{"id":78881,"date":"2024-11-29T08:00:23","date_gmt":"2024-11-29T08:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=78881"},"modified":"2024-11-29T08:00:23","modified_gmt":"2024-11-29T08:00:23","slug":"the-single-transferable-party-is-trying-to-retain-power-in-ireland-whatever-its-people-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2024\/11\/29\/the-single-transferable-party-is-trying-to-retain-power-in-ireland-whatever-its-people-want\/","title":{"rendered":"The Single Transferable Party is trying to retain power in Ireland, whatever its people want"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the Guardian notes<\/a> this morning, there is a general election in Ireland today.<\/p>\n

As it also notes, Fine Gael, Fianna F\u00e1il and Sinn F\u00e9in are all on about 20% in opinion polls after a short, sharp campaign.<\/p>\n

There is a claim in that Guardian article that almost nothing separates the parties, none of whom could form a government with that level of support without a coalition being required. But that is not true. There is a massive gulf between them.<\/p>\n

The gulf is that the two parties of the Irish establishment -Fine Gael, Fianna F\u00e1il - who have been in coalition with each other for the sole reason of keeping Sinn Fein out of power - have said they will do all that they can again to ensure Sinn Fein is blocked again this time.<\/p>\n

In other words, the Single Transferable Party of the Irish Political and Management Caste (PMC) is, once more, trying to undermine any democratic choice that the people of Ireland might make.<\/p>\n

Are there reservations to be had about what Sinn Fien plans? Of course, there are. No party has a solution to all ills. It will also require a potentially quite unstable colation for Sinn Feing to secure power, but what is most noticeable is the willingness of the Irish elite - which is very powerful - to seek to undermine democratic freedom.<\/p>\n

The idea that democracy is now only being tolerated if it delivers what the PMC (hat tip for that term to Aurelian<\/a>) wants is becoming very obvious, and nowhere more so than in Ireland.<\/p>\n

There is a class war going on in Western democracies right now, and it is one between the PMC and their Single Transferable Party against the rest of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the Guardian notes this morning, there is a general election in Ireland today. As it also notes, Fine Gael, Fianna F\u00e1il and Sinn F\u00e9in
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ireland","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78881"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78883,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78881\/revisions\/78883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}