Politics »

  • Sudden and Tragic Loss of a Fine Colleague

    June 25, 2012 @ 9:11 pm | by Deaglán de Bréadún

    The late Eugene Moloney was not a politician but he covered politics at its rawest and most edgy in Northern Ireland. Most of my memories of him derive from that period in his career.

    (more…)

  • Hanged, Redrawn and Quartered

    June 21, 2012 @ 4:18 pm | by Harry McGee

    A rule of thumb in Irish politics has it that the churn rate of TDs at a General Election is usually around the 20 per cent mark. (more…)

  • Politics and religion: preaching to the converted

    June 19, 2012 @ 8:58 am | by Mary Minihan

    Former Fine Gael taoiseach John Bruton dismissed the common argument that religious belief should be kept out of politics when he addressed the Eucharistic Congress recently.

    It was a well-received address, but then he was probably preaching to the converted. (more…)

  • All over bar the shouting

    June 1, 2012 @ 3:18 pm | by Deaglán de Bréadún

    It turned out to be an even damper squib than some people were forecasting. The latest tally is putting the Yes vote at 60.5% which is in line with the opinion polls.

    (more…)

  • Early Days but already early doors for No side

    @ 12:36 pm | by Harry McGee

    It’s just after noon and already the die is cast. The win won’t be emphatic – nothing like the 67 per cent to 33 per cent of Lisbon II – but it will be clearcut enough for the forces railed on the Yes side to claim a mandate for the fiscal treaty.

    (more…)

  • A class and generational divide?

    @ 12:24 pm | by Mary Minihan

    No alarms and no surprises for the Yes side in the end, although the lowish turn-out may have allowed the most optimistic on the No side to dare to dream very briefly yesterday.
    Talking about class difference makes many of us uncomfortable. We live in a Republic, after all. But tallies are broadly showing, as polls predicted, that the Yes campaign had strong backing from middle-class voters while many working-class voters remained opposed to the treaty.

    That’s basically what I found when I went around polling stations in Dun Laoghaire yesterday. (My colleague Pamela Duncan did the same thing in Donegal. The idea was to canvass a traditionally strong Yes and strong No constituency.)

    I also found something of a generational split, with lots of older people fretting that younger voters had drifted towards the No side.

    A growing number of disgruntled and politicised working-class voters, and disillusioned young people across social divides, means that problems are being stored up for Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fail.

    Will Sinn Fein be the direct beneficiary, or is there scope for the emergence of a single-issue anti-EU party?

    Did fear win the day, as some on the No side will say? Let us know.


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