Independents

New poll suggests old FFers are returning to actual Fianna Fail…

Mick Fealty on July 7, 2016, 12:33 pm

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One of the worse refractions of political light, as it comes across the border from the south to the north, is the illusion that somehow the southern electorate share the same obsessions and political outlook as those of us in Northern Ireland. For many northerners, southern politics did not really exist before the Sinn Fein expeditionary force began to should some fruit for it’s long and patient endeavour to seize power on both sides of the border. Accordingly, we tend …

New Dail will be all about who can tag whom with legislative responsibility…

Mick Fealty on April 18, 2016, 10:03 am

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Brilliant from Jason O’Mahony, on the awkward situation Fine Gael now find themselves in. If you still struggle with understanding the difference between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail (and despite all guff being written recently there definitely is one: it’s just not ideological), read this: Someone once said to me that the problem with Fine Gael is that they’re that lethal mixture of being both arrogant and stupid. You can survive by being arrogant but clever, or by being dim but …

“Many very candid positions have been stated in private which have yet to be repeated in public.”

Mick Fealty on April 14, 2016, 7:57 pm

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So the Fianna Fail Parliamentary party went into conclave at 7 this evening now that they have failed to attract any support from the independents. But it clear now that Micheal Martin is taking any deal he might have done with them off the table. At this stage that does two things. It quickens the endgame and it is probably clear enough to absolve FF of any responsibility for where that endgame now lands the 32nd Dail. If the independents …

#GE16 – The Goss

Johnny Fallon on February 8, 2016, 8:57 am

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Enda’s blitz, FF poster joy, Independent plans……all the goss from #GE16

Northern Ireland Independent Network seeking support for an independent representatives’ umbrella group

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on November 20, 2014, 10:51 pm

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sorting Belfast West assembly votes - May 2011

One of the interventions people frequently call for in Northern Ireland politics is the creation of new parties. It came up again last night as one of the first questions at Platform for Change’s event: “Why can’t the [middle ground] politicians sitting around the table unite and form a new party?” I’m not so convinced that we’re ready for new parties. Even before NI21 launched and fell apart, I’ve longed for a surge of independents to flood the local government …

After the elections… The Independents of the south…

Mick Fealty on June 2, 2014, 2:12 pm

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For years it has been the case in England at council level ‘independent’ usually connotes rebel Tories disaffected with some national party line or other. They go independent because they feel there is nowhere else they can credibly go. In Ireland, one of the effects of the STV PR system is to shred party platforms in favour of maintaining a community of often fiercely competing individuals. So redesignation as independent often was a last ditch or even first ditch exercise …