2009: How was it for them?

This has been the most eventful political year in quite a while. We were brought to the brink of economic apocalypse and are still struggling to be held back from it. The people who led us there are trying to lead us back but it is felt they do not have the ability. The alternatives are perceived as being equally weak but benifit from having less blood on their hands. Here I hope to set out where we have come from, where were are, and where we’re are going to go in 2010.

Fianna Fáil

Fianna Fáil are the big winners of 2009 for the simple reason that they survived the year and stayed in Government despite the many challenges they faced. That is not to say they had a good 2009, quite the opposite. Their ratings are at the lowest since polling began in this state, their members are hated nationally and the leaders are a melancholic bunch. In February when Brian Cowen announced his part was joining the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party, questions were asked about the direction the party was taking. Prominent MEP, Brian Crowley was not happy with this change in policy as he had been tipped for leader of the conservative group from which they came.

After this the focus switched to the European and Local Elections. The June elections were a monumental failure for Fianna Fáil. They lost 84 council seats on 2004 and Eoin Ryan’s seat in Dublin. Those elections were nothing short of a blood bath for the Soldiers of Destiny.

The Lisbon Referendum which focused on job creation and economic recovery was  shining star in the Government’s sky with Michael Martin securing a yes vote for the government. However, had the referendum been lost, it is safe to say that the government would have had little choice but to fall.

Around this time the Greens were negotiating the new Program for Government. It was speculated almost daily that the talks were on breaking point and the Greens may walk at any time. Hyperbolic nonsense in my opinion. The negotiations were completed and the program for government and an endorsement for NAMA were passed, thus giving Fianna Fail more time.

After 120 hours of intense and heavy debate, the greatest economic travesty in the history of the state, and possibly even Europe, NAMA, was passed by the Dáil, another success for FF.

It is these success however that are also wounding Fianna Fáil. They say they are making tough decisions but really we are looking at Yes, Minister style courageous decisions. Fianna Fáil are looking to the future now. They have expanded into Northern Ireland and with the election seeming unlikely until 2012 they will be looking to ride the wave of global recovery. Things could yet backfire however unless proper decisions are made.

Fine Gael

It is contradictory to popular opinion to believe that Fine Gael have a chance at loosing the next election.  All through the year they were given opportunity after opportunity to force and election but each time they were beaten back. Fine Gael have had a good year, they made gains in all areas but somehow the ultimate prize slipped through their fingers. Fine Gael’s highlights included George Lee’s election to Dublin South and an admirable return in the locals.

They failed to capitalise on these however and as such are going to be stuck in the Opposition benches, probably until 2012 and maybe even after. The Blueshirts fail because they don’t reinvest their profits. Take Lee for example; widely regarded as a economic titan, George Lee has not been given much time to speak. This is not surprising as  in Fine Gael, their front bench believe that it’s “their turn to be in government”, that it’s Enda’s “turn to be Taoiseach”. The reluctance of the old guard within Fine Gael to move aside for younger blood is what’s holding Fine Gael back.

There is also the infighting within the party. Frank Flannery’s remarks about a coalition with Sinn Fein and the disagreements between Enda Kenny and Lucinda Creighton have give the impression that Fine Gael are the Clampetts of Irish politics. When Garrret FitzGerald came out in favour of NAMA there was a major undercutting of credibility that Fine Gael had struggled to build up. These incidents need to be prevented, or at least better hidden should Fine Gale have any realistic hopes of entering government.

But what is mainly keeping Fine Gael on the other side of the room is the fact that they’re just not an attractive package. Within Fine Gael there is no consistency, no game plan. It’s just one campaign after another with none of them actually accomplishing anything.

Labour

When the words “Labour Taoiseach” are spoken, you know you’re doing something right. This has been a fantastic year for Labour. They have attracted dissenters from Fianna Fail and the Greens and steadily gaining momentum with over 20,000 new members this year. There is the cult of Gilmore and Burton which is always growing. Labour are rising because they are talking change. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are often thought of as two sides of the same coin with Labour being a strong alternative for those who don’t want to elect Coke or Pepsi.

Labour has been on the ball all year with it’s economic stances, ideas and observations. It called for the banks to be nationalised at a time when few others presented other ideas. Joan Burton is widely perceived as being the woman to get us out of this mess with her talk of fairness and making sure everyone pays their fair share. This resonates with the Public Sector electorate who are being levied by Fianna Fail.

Gilmore’s popularity is coming partially from his rhetoric and partially from the fact that he’s neither Cowen nor Kenny. He is seen as the third man; the one who offers a way forward. He could be Taoiseach if Labour can get another 7-10 seats in the Dáil and prop up Fianna Fáil or even Fine Gael.

The Green Party

What can be said about the Greens? Their core vote has left them, they resent Fianna Fáil for locking them into a loveless marriage and they have gotten a few promises about trees and deer and a commitment on a few other things. The reason the Green members voted to stay in government and support NAMA is because most of the disillusioned Greens have left the party.

The Greens ave had  a short lived life in Irish politics and it is difficult to see them staying around after 2012.

Sinn Fein

The Shinners had an uneventful year. Some moderate success in the North and very little in the republic. The loss of Mary Lou McDonald’s seat was unfortunate but predictable with that diverse a range of lefty candidates.

The Socialist Party

Mr. Higgins going to Strasbourg is a tremendous accomplishment for them.

Social Media?s Potential in Electioneering

My BlackBerry supports email, Twitter, SMS, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Bebo, and numerous other social media programs and sites. Nor does it ever leave my hand. I have a routine that from the second I wake up I roll over and check my emails, then I move onto Twitter and finally rest on Facebook. Fast forward though other morning chores and I find myself checking out the news sites, RTE, Irish Times, etc. Again, all on my tiny phone. Throughout the day I will check this stuff again and again. As an experiment I loaded a usage recorder application to my phone which, by the end of one day, told me I spent five hours and 43 minutes using my phone. By week’s end the total usage statistic was 39 hours and 14 minutes. By month’s end, it was 136 hours. That’s about five and a half days of consecutive usage.

That software showed me how reliant I am on my mobile. What struck me about that whole experiment however was how much I was accessible through social networking sites. And not just me; to date there are over 400,000 Irish people on Facebook and 2,000,000 plus on Bebo. In terms of potential markets those are not figures to be ignored. Companies such as Coca Cola and various Hollywood studios are using them to reach new audiences that they otherwise would not be able to. Advertising in mediums such as newspapers or radio is being rendered obsolete through internet use by 13-25 year old consumers who seek their information from online sources.

In a commercial context these sites offer a superior form of advertising model through their ability to accurately seek potential customers based on their web usage. There is no reason however that such sites cannot be used effectively in a political campaign. In a recent experiment (ten minutes ago in fact) I found that a Twitter message has the potential to reach an average of 120 people from once it’s posted and the further potential to be “re-tweeted” 161 times in five minutes; thus giving a single tweet a potential target audience of just under 20,000. While political parties in Ireland have already began using this technology, there is still a great deal of potential to be unlocked from it. At the moment it seems to be confined to re-publication of press releases and trotting out usual party lines.

Politicians who use social media include Ciaran Cuffe TD and Senator Dan Boyle who both administer their own accounts themselves, thus making them directly accesible. To date very few politicians have recognised the potential of social media as a means of reaching their constituents and in turn allowing themselves to be reached. It allows the electorate a greater means of scrutinising their elected officials and enquiring about local issues. Politicians need to recognise that as technology advances, so to will the avenues of communication. For the most part, the electorate the current Dail relies on is close to death, soon to be replaced by a more tech savy electorate who won’t be rushing to shake hands after mass at election time. They will be canvassed through their phones on the DART or through their Facebook accounts in their office. They need to become more aware of how their electorate works and how nobody has the time for hour long chats on the doorstep about “the shtate of da roads”.

Possible Political Repercussions of An Bord Snip Report

I’ve also posted this on http://irishelection.com which has excellent coverage of the report.

The release of the An Board Snip report has been met with anxiousness, hostility and surprisingly, in some cases, welcome. It seems that there is a surprisingly large agreement amongst the people that cuts in social welfare and public sector services are a necessary evil. This seems to be based solely on the media’s war on the public sector. Off course, this will change rapidly once the smaller, less covered aspects of the report are brought to the attention of the public. Aspects including the ending of community employment schemes, grading of job seekers benefit by age and increasing the drugs threshold. The implementation of these measures would once again return the elderly to the streets accompanied, undoubtedly, by many more, unions are already painting the placards warning they’ll be on the streets if certain things are implemented.

The government will have to consider the events of the last senior’s protest concerning medical cards and how badly it hit them in opinion polls before they take a serious look at the proposals on medical cards, social welfare and education. But because these cuts are coupled with so many more drastic expenditure cuts, it would possibly put Fianna Fail in the mid teens and the Greens on less than five points respectively. Of course, there’s also the curious timing on the release of this report with Leas Cross and the ERSI findings both also being published today. The fact they all, coincidentally, emegred at the same time will somewhat lessen what would have been their individual impacts.

This weekend the Green Party holds a special convention which will decide their future (if any) role in Government after the slaughter of their councillors in the June local elections. One must wonder what areas of Snip they’ll take a stand…

It also appears that history is repeating itself given that the proposal to cut 5% off all Social Welfare payments would be the equivalent of Blythe’s cut of the Shilling off the pension as of course there were 20 shillings in the old pound, or 5%. That cut, it can be argued, is what lead to the ultimate destruction of Cumann na nGaedhael. It remains to be seen if the debate around these cuts proposals will affect the Greens. If implemented, these decisions have the potential to destroy Fianna Fail and the Green Party in the near future. There are already cries for the Dáil to be recalled to debate this, and I feel they will fall on deaf ears – the Government knows full well that while they are not sitting the people can’t yell at them. The Government will, over the coming months, remind the electorate that they are the ones making the difficult decisions. It is quite certain that, come election time, the electorate will reply with “Well we’ll make the easy one”.