European Parliament Elections 2024 - Friday, June 7th

Brussels Sprout

Leo Varadkar announced the date of the European (and local) elections today.

Reminder of our current sitting MEPs

Dublin

• Ciaran Cuffe - GP
• Clare Daly - I4C
• Frances Fitzgerald - FG (retiring)
• Barry Andrews - FF

Midlands - North West

• Chris MacManus- SF
• Luke Ming Flanagan - Ind
• Maria Walsh - FG
• Colm Markey - FG

South

• Mick Wallace - I4C
• Billy Kelleher - FF
• Sean Kelly - FG
• Deirdre Clune - FG (retiring)
• Grace O'Sullivan - GP

Apart from the two retirees all other sitting MEPs have announced that they are running again apart from Clare Daly and Colm Markey who have yet to indicate their intentions.

Ireland will have 1 extra MEP this time. This will go to the Midlands-North West constituency, which becomes a 5 seater. As part of this the boundaries have moved with the counties of Laois and Offaly moving back to this constituency from South.

The current candidate lists are as follows:

Some interesting names there:

• Aontu's leader and sole TD, Peadar Toibin running for a seat
• FF going for a 3 candidate strategy in Midlands-North West (seems potentially disastrous)
• Lynn Boylan aiming to win back her old seat in Dublin
• Housing Campaigner Rory Hearne joining the Social Democrats (seems an odd race to run in given his area of focus)
• The leaders of the far-right National Party (James Reynolds) and Irish Freedom Party (Hermann Kelly) both running
• Brid Smith retiring from the Dail but running for Europe
• ex-Green Lorna Bogue running in South for her new-ish party

With 12 weeks to go, no doubt there will be many more candidates added to those lists. It's relatively easy to run in these - Ireland South had 23 candidates last time out.

So who do you think will lose their seats? Who is best poised to gain? Any likely surprises?

L1011

MNW is going to be a mess for later seats. Ming, one assumes, is safe. If FG do give up on a second seat and just run Maria, she'll be safe. Carthy safe.

But for the 4th and 5th seat - FF could crash in to each other and transfer badly and get nothing. Potential FG2 could still be in the running. There's surely a seat for SF2 *or* for whoever gathers all the other transfers on the left.

There was ~80k FPV for looper Independents last time, this is presumably going to feed a lot of the far right candidates and with five seats there's a chance someone could scrape through; at the expense of FF or FG2 probably.

Brussels Sprout

Two more candidates to add to the list:

• South - Derek Blighe - Ireland First
• Dublin - Patrick Quinlan - National Party

As far as I know Blighe is a one-man band so don't think there will be any other Ireland First candidates. The National Party and Irish Freedom Party are now up to 5 candidates across the 3 constituencies.

It will be interesting to see if these far-right parties transfer votes efficiently to each other. If not then they are just hurting each other by splitting that vote.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121897045#Comment_121897045

For the 2020 GE, there were some things issued by the rag-bag suggesting transferring amongst Irexit/National/Renua anyway.

Did it work? Not really. And at the 2019 EEs, the various right wing groups then managed to transfer absolutely everywhere, in some cases more going to Labour or the Greens than another right wing candidate.

Will be interesting to see if Renua's latest zombie "The Centre Party" runs anyone. They wouldn't even be considered Centre in the US where "left" means "centre right" and "right" means "somewhat to the right of Mussolini"

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121897807#Comment_121897807

Someone's been updating their website* anyway. The Latest News page has a few articles published in the past week.

Their twitter account is oddly dormant though. The last tweet was from a year ago although someone has updated the name and handle to match the Rebranding. You'd think that would be the ideal site for any budding far-right party these days to get the message out.

*Something was bothering me about that website and then it hit me. I realised that there is no information about anyone in the party. No photos of their leaders, funders, supporters. No physical address, phone number - not even an email address. The only names anywhere are the purported authors of a couple of the articles in their latest News section (Karl Michael & Andrew Kelly). Instead they just have some generic stock photos including this one on the main page which looks like something from a White Nationalist site in Tennessee (it's got big "Blood & Soil" vibes):

L1011

FG apparently going down the Celeb route for Midlands North West again - Nina Carberry.

I mean, it worked for McGuinness (TV presenter) and Walsh (Rose of Tralee)...

They also don't have the legs to run 3 candidates safely though.

Geuze

If FG are running both Maria Walsh and Nina Carberry, does that mean Colm Markey isn't running?

I had to look him up. Has he made much impact?

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121910858#Comment_121910858

He's running alright.

In the old days, FF and FG would always run 3, or 4, or 5 candidates for a 5 seater. With their current vote share, it could go horribly wrong.

blackwhite

I'd missed that Hearne had jumped ship from PBP to join SDs.

Topgear on Dave

Likewise, I was also totally unaware that he was a Soc-Dem. An interesting selection.

Brussels Sprout

Was he a member of PBP before?

blackwhite

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121926195#Comment_121926195

Failed local election candidate for them in the past.

I suspect Hearne is more about promoting himself than being tied to any party TBH

Topgear on Dave

Are the Soc-Dems really that short of candidates?

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121926221#Comment_121926221

Yes

blackwhite

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121926221#Comment_121926221

I’d suspect they are focusing on local and general election candidates - European Parliament elections probably not their priority and just happy to have a high profile name there

Brussels Sprout

Additional Candidates Running

• Dublin - Clare Daly - I4C
• Dublin - Philip Dwyer - Ireland First
• Midlands NorthWest - Nina Carbery - FG
• Midlands NorthWest - Colm Markey - FG

Delighted to see Daly is running purely because I want her to lose her seat and hopefully be thoroughly rejected by the voters for all of her shilling for Putin and Assad. She took Boylan's seat in 2019 and I suspect it will be going right back to her this time.

FF & FG both running 3 candidates in MNW is insanity of the highest order.

Brussels Sprout

Markey, is in fact, not running:

https://twitter.com/RTENewsPaulC/status/1771560362262794501

L1011

That's somewhat surprising but makes the FG candidate volume less insane.

Good loser

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121925640#Comment_121925640

He irritates the hell out of me whenever he's on a show and he's on an awful lot of them. Likes the limelight I'd sa,y but his suggestions for fixing the housing issue and beyond brainless. Never yet heard him come up with a halfway sensible solution to anything. Doesn't like being criticised though.

Another one of Vincent Browne's proteges. Clare Daly, Mick Wallace types etc.

I remember when Syriza won the Greek election back in the day he was over the moon, the future had arrived etc etc; he went over to Greece to flavour the new Jerusalem. Linked it up to the Podemos advances in Spain. All such dreams now in tatters!!

blackwhite

He’s an ideologue - but tried to paint himself as an expert. Anyone as blinded by ideology as he is shouldn’t be presented by the media as an independent expert.

Pete_Cavan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121930994#Comment_121930994

Quite a gracious statement from him. I wonder will he run for the Dáil, could keep FOD's seat for FG.

dulpit

When do the candidate lists close? There's a real lack of quality in Ireland South...

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121948795#Comment_121948795

I believe it's 6 weeks beforehand so near the end of April.

jmayo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121894011#Comment_121894011

Walsh represents the modern woke FG and that is definitely going to go against her.

Remember this is the woman that told reporters visiting EU parliament that FF candidates for June elections were "male, pale and stale".

A lot of rural voters and particularly older FG voters would see no problem with male and pale unlike the lady that made her name in a somewhat weird beauty pagent.

Toibin is going to pick up lots of disenfranchised SF voters as the shinners have sat playing dumbo with their thumbs up their backsides as massive amount of asylum seekers/refugees dumped into towns and villages particularly in Donegal, Mayo, Roscommon.

That will also come back to haunt FG.

Cowen could get a seat back for FF.

scheister

I was discussing this last night

Midlands I see Luke Ming Flanagan taking a seat with SF and FG getting a seat each. FF is the vote management is correctly they will take the 4th seat. The FF/SF/FG likely fighting to see who gets the last seat.

I am not sure about the Soc dem choice, with a mainly housing policy back ground would the dail not be a better shout. Perhaps they are running him here to get exposure ahead of a dail run next time.

jmayo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121952872#Comment_121952872

So you are totally ignoring Toibin ?

The only TD in the Dail that told it as the actual public saw it with regards the referendums.

Toibin also has his old shinner credentials which appeals to thousands of disaffected SF voters and he also appeals to old rural voters with his stance on abortion.

I believe if he plays this right he could top the poll as the ultimate two fingers to the establishment.

Voting against government in a referendum isn't going to sate the anger out there at the mainstream political parties.

FG swapping to Leo Lite aint going to come anywhere near fixing the damage done.

Donegal going on population has the highest number of asylum seekers and Ukrainian refugees in the country.

Mayo, Monaghan and Wicklow are the next highest.

That is two more counties in that constituency.

All of this is happening in Donegal while the mica fiasco hasn't been solved.

And SF sit back getting splinters in their ass from the fence.

L1011

Toibin can only top the poll in his dreams.

Or possibly his nightmares - if he goes to Europe, they will not retain his seat in a by-election, and he will become irrelevant to domestic politics.

He has very little chance of being elected and has likely not realised that he would kill his party if he did.

dulpit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121953645#Comment_121953645

If Toibin wins a seat in Europe he'll run in next general election and get his td seat back, with his MEP seat going to whoever is next on his list. Win win for him.

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121953553#Comment_121953553

It's a folly to try and extrapolate from the Referendum result to other unrelated elections and candidates.

People voted No to those referenda for all sorts of different reasons. I'd wager that a lot of people voting no had no clue that Aontu were the only party in the Dail who were calling for a No vote.

People's positions on Abortion don't tend to attract too many votes purely becuase it's low down on the list of priorities for most voters. That's why Renua failed and why Aontu has not had much success so far.

If he goes full bore on Migration then yes I'd say he'd have a shot since there's likely a free lane for a sitting TD speaking critically of current government policy. I suspect that there will be other candidates running who will out-flank him to the right on that issue though who might mop up that vote and not transfer it back to him.

I don't give him any chance of topping the poll.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121953678#Comment_121953678

Up to 9 months of being electorally irrelevant and not being on every politics show that uses him as the contrarian viewpoint.

He is the party. 9 months in Brussels will kill it

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121953706#Comment_121953706

Mep Jobs bring incredible salary and incredible funding for offices and staff etc.

It's probably the biggest gravy train in the Democratic world.

That buys a lot of publicity, swings and roundabouts.