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| Victorious United Left Alliance candidates Richard Boyd-Barrett (People Before Profit); with Joe Higgins (Socialist Party) and Clare Daly (Socialist Party) celebrate at the Dun Laoghaire count centre in Loughlinstown. Photograph: Matt Kavanagh |
Fianna Fáil is down from 73 seats to 17, as of a couple of hours ago. The count continues so they may pick up a few more. A protest at ceding sovereignty to the IMF and hammering the workers to pay the bond holders. Their electoral meltdown was most keenly felt in Dublin, where, if I read it right, they now only have one TD (finance minister Brian Lenihan).
With all 47 seats in Dublin filled, it’s Labour Party 18, Fine Gael 17, Sinn Féin 4, and the United Left Alliance 4.
We missed the election as we are in London. No postal votes. And no United Left Alliance candidate standing in our constituency, Cork East.
So one Tory party has been decisively ejected. But hey, what's this, another has been decisively elected. The Fine Gael candidate Pa O’Driscoll, a pleasant fellow, came canvassing and I told him I had never voted Tory and wouldn’t be starting now. He said : We’re not Tories. But on the way out the door he said: Well I admit half my party are, but not me.
The Irish Times reported on February 24th that former leading Progressive Democrat Pat Cox is advising Fine Gael. The PD's (now defunct) are the most right-wing party to have existed in recent Irish history. Cox was noted as the apostle of “light touch” regulation, and promoter of the market-knows-best philosophy. Policies at the heart of the present catastrophe.
You should worry Pete - we're stuck with a party who came a very poor third after getting hammered in the election now having the balance of power and pushing through some of the pledges which no-one voted for, while supporting a government whose main policies (NHS re-organisation etc)didn't even warrant a mention in the manifesto.
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