Presidential Election 2025

Sure, I recall listening to an interview with a Crean author on Newstalk years ago.

Unfortunately, Crean was brave enough to take orders from a sectarian unionist Shackleton, but not brave enough to volunteer - though his home was raided and his wife intimidated and attacked by the Tans.

Interestingly he did attend a march to help Thomas Ashe and Republican prisoners.

He claimed there was no monument to Crean in Ireland because he was part of the British navy auxiliary during the W of I, but this must have been brief as he retired in 1920.

However, I suspect as he is a British author, he simply does not understand the W of I or how monuments are decided.

For instance, he referred to recipients of British Tan terror, like the Crean family as due to “unfortunate victims of Ireland’s Troubles” - referring to 1920 violent occupation of Britain 🙄

This man I believe:

“In his excellent book An Unsung Hero, Polar author, Michael Smith sheds more light on the incident.

He recounts how Nell who was heavily pregnant with the Creans second child at the time of the raid, always maintained that the rough treatment she received at the hands of the Black and Tans that day contributed to the fact that Kate was always a sickly child, and subsequently died at the age of four, despite every effort to remedy her health, including a trip of faithful pilgrimage, to Lourdes in France.
“Even today generations of the Creans insist that the child was another unfortunate victim of Ireland’s Troubles.” “

(Admittedly, this would be why I avoid British authors on all matters historical, not just involving Ireland.)

Ya personally I've never been impressed by her while I know FG supporters who love her. I don't see any clear winner at the moment tbh, they're all very poor imo. Really poor including HH.

The problem is the FF rank and file don't get a vote. It's just the PP, where Micheál Martin rules. So it's quite likely that Gavin will win well (will we hear the vote results or just the winner I wonder?)

I hadn't realised that. However the rank and file should put the pressure on the parliamentary party.

No matter how much you want to make this about SF, it is an FF problem. Martin was talking about FF's diminished support and FF endorsing a non-FF candidate months ago. This seems to have been his plan though there were possibly better candidates under consideration.

One of the problems that FF has now, in the absence of a well-known celebrity candidate is "Jim Who?". Beyond GAA supporters and perhaps some people in Dublin, Gavin is an unknown. Martin has been able to convince FFers that FF's resurrection was his doing rather than the natural ebb and flow of Irish politics. I think that the FF Ard Fheis voted against Repeal and it was Martin who decided to support it. In this respect, his imposition of a non-FF candidate is exactly what would be expected of him.

It might appear to be some kind of democratic process in FF. In reality, it seems to be a challenge to Martin's leadership. There was a previous challenge in 2020 but Covid saved him. O'Callaghan was supposed to be the replacement and there was a Zoom rubber chicken effort to build support. Cowen was later demoted and ended up an MEP. Right now, the election is wide open because the support for various candidates is siloed. The true believers and party supporters each think that their candidate is the best and will win. Extrapolating from GE results, none of them have enough support to win outright because the floating vote is so large and will decided matters. Even in the last opinion poll, the Don't Knows were at 28%. That was higher than any party "candidate". The way that some FFers wanted Bertie Ahern to run may indicate that all is not well in FF. It would have been better for Martin and his candidate had SF made a move first. It didn't. Now the focus is on the candidate selection and Martin's leadership.

If the FF rank and file had a serious problem with the party selection process for presidential nominee, God knows they had plenty of time to make a move to change it, since the EXACT SAME system was last used 28 years ago.

She was terrible I thought, enough for me to rule her out immediately as someone I'd vote for.

true believers and party supporters each think that their candidate is the best and will win. Extrapolating from GE results, none of them have enough support to win outright 

Well somebody has to win…

In 1997, FF got 39.3% of the votes in the GE and won 77 seats. It was a very different FF. FF and FG dominated Irish politics. FG got 27.9% of the vote and 54 seats. Combined, they had 67.2% of the vote. Fast forward to 2024 and FF got 21.9% of the vote and 48 seats. FG got 20.8% of the vote and 38 seats. That's only 42.7%. Neither party would be in a position to win the presidential election outright on those %s. After the property bubble burst, FF didn't run any official FF candidate in 2011. In 2018, it enorsed Higgins. This non-FF FF candidate seems to be Martin's idea and he had been talking about it for some time. Perhaps FFers are hoping for a resurrection of FF as it feeds of the support and seats of FG. In 2011, FG had 76 seats and FF 20. In 2024, FG won 38 seats and FF 48.

Gavin seems to be Martin's choice for a non-FF candidate. He has apparently since joined FF. FFHQ changed the GE candidate selection process to make it more Dublin-centric. That may have been the time that FF started to decline as it lost contact with the grassroots. In 2003, FF stopped the TD/councillor double jobbing. That also created another disconnect between the FF TDs and the grassroots. FF relied a lot on clientelism as did other parties.

After 2011, there may have been no incentive for FF to change the selection process. It is what looks like an attempted imposition of Gavin as the Not A FFer candidate that sparked this contest. Apparently, Gavin has become a card-carrying member of FF according to some news reports.

This drama is sidelining Humphreys/FG and it is the same strategy that was used by Trump to take away the oxygen of publicity from HRC in 2016. It worked then and the wonderfully smart people in the media (there and here) who had focused on Trump to the exclusion of Clinton got a terrible shock when Trump won in 2016.

Would FF be cynical enough to use the same strategy to keep the other candidates out of the limelight or is this really a grassroots challenge to Martin's leadership? People always understimate FF.

So HH's campaign proper is only getting under way now because she has been officially nominated by FG, and she hasn't just been keeping a low profile up to now?