The DUP refusing to let Sinn Fein have First Minister means a December Assembly Election. Will the numbers change in a fresh Election?
What parties seats are vulnerable or who might make gains in any constituencies ??
Now just how would you 100% know that? You obviously have no idea of the murky goings on north of the border.
local nationalists also spread rumours that the murdered man for whom the retaliation took place, was connected to loyalist paramilitaries. I couldn’t possibly Clain I know 100% he wasn’t.
I can tell you paddy has changed dramatically since getting out of the heat of sectarian south down for quite a few years. It is my view that he clearly respects my local community now.
God knows if it's true and I'd welcome proof; cos apart from anything else I'm not sure what value a Dublin accent handing out fliers or knocking on doors would bring. If anything there's an argument it'd have the opposite effect: all Politics being Local after all. Drawing equivalence with russian interference though is OTT. It's scarcely interference for one thing.
In any case, Sinn Fein are not the first multinational party to exist, they're not even the only all island party either what with PBP or The Greens (themselves cross continental!); and unless there's explicit laws saying you cannot have foreign national canvas this whole argument of the DUP smells like another attempt to stir fear and resentment over Dem 'Uns rather than try to figure how to move the province forward.
Cos again, their entire philosophical baseline exists as a dyke against what it sees as encroaching change. It's ideologically allergic to forward momentum or basic consensus because it is literal conservatism in action: that is, conserving a status quo that is slowly becoming extinct.
Have to say the chagrin about the Shinners just being more popular with the electorate is funny.
First it was they are standing too many candidates and Unionists can’t get elected.
Then it was they are having children as part of a some sinister SF plot.
Now it’s they are using fellow Irish people to help them.
Brilliant really.
Ever hear the phrase ‘paper doesn’t refuse ink’?
Green/PBP/WP supporters go North to canvass for their parties; Labour and occasionally FF supporters go to canvass for the SDLP.
The UUP used to get Tory figures over to try boost them, long since stopped as the Tories are toxic and more aligned to the DUP
Was reading an interview with him today where he said commuting ‘would not be as good as living here’.
Don’t tell downcow or his ‘decent’ identity will be removed! 😁
"We have knowledge across Northern Ireland of Sinn Féin workers from Wexford, from Dublin, from Limerick, from Cork, being bussed into areas to get the vote out."
And is this true? Were the Shinners busing up party workers from the south to canvas in the north? Would this not be seen as interfering in the elections of another jurisdiction? Like the Russians supposedly meddling in USA elections or Brexit etc.
Sinn Féin can argue it is all one party and free to do this but getting to and/or crossing the line.
Any read Shane Ross's biography of Mary Lou? He paints a very interesting portrait of a SF Ard Fheis, where he observes the northern and southern contingents of SF and concludes that they are like oil & water and never the twain shall mix.
Apparently Kielty is still going to live in London and just commute across once a week to do the show. Kinda like the situation when the Act of Union was in place!
And here we are, myopia and inert strategists by example.
“Whilst the DUP vote held up well, whilst we held our seats, I think that we need to work with our fellow unionists to increase turnout in areas where unionists expect to do well and to ensure the splitting of the unionist vote is avoided and people transfer.
“I accept that unionism needs to recognise the task in front of it, we need to do more to get our people out to vote, we need to do more to win seats.
...
He said: “We have knowledge across Northern Ireland of Sinn Féin workers from Wexford, from Dublin, from Limerick, from Cork, being bussed into areas to get the vote out.
I dunno how else to see this kind of thinking. The entire DUP narrative is, by the tongue of its leader, inherently self limiting and besieged by its own insistence the world has "unionist" and nothing else beyond it except foreign hordes up to such underhand tactics as ... .. encouraging people to vote! Scurrilous. No reflection that it might need to redefine itself for a broader church, perhaps no longer buying a strictly domineering sense of Unionism. Naw. It also almost reads like the Silent Majority fallacy: those Unionists sitting at home twiddling their thumbs while the Tadhgs steal their lunch.
And yet these clods who would get outplayed by everyone around them still hold the Executive to ransom.
hilarious interview. basically unionists deserve council seats even if they dont win any democratically. personally I think its a good view into the headspace of unionism - it just cant accept that it needs to share.
downcow - will the unionists go back into stormont and if not why not? also, whats your personal opinion on the stormont scenario? I think they should go do what they're paid to do and represent people.
"change from Shinner supporting republican to a well rounded young man who respects his neighbours, whatever their background."
Yet another disgusting post from you downcow with no evidence whatsoever to back it up.
I've no issue with Paddy identifying as a republican or supporting Sinn Fein (although to my knowledge he has never declared either)
What I do have an issue with is your belief that he has "changed" into a "well rounded young man who respects his neighbours, whatever their background"
He's always been that. You insistence that he hasn't is straight out of the UFF phrasebook when they tried to justify the brutal murder of his father by spreading false rumours that he was connected to paramilitaries when he 100% was not.
If they can get something that will save face from the British government, they will go back in. They have a track record on this 'Never Never... well maybe' behaviour with the AIA, The GFA, parades and flags etc.
As a strategy, that that behaviour is only eroding the Unionist vote, seems to completely escape them.
After these results and especially after the pathetic showing of the TUV will Jeffrey Donaldson be able to manoeuvre the DUP back into Stormont and implementation of the Windsor framework?
There are many people from both communities in NI working in southern media and entertainment. Kielty is not an exception to the rule.
Dearbhail McDonald, Susan McKay, John Kelly, Brian Kennedy, our most popular soccer commentator George Hamilton and on it goes.
And I think he lived in London for a while also.
He did a good segment on Dublin pubs a few years back which is probably still on Youtube.
Good to have someone in that role championing both Ireland & NI, which is how it should be, in my humble opinion.
"Opposed" may be a a strong word, but it's not just that 70% (NI) or 75% (RoI) of voters didn't vote for SF; they all had other candidates, other programmes, that they preferred to SF's offering. And that's my point about coalitions; SF's vote abundantly qualifies them to seek to build a governing coalition with other parties, but it doesn't give them a democratic mandate to implement their programme over the protests of other parties. The programme for a coalition government will have to be built on elements of several parties' programmes - either elements which are common to the various programmes, or elements which the various parties can all agree to support.
'Opposed to' is too strong Peregrinus.
I didn't vote SF because I opposed the PBP or Soc Dem or Lab candidate. I just preferred what SF offered this time. Someone else might prefer FF's offering this time to SF's.
Couple of thoughts:
Yes, SF is successfully consolidating the nationalist vote. And, I suggest, also successfully building the nationalist vote (in a way that the unionist vote is not being built by anybody).
I'm far from saying that SF can't build this kind of relationship with coalition parties; I'm just saying that their capacity for doing so, or even their understanding of why they should do so, is wholly untested. For a long time they were on the fringes of Irish political life, where it's quite easy to maintain a basically oppositional stance towards all other parties. Suddenly now they're at the centre, where that stance will be hugely damaging to them, because it may keep them out of government, or it may destabilise any government of which they form a part.
SF have been very adept at repositioning themselves and developing new positions and new poltical strategies that have succesfully garnered votes for them on a scale that would have seemed unimaginable before, so I certainly don't see them as incapable of change. But they are going to have to be just as agile in making the changes needed to become a successful party of government. If they develop a Tory-like sense of entitlement that, because they are the largest party, they have a natural right to form a government and to implement their programme more or less in toto, that's not going to work out well for them.
As for winning over the middle ground — there definitely is a new and growing middle ground in NI. But it doesn't consist of swing voters who might choose between unionist and nationalist parties. My sense is that the proportion of NI voters who are genuinely open to voting both for the "right" nationalist part and for the "right" unionist part is still tiny. The middle ground/unaligned parties in NI attract votes from (a) people who could vote for a nationalist party but would never vote for a unionist party; (b) people who could vote for a unionist party but would never vote for a nationalist party; and (c) people who reject the unionist/nationalist dichotomy, see it as harmful or regressive, and would be unlikely to vote for either a unionist or a nationalist party.
Which means, if I'm right, the portion of the middle ground that could be won over is quite small — only one of these three groups would contemplate voting for a nationalist party and, right now, if they did vote for a nationalist party it might be more likely to be the SDLP than SF.
SF's strategy for maximising the share of the middle ground vote that they can win is a tricky one, since it involves distancing themselves from militant nationalism. And doing that, obviously, could alienate some of their core support.
Noted issues with democratic decisions too, from the Anglo Irish Agreement to the GFA, to a majority of MLA's wanting legislation enacted, to the election of First Minister.
The DUP has noted issues with socially illiberal attitudes WRT to abortion and same-sex marriage. Or indeed, the age of the planet in some single examples. You vote for these people so I presume you're well aware of this.
For someone who loves trotting out that acronym like it makes NI special among the ~30 nations on this continent... you'd think you'd be keen to have its various economic issues addressed by sober politicians? But yeah, sure sure, affect outrage and insult about your person rather than address the immediacy of the North lacking the institutions to solve its economic problems.
What 'nonsense' is this now?
P.S. Kielty got the show host job because he has been popular in Ireland for a long time... he was popular long before he decided to share his views on the murder of his father by the local UFF.
Journalist Sam McBride got himself into some hot water yesterday for echoing (accidentally or deliberately) the Paisleyism's of 'they breed like rabbits' in the Sunday Independent (NI edition)
He claims he wasn't conciously aware he was doing it and who knows, I think what is more revealing of Sam and journalists like him, north and south, is a deep seated bias. It is here in this paragraph written loud and clear, a UI is a 'threat'.
Maybe if so called independent journalists looked at a UI as a possible solution to the north's problem's we might go forward instead of stagnating or regressing. I'm not talking about them becoming advocates for a UI, just to look at it without blinkers, like the one above.
I am so glad you have all followed paddy. Have you watched him change from Shinner supporting republican to a well rounded young man who respects his neighbours, whatever their background. I genuinely believe his involvement in prime time tv will be excellent for educating open minded southern viewers. He will challenge the nonsense portrayed of OWC regularly by ‘guests’ on that show
My goodness. Someone accusing me of having a weird view of roi (with a load of mad up nonsense about me) then sets about presenting a 10x more weird view of OWC and unionism. Mmmmm!
Because that's all this strain of unionism has left: division and "othering" of the Republic like it's the 1960s all over again, alongside some twaddle about this strawman GAA-loving Catholic. Which just reinforces this mythical version of the RoI that lives in their heads: Papists and GAA Tadhgs a far as the eye can see; an alien country to be wary and hostile towards, a version that's at odds with reality - especially around the noted porous border counties and anyone who has gone up and down the M1 without feeling like they're crossing timezones, to hear our resident "unionist".
Mind you, given the way the Republic has gone in the last 30 years, those bunkered unionists still have a convenient fantasy to clutch: from a country riven with Catholic dogma, it's now a godless place of baby-murders, brown people and sodomites. Which probably dovetails nicely into why the DUP and its ilk's vote is stagnating, if not starting to shrink. This constant anxiety that you're not loving the Union enough curries no favour with the young demographics who have only known the peace born from the GFA, and want solutions to real issues about housing, health and all the other actual problems every normal country needs to deal with. The people who happily drive up and down the M1 without experiencing any hassle or interest about their background.
If Unionism wants to be taken seriously, maybe it should starting taking its own "wee country" seriously and running it like one - not hold it hostage because of trumped-up reasons nobody else in politics believes or cares about.
Actually Dublin is much closer to where he was brought up than where he is currently living. Paddy as a young person was a very strong republican (and I am not suggesting he was in any way supportive of the violence of the Ira). He was steeped in the local GAA and actually local unionists found his political approach quite divisive. A number of years living away from this island has opened his eyes and he has endeared himself to unionism on his return. He done a podcast I think called ‘postcard from the other side’ which was excellent and of course he openly challenged, on prime roi tv, the ‘up the ra’ chanting by the roi football team. That was courageous and spot on. I wish him well and might even tune in occasionally
You never explained what the significance in PR terms of the posters wearing different styles of jackets in two different colours was downcow?
Or why Unionism has been reduced to hoping someone else **** up in order for them to hold on. From a PR perspective that isn't a great look.
Absolutely. It’s exactly the point I was making . Excellent PR. The bubble will burst if they get into power in roi as the PR mask will slip
What has been demonstrated is the ability to coalesce the nationalist vote and to get it out.
I also think 'opposed' is the wrong word here Peregrinus.
I voted for x candidate for x reason, I don't think you can read into that vote that I did it because I oppose anybody in particular. Unless it's a two horse race.
Those votes are there to be won and surely it is clear that in the North there is a middle ground that can be won over.
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