With the list of candidates for the 2019 local government election scheduled to be released after 6pm on Monday 8th April, now is a good time to look back at the runners and riders from the last council elections back in 2014. The 2014 election was the first to be fought on the new eleven ‘super council’ basis and saw a total of 974 candidates running for 462 seats, a reduction from the 582 seats prior to 2014. The results …
We are less than 100 days away from the Local Council elections in Northern Ireland which are set to take place on May 2nd. As candidates are selected and the campaign gets under way I thought I’d put up some things to watch out for in this election. Context is King-Before you look at the election that is coming up, you need to remind yourself about the circumstances of the previous one. In 2014, we were beginning to see the …
For all its detractors (and I don’t count myself as the greatest fan of its ‘Brixit’ policy) UKIP does something most mainstream parties in Britain are struggling with. They connect with the ordinary man (and I suspect it is mostly men, to be honest) in the street, and they speak in a language they understand. They may get dismissed as saloon bar politicians, but in England they know how to put on a show with a sense of drama that …
The poor performance of the Irish Labour Party is important for a number of reasons. It’s not as though it hasn’t happened before in the party’s history. Labour defenestration has been a regular feature of coalition governments over the last 30 years. And it always happens for roughly the same reasons: overpromising before the election, then substantially underselling its own agency within government afterwards. It happened to the Greens in the last administration. That’s why the smaller government party is …
I don’t normally scatter too many hostages to fortune, but in a fit of foolish madness I decided to furnish the world of Twitter with my great wisdom on how the parties would fare, before the election… The DUP will perform significantly better in #LE14 than #EP14. Competition from UKIP & TUV will hollow out their EuroSceptic credentials. — Mick Fealty (@mickfealty) May 22, 2014 So what did you get wrong, or right about what happened last weekend? Mick FealtyMick …
Whilst I am trying to recover my post election wits and figure out the various party profiles, Vixens have some reading for the vanquished of the last few days… Sinn Fein’s secret electoral sauce… (parts two and three)… It’s a great system and much more widely known about these days than it used to be, although not everyone has the residual full time professional structure that Sinn Fein has to be able to carry it all through. Mick FealtyMick is …
I confess, I love elections. I don’t particularly like how party activists on Slugger slightly lose the run of themselves in the run, but it is an urgent life and death struggle. And at the end of the day in some of them, the earth just seems to move a little. This was case in 2003 and 2005. This is probably the first time since then we’ve seen some genuinely interesting shifts. Personally, I am going to wade patiently through each …
That’s a detail you might miss in all the fun and games. Fianna Fail have edged ahead of Fine Gael in the local councils across the country and now sit on 25% of the vote. That’s a seven per cent rise on the General Election at a time when when there has never been more competition to mainstreams. As noted about the Sinn Fein surge in Dublin this will mean more FF TDs in parliament. Despite losing the Dublin Euro …
When I went to bed last night, I thought Eamon Ryan was home and hosed. Just but now, there’s a recount. The difference between second third and fourth place is tiny, so now there’s a recount. It won’t change the major outline of the results, both in Europe and in the local authorities. Comparisons with UKIP don’t really cut it, given the depth and breadth of Sinn Fein’s displacement of Labour in the Irish capital. Topping the poll by such …
I had an interesting conversation recently with the Sinn Fein candidate for Castlereagh South, Nuala Toman. Being honest, I was hoping for an insight into Sinn Fein strategy for the forthcoming elections and, perhaps, a snappy line that I might use as a headline for this article to engage readers. What I got was a smart, friendly, local political candidate who surprised me with her knowledge, intelligence and experience, and disarmed me somewhat with her candour and focus on the …
Tom Kelly’s column in the Irish News today offers this explanation the upcoming success of Sinn Fein in the north and the south: Sinn Fein’s greatest strengths are its twin planks of discipline and an ability to learn lessons fast. Add into the mix its utter shamelessness in doing “u-turns” faster than Ayrton Senna with make moves that would embarrass Max Mosley. While other parties agonise like St. Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane – Sinn Fein just do it …
So below is a list of the new councils for the Local Elections in Northern Ireland, along with suggested hashtags. These are all pretty obvious, and I’ve not tested any of them, so if you find major clashes with others let us know? Belfast City Council (#BCC) North Down and Ards District Council (#NDA) Antrim and Newtownabbey District Council (#AND) Lisburn and Castlereagh District Council (#LCD) Newry, Mourne and Down District Council (#NMD) Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon District Council (#ABC) Mid and …
Tom Kelly makes an important point in today’s Irish News about voting, not least the historic precident of not having it and the contemporary consequence (as he sees it) of not doing it… Proportional representation was enshrined in the legislation on both parts of Ireland at partition to maintain if possible the broadest reach of representation. That the north abandoned it for 50 years is a travesty of historical proportions, which allowed militant republicans to propagate and exaggerate a myth …
So, two Irish polls this weekend. Not sure what to make of either of them to be honest, since there’s a divergence between them in FG’s rating of some 9%. The B&A poll in the Sunday Times has Fine Gael dropping like stone from 30% to 21%, whilst Sindo/Millward Brown has them on 29% (no change). Here’s the adjusted figures: Sunday Times/B&A poll: FG 21 (-9 since end Feb), FF 20 (+1), SF 20 (+2), Lab 9 (unchanged), Greens 4 …
Right, I am literally just rushing out the door… Can I ask that people take a bit of time out to to complete the Belfast Telegraph’s Local Election party preference poll and then share your experiences (though not necessarily your choices) with us here below. I’ll come back over the weekend and share some of my own. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media …
Having a good idea (NI21) is not the same as putting it into action… Trouble in Holywood and Clandeboye… Gerry Leddy, who had been involved with the party since its inception almost a year ago, said that he could not tell people to vote for its European candidate, Tina McKenzie, as he had “no confidence” in her. In a message posted on his Facebook page, the former North Down and Strangford constituency association treasurer said that Mrs McKenzie, who is …
I had an interesting chat today with John Barry. A fellow Dubliner but a far more interesting and indeed public character than that may suggest. John is a Green Party candidate in the forthcoming Council elections standing in the Abbey ward of the new North Down and Ards Council. He was co-opted onto the existing North Down Council when Steven Agnew was elected as an MLA and will be seeking to retain the Green seat in the forthcoming elections but he …
Former Fianna Fail spad Gerald Howlin’s take on the Red C Poll is worth reading in the Examiner today (if only for some useful historical context): A new seismic shift is under way. It is far greater than any that is gone before and it is far from over. It is still unclear if the general election of 2011 was the main shock or its precursor. Fianna Fáil’s once vast stock of political capital is irretrievably scattered. Labour’s is in …
While we are all trying to assess the political damage (or otherwise) of the shortest crisis in Northern Ireland’s long and twisted history, it’s worth noting that the Judge led inquiry will only report after the Local elections… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
I thought this snippet from the end of last week worth noting… Niall O’Connor reports that Fianna Fail are calling on some of its younger veterans to run in next year’s local elections… Ex-ministers Barry Andrews and Sean Connick are two of the highest-profile names linked with a run at the locals. Former TDs Margaret Conlon and Charlie O’Connor, as well as ex-senators Lisa McDonald and Maria Corrigan are also considering standing. “In areas where there is no Fianna Fail representation, …
