I never voted SF before, never supported them, but I’ll vote for them in the next election. I have no interest in voting for anyone in FG, FF or Labour. Not sure about the independents, but I’ll give them and SF my vote, and let them put their money where their mouths are if they get in.
SF will go into government with FG quicker than FF. They know what FG are and what they think of them. If they went into government with FF they would be getting knives in the back from their coalition partners everyday. FF would take the kudos for everything and try bury their junior partners.
If SF went in with FG they would say they have to in order to implement their housing plan with Eoin O’Broin becoming Minister. Once in government they will toe the line- look at them in government in the north.
They will also demand a white paper on reunification as part of a program for government. They will sell this to what’s left of the grassroots as a way of putting in place the plan for a border poll. Most SF would go along with it. SF have lost a huge amount of the old hard boys with the girlies in charge and they lost the mass goers with Aontu.
The next election could be make or break. If they get the chance of government they have to take it and if they have the choice they will pick FG.
Sitting on the sidelines, cribbin and moaning is a lost opportunity.
Oh I see… Apparently one of their medallists was attempting a withdrawal from an ATM in Cavan in times past. He’d unfortunately travelled without his bank card and was forced to improvise. He “borrowed” a digger and, well you can join the dots from there…
Too true. SF and FF fish in the same pool of voters (lads who think the Wolfe Tones going No 1 is gas craic and would take their shoes off for the boys in green) - they’d kill each other in government.
FG/SF, no matter how distasteful a prospect, would be business like. Both happy to fuck over FF by squeezing them from either side.
It’ll only happen if the numbers stack up though - “in the interest of the country”
Fine Gael and Sinn Fein are highly unlikely to have enough seats to form a coalition by themselves
Both parties are unlikely to do any better than they did in 2016 and they didn’t have enough then, either or both could do considerably worse this time
We would need a lot of “maturity” as a nation if in a United Ireland a FG-UUP coalition government drove more resources to tackle
homelessness in Belfast rather than Dublin. The recent RIC commemoration controversy suggests it would be difficult.
If you get beyond that there are potentially great things for a county this size in diluting gombeenism but the risk is it becomes more pronounced. We probably need a list system and a reduction of power of local vote to make it work for the whole Island.
Ireland is not the least densely populated country in Western Europe. Not by a distance. Sweden Finland and Norway for example are much much less densely populated