Insecurity    Niall Cullinane

In recent days, Irish media and the political establishment have sounded the alarm about the escalating dispute between the European Union and the United States, warning that new tariff threats and the possible unravelling of last year’s trade deal could have serious consequences for the Irish economy and jobs, particularly […]

“Trump’s Terrorism” in Minnesota is Radicalising American Liberals, Says Union Organiser Azzy O’Connor

On Friday, January 23rd, several thousand people braved below-freezing temperatures in Minneapolis for the first Statewide Economic Shutdown of Minnesota, a political strike and day of protests against the ongoing crackdowns by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The next morning, tensions surged again with the ICE killing of ICU […]

The Monroe Doctrine and the True Face of US Imperialism   Sajeev Kumar

US policy regarding Latin America is nothing new. The Monroe Doctrine (1823) established a US sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, which considers Latin America as the backyard of the US and treats any interference there as an act of war. The recent attack on Venezuela took place following […]

The Caracas Crisis: Imperial Aggression and the Lessons for the Left Eugene McCartan

Events surrounding the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro on 3 January by the US continue to cause confusion and division on the Left worldwide as people try to understand what happened. Many questions have certainly been raised by the events that unfolded on […]

The Financial Blockade: How OFAC Enforces Cuba’s Isolation:  Aida Ní Mhurchú

Société Générale was fined $1.34 billion for processing $5.5 billion in Cuba-related payments. ING bank was fined $619 million for Cuba wire transfers. European banks have been hit with 83% of all US sanctions fines. If a foreign bank defies OFAC, the US Treasury can cut off its access to […]

Irish Establishment Running Out of Road on Sovereignty and Neutrality: Jimmy Corcoran

The political and economic space in which the Irish state operates is increasingly shaped by the growing inter-imperialist contradictions within the NATO/EU bloc, which is itself a manifestation of the general crisis of capitalism. The tensions over Greenland are not an aberration but the latest symptom of a systemic process […]

From the Smuggling Narrative to the Engineering of the International Position: A Critical Reading of Israel’s Political Use of the Iranian Arming File in the West Bank: Dr. Rasem Bisharat

With Israel repeatedly announcing the launch of large-scale military operations in the West Bank, particularly in Nablus and Tubas, and more recently in Hebron, a series of reports published by Israeli and Western media during the final quarter of 2025 has resurfaced. These reports addressed what was described as “Iranian […]

Why is the US Interested in Greenland?  Máire Ruadh 

It’s a question asked by many working people. The US establishment already has access to Greenland’s rich natural resources, and NATO already has a number of bases there. The Danish establishment was happy with its subordinate relationship with the US and willing to allow the US to expand its military […]

From the Frying Pan of Danish Colonialism into the Fire of American Imperialism: Mary Graham

The rallying cry at demonstrations across Denmark over the past weeks has been: “Hands off. Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders.” On the face of it, a country united from left to right in resistance to US aggression. ‘We want democracy, we want freedom, we stand behind Greenland,’ they chant. ‘We […]

Trade unions:

When a Union Teaches You to Lower Your Expectations: Freddy Anubis

SIPTU presents itself as the largest force for organised labour in Ireland. Its scale is cited as proof of strength, of presence, of the collective weight of workers. Yet for many members, especially those in small and medium workplaces, the reality of SIPTU representation is starkly different. Instead of strength, […]

Culture:

The Iron Heel – First Dystopian Novel of Imperialism Jack London at 150: Jenny Farrell

Jack London’s journey as a socialist and a writer is a story of dramatic ascent and tragic decline. His socialism grew from lived experience: childhood poverty, hard labour in factories, and firsthand exposure to capitalism’s exploitative logic, crystallised in 1894 during his time as a hobo. On “The Road,” travelling […]

Shivaun O’Casey’s Intimate Portrait of Family, Art, and Communism: Jenny Farrell

Shivaun O’Casey, Sean O’Casey’s only daughter and now sole surviving child, has published a remarkable memoir. Born in 1939, she grew up in a highly political household: Sean defined himself as a communist for most of his life, and Eileen shared his convictions. Their home was filled with modernist art, […]

Political Statement 

Attack on Venezuela: Statement of the Communist Party of Ireland

The Irish Government’s response to the US attack on Venezuela is hypocritical and exposes the extent to which the 26-County State’s membership of the EU and dependence on foreign, mostly US, capital has undermined Irish neutrality. Micheál Martin, while refusing to condemn the illegal US actions in kidnapping President Nicolás […]

That Irish Times polling on neutrality

Not difficult to determine how Irish citizens feel about neutrality in the latest Irish Times poll:

…the addition of a guarantee of neutrality to the Constitution enjoys wide support, with majorities in favour among supporters of all the big parties. 

But the question of the triple lock is more divisive. While a majority of those who express a view (45 per cent) wish to keep the triple lock in place, a substantial minority (35 per cent) want to get rid of it, while 21 per cent say they don’t know.

Fianna Fáil supporters are more or less evenly split on the question (40-39 in favour of keeping it), Fine Gael voters want to get rid of it and Sinn Féin supporters are strongly in favour of keeping it, by a margin of two to one.

The Government has said it would bring forward the legislation later this year.

At the same time, however, voters strongly believe that the Republic should take more responsibility for our defence, with 85 per cent of respondents agreeing and just 8 per cent disagreeing. There is strong support across all demographics and among supporters of all parties.

In other words as mattes stand at the moment there is a majority of voters, though not a plurality, in favour of the triple lock. Pat Leahy who wrote the above suggests:

Long-time watchers of Irish politics are entitled to view this debate as ironic. When the triple lock was touted as a guarantee that neutrality would not be affected by the Nice Treaty, it was Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil who argued that the triple lock ensured Irish neutrality. Now they are arguing that its removal does not affect neutrality. Many of those who argued then that the triple lock did not safeguard neutrality now say its removal would be the end of neutrality. Take your pick.

That’s not the ironic contradiction he seems to think. Voters who are sceptical about the removal of the triple lock might rightly regard this as a part of a process of nudging this state away from its traditional military neutrality to something softer and more ambiguous and therefore want the status quo to remain. There are contradictions in the positioning of the triple lock in relation to the UN, which is weathering its own storms, but given the realities of the situation it is far from irrational for voters to choose to retain the measure.

Which also makes the remarkably vague term “Ireland should take more responsibility for our own defence” entirely logical too. There are good rational reasons for remaining militarily neutral (the term that the government itself likes to use) while buttressing our own defences to whatever degree is possible.

How the government negotiates this will be educative.

Left Archive: ‘Vultures Out!’, An Éirígí Special Publication – Summer 2021, Éirígí

To download the above please click on the following link.

Vultures+Out+Newsletter+Summer+2021Download

Please click here to go the Left Archive.

This document, published in the Summer of 2021 is a four page leaflet which argues that:

The vulture takeover of Irish housing has not happened by accident but by deliberate design. Guided by their own vested intersts and a blind ideological belief in the so-called ‘free market’ the establishment parties have rolled out the red carpet for the vulture landlords. Inside this newsletter you will find out exactly how Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, Labour and the Green Party all played their part in changing housing policies, tax laws and planning regulations to create the perfect conditions for a vulture feeding frenzy on Irish homes. 

It outlines “What is a Vulture Landlord?”, looks at the impact of same and then offers examples of ‘estates [that] fall to the  vulture landlords’. There’s also a ‘Timeline of Betrayal’ which goes from 2010 to 2021 and details various notable points, concluding with this analysis of changes made in 2021 ‘in response to public anger over Mullen Park [Maynooth] the government promised strong measures to stop the vulture takeover of housing:

Instead of strong measures, the government only made minimal changes to planning rules and stamp duty rates. The vultures will easily overcome these changes by charging higher rents and by directly building housing estates that will then be rented out to desperate tenants paying extortionate rents.

The leaflet also highlights how Éirígí has been ‘fighting the Vulture Landlords since 2016’ and argues that ‘Universal Public Housing is the Solution’. It also points to how ‘earlier this year Éirígí launched Ireland’s only national interactive vulture tracking map’. It offers suggestions for ‘How you can help’ and suggests that readers ‘Join Us’ asserting that ‘[we are] a campaigning political party with a fifteen year proven track record of fighting for the rights of working people across a wide range of political, economic, social and cultural issues’.

Sunday and other stupid statements from this week

All contributions welcome.

The Sunday Independent sub-editors hard at work today on Eilish O’Hanlon’s article on Epstein and Mitchell:

Receiving some emails from the disgraced financier is should not be enough to destroy a reputation 

The piece does not note that Mitchell has resigned from certain positions in public life – clearly not an admission of guilt but indicative that the association raised questions.

Shockingly, Queen’s University ­acknowledges there are “no findings of wrongdoing by Senator Mitchell”, simply that it is “no longer appropriate” for its “institutional spaces and entities to continue to bear his name”. That is a genuinely outrageous and scurrilous statement.

What happened this week is like something from the era of extra-­judicial shaming rituals in the Soviet ­Union, where those who had not broken a law but who had upset the comrades by their supposed deficiencies in character were publicly denounced.

Is it ‘like something from the era of extra-judicial shaming rituals in the Soviet Union’? Really? And is that an accurate characterisation of rationale for the show-trials?

A terrible argument in Starmer’s defence made in the Guardian here:

He could say that what has enraged so many, including among his own MPs, was his admission on Wednesday that he had known, when he appointed him, that Mandelson had continued his relationship with Epstein. But, Starmer could say, pointing his finger at the benches in front of and behind him, so did all of you. It had all been laid out, in detail, two years before Mandelson was posted to the US, in a JP Morgan report covered in the Financial Times. Why did so few of you protest at the time? Why, on the contrary, did the Westminster village, including Farage by the way, along with most of the media, support the appointment, declaring it a masterstroke?

A strange take here:

When Coppinger proposed her bill last Thursday to abolish three-day wait for abortions, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill announced the Government would not oppose it at this stage. I asked the Fine Gael press office if that meant that Fine Gael ministers Helen McEntee and Jennifer Carroll MacNeill would vote to abolish the three-day wait.

The reply was: “The ministers voted to restore the bill to the order paper, respecting the different views across the house.”

That is a nothing answer. Are they in favour of abolishing the wait or not? Why not just tell us?

In the face of this wilfully obtuse reply, all I’m left with is the record. By voting to restore Smith’s bill and declining to oppose Coppinger’s bill, they have aligned themselves with hard-left socialist politicians. What does that say about Fine Gael today?

That they’re broadly a socially liberal party? Is that a surprise to the columnist who asserts that they themselves are ‘pro-choice and voted for repeal’.

A commentator in the Irish Times argues that:

The message for the Social Democrats, Labour and the Greens in the current phase of political stasis is that they need to win over voters from Sinn Féin, rather than trotting after it. One way of doing this would be to present themselves as willing to go into government with any of the big Dáil parties to pursue their policy objectives. Labour and the Greens have done this in the past and have serious achievements to their credit.

Any of the big parties except Sinn Fein? Somehow he has also forgotten that the Green Party lost all its TDs once and all but one the second time and that the Labour Party lost so many that some thought it might never recover. A small price to pay to keep those ‘big parties’ in office – for him.

Another columnist in the same paper writes:

For the past decade, Ireland has enjoyed a period of sustained influence in British political life – throughout Brexit, via Joe Biden’s Washington, now with a Corkman advising a prime minister whose instincts were forged in Northern Ireland. 

But with the sacking-then-resignation of Peter Mandelson, former ambassador to the United States, this era of limited Hiberno-imperium may be about to come to a screeching halt.

Which is odd because last May the same columnist was painting this in very different terms:

Next year will mark a decade from Britain’s European Union exit. If a week is a long time in politics, so goes the cliche, then 10 years should feel like an eternity. Plenty of time, then, for Ireland and the United Kingdom to drop all those hostilities fomented over the Brexit years. 

At its peak, 2018 and 2019, Leo Varadkar was cast as villain-in-chief to the British state, while Ireland had its own fair share of schadenfreude to lob over the Irish Sea. Both bear responsibility for the collapse in that once-friendly acquaintance.

Now everyone with any eyes on the Anglo-Irish relationship will earnestly tell you things have improved since then, the nadir is over, what’s past is past, et cetera.

They are right, but they are neglecting to mention that things could still be much better, that the wound has not entirely healed. Instead of open upset, a stilted distance between these oldest and closest neighbours is still lingering.

‘Limited Hiberno-imperium’ or a ‘wound that has not entirely healed’. You choose.