Where do I fit in in Irish politics?

Trotter

I've always had an interest in politics and I'd like to play a closer part in the whole thing. I've taken the political compass test but I'm not too sure where it matches to the Irish political spectrum of political parties.

Personally, I feel more linked to the Labour party but not in the extreme.

Where do these results put me do you think?

Lockstep

Given those results, I'd say you'd fit quite easily into the Labour party (left of centre)

Although you'd presumably find people like yourselves in most of the main political parties given how broad they are (I've known people in Fianna Fail/Fine Gael who were far more left wing than others I knew in Labour)

Hagar

Not what I was expecting at all, I always thought I was a bit of a capitalist hard-liner.
It turns out I'm a bleeding-heart jelly-baby.

Trotter

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Given those results, I'd say you'd fit quite easily into the Labour party (left of centre)

Although you'd presumably find people like yourselves in most of the main political parties given how broad they are (I've known people in Fianna Fail/Fine Gael who were far more left wing than others I knew in Labour)

Interesting! That's where I suspected that I'd be.

Lockstep

I'm a pinko

leninbenjamin

heh, that thing doesn't apply to Irish politics in the slightest. most Irish political parties have long left any idealogical foundations far behind in their pursuit of power/seats in the daíl. there are obviously exceptions, but by and large they seem to be on a case by case basis.

and for the fun of it, i'm

Cokehead Mother

Would've thought I'd be more to the right.

bigstar

viva la revolution

The Volt

Looks like I'm Ghandi

HalloweenJack

dsmythy

Last time i did it it had me dead centre and about 3 boxes up towards Authoritarian. What does that even mean!

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

GhostInTheRuins

Here's a chart from that website that supposedly shows where all the Irish parties would fit on the grid

RNL

I've taken this a few times over the past five years and gradually become more and more tucked away in the bottom left corner.

philologos

Not sure which political party suits me at all:

Fat_Fingers

hmmm.. i did not expect this!

ChocolateSauce

Take this one with a pinch of salt, I come up as about 50% of the way the the bottom left, but if I put myself on it, I'd be 85% libertarian and 35% left economically.

Húrin

You cannot decide which political party you like by looking at a dot on a graph. That quiz is not Ireland specific. The issues are Ireland specific.

pokerpaddy

Trotter wrote: »

...matches to the Irish political spectrum of political parties.

I'd say that you're not represented by any political party, Irish politicis is power focused and not issue focused. Representation is something we hear around election time.

Also - with the political compass, i like what they're doing, but their questions are left-focused, and seemingly churn out many people in the lower left of the chart (admittedly could be because most people doing the test are online and smart = liberal lefties )

thebigcheese22

Hey OP so have ya decided that the Labour Party are right for ya?

We'll embrace you with open arms!!! The more the merrier :pac:

BroomBurner

Any party to suit a left-wing milatarist?!
Kind of like if you crossed a Guardian reader with a Daily Mail reader (I don't read the Daily Mail...)

OP, maybe do a quick audit on a few individual party members views and see how many from which party you agree with.

Trotter

thebigcheese22 wrote: »

Hey OP so have ya decided that the Labour Party are right for ya?

We'll embrace you with open arms!!! The more the merrier :pac:

I'm disillusioned by the whole lot to be honest. I bought the cheapest house I could 2 years ago, and now Im going to have to figure out how to pay for it having €3000+ less in my wages.

I'll look and see what labour's stance on this is. The way I see it, the richest people in Ireland are giggling at me.

nesf

There was a thread in the main Politics forum a bit ago where people added their scores to the following distribution. It gives you an idea of the ideologies behind the usernames: http://ibis.100webspace.net/index.php

Most people, unsurprisingly are in the bottom left quarter. Almost everyone is in the libertarian half when it comes to social issues. Given the average age (20-30) on boards this would be expected. As people age they tend to move right and upwards from what I've seen.

nesf

Trotter wrote: »

I'll look and see what labour's stance on this is. The way I see it, the richest people in Ireland are giggling at me.

Labour are the closest mainstream party to your views. The Greens aren't far away but I imagine you're less than impressed by their performance in Government.

Frank007

I'm exactly what a PD should be

dlofnep

Tech3

heres where I fit in, not too sure what party would be right for me

Lockstep

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

Here's a chart from that website that supposedly shows where all the Irish parties would fit on the grid

Meh, I definetly would put the Socialists higher up on the Authoritarian scale and Labour further left on the Collectivist scale.

nesf

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Meh, I definetly would put the Socialists higher up on the Authoritarian scale and Labour further left on the Collectivist scale.

Not with their proposals for tax cuts in their last election manifesto which is what that graph was based on.

Lockstep

nesf wrote: »

Not with their proposals for tax cuts in their last election manifesto which is what that graph was based on.

The cuts were in the standard rates of tax (cutting it by 2%), idea being that it was too high for the standard rate of tax.
Progressive taxation and all that jazz.


I remember asking the local Labour candidate how Labour planned to offset better public services with a tax cut, he said better efficiency of taxes, closing off tax loopholes, ensuring higher tax bands for the rich.

nesf

kickoutthejams wrote: »

I remember asking the local Labour candidate how Labour planned to offset better public services with a tax cut, he said better efficiency of taxes, closing off tax loopholes, ensuring higher tax bands for the rich.

But Labour said little of that, especially the higher tax bands for the rich in their manifesto. Doorstep promises and the opinions of individual candidate do not a party line make.

Lockstep

nesf wrote: »

But Labour said little of that, especially the higher tax bands for the rich in their manifesto. Doorstep promises and the opinions of individual candidate do not a party line make.

Not really, I was working for him in the election.

Labour advocated cutting the standard tax. Fair enough by me, I wouldn't say cutting the standard tax from 20% constitutes free market policy, I'd say it's more in line with socialism (or given that it seeks to retain capitalism; social democracy) given that it involves progressive taxation.

nesf

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Not really, I was working for him in the election.

Labour advocated cutting the standard tax. Fair enough by me, I wouldn't say cutting the standard tax from 20% constitutes free market policy, I'd say it's more in line with socialism (or given that it seeks to retain capitalism; social democracy) given that it involves progressive taxation.

Well it's very centrist really. Tax cuts for the worse off rather than tax hikes for the middle class. To the left is the territory of the old Labour party that would favour 60-70% rates at the top level of income and similar. Labour have moved decidedly to the centre with their proposed policies in the past decade.

Lockstep

nesf wrote: »

Well it's very centrist really. Tax cuts for the worse off rather than tax hikes for the middle class. To the left is the territory of the old Labour party that would favour 60-70% rates at the top level of income and similar. Labour have moved decidedly to the centre with their proposed policies in the past decade.

Fair enough it's more centrist, but it's still not what I'd deem Labour to be right on the left right/scale.

Labour has moved further to the left with Gilmore however. He's attempting to bring back a more old school Labour.

nesf

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Fair enough it's more centrist, but it's still not what I'd deem Labour to be right on the left right/scale.

Meh, it only depends on where you put the centre point. If you're drawing a graph for the last 10-15 years, Labour at the last election were to the left. If you're including parties from the 60's and 70's they'd be on the right compared to the old school leftist parties.

Much of a muchness tbh. It's all just lines in the sand. Much easier to just agree that Labour are very much the leftist party of the big 3.

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Labour has moved further to the left with Gilmore however. He's attempting to bring back a more old school Labour.

Indeed. More's the pity.

Denerick

I've taken this over the last couple of years. Economically I've moved slightly to the right, but I've become more and more libertarian as my distrust of the state, and their supposed organs of control - the lily livered 'people' - grows more cynical every day:

Lockstep

nesf wrote: »

Meh, it only depends on where you put the centre point. If you're drawing a graph for the last 10-15 years, Labour at the last election were to the left. If you're including parties from the 60's and 70's they'd be on the right compared to the old school leftist parties.

Much of a muchness tbh. It's all just lines in the sand. Much easier to just agree that Labour are very much the leftist party of the big 3.

Meh, I see what you're saying.

Although I am still rather shocked that Labour has been placed on the right of the scale and a Libertarian Fianna Fáil. Centrist economic policies? To a degree but I'd say left on centre.

Denerick

The problem is that this test doesn't work on the basis of prevailing political categorisations. It takes authoritarianism, Libertarianism, Communism and capitalism as four distinct wholes; depending on your answers and how you correspond to these categorisations your 'pure' political compass emerges. Its a bit pointless doing the same for political parties, as they are by nature diverse and pragmatic, and not particularly bothered with political principles other than the base points of democracy, limited liberty etc. The compass is a much better gauge of individual political philosophy.

af_thefragile

Ha, i did it and this is what i got...

Kinda interesting to see how almost everyone got their results in the same quadrant.
I guessed i'ld be a lot more libertarian though... I'm really all about liberty and freedom...

Iwasfrozen

Mine

Mostly as expected, I've always considered myself a hard-line lefter.

S-Murph

An extremist and proud

markesmith

Pretty similar to a lot of you, to the left of Gandhi, bit more libertarian than Friedman. Makes you wonder why Labour doesn't do so well in Ireland. Apparently we're historically suspicious of socialism.

S-Murph

markesmith wrote: »

Pretty similar to a lot of you, to the left of Gandhi, bit more libertarian than Friedman. Makes you wonder why Labour doesn't do so well in Ireland. Apparently we're historically suspicious of socialism.

Or rather that the means to propagate and communicate politics and theories are controlled by for-profit media giants and state companies in the pockets of the present establishment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_ideology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

Its an up hill struggle trying to go against the grain of what is considered, through a process of socialization, 'common sense'.

Labour is hardly left wing either.

b12mearse

what is the political compass test?

Tar.Aldarion

Cokehead Mother wrote: »

Would've thought I'd be more to the right.

This is the most similar to the one I did a while ago, I was a little more left.

Mike 1972

Seems to be a problem with smaller parties. It puts me in the SDLP camp but the Alliance or Greens (which I thought I might be closer to) dont appear on the result (only the four largest parties here in NI are listed even though a previous question on which I thought I was most likely to go for had all of them)

The question on which I thought I was most likely to go for could have done with a "dont know" option as there was one party on there which I had never heard of before (and doesnt appear on the candidate list).

The rest of it is fairly well set up although I found myself having to vote "neutral" on bailing out Banks and Turkish EU membership when my position on these issues could be more closely summed up as "it depends".

Of course 99% of those who vote here come election day will do so on the basis of a hundreds year-old ethnic bunfight which is completly irrelevent to EU politics.

philologos

I've moved slightly further right, and more authoritarian.

af_thefragile

I have moved a lot right since i first did this test...
Well, i was a commie when i first did this test and now i'm a libertarian/anarchist. So guess its starting to show!


Also the i don't like the way the questions are phrased in that test. The questions have a very lefty tone to them.
No surprise why so many people are leftists. The test was surely designed by a leftist!

Mike 1972

Out of curiosity I tried it for a few different countries

I just had a look at where the UK (England) parties are positioned on the graphs. The results are a bit odd.

On the left/right scale the conservatives and BNP are dead centre with Labour slightly to the right and the Lib Dems a good bit to the left. and UKIP a good bit to the right

Tony Blair has a lot to answer for !

turgon

Im surprised by your result Jackass, on the authoritarian scale I thought you would be rubbing shoulders with Stalin

Mine changes every now and again. I started at somewhere like (-3,-2) and the last time was (3.5,-7.5) so its a big change. Thats only in the last 8 months, and especially in the last 2, since I started reading here more.

philologos

turgon: I was authoritarian and barely left until a few months ago. I've shifted across to the right mainly, I was never libetarian though. A few years ago I would have been a good bit further left.