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Originally Posted by west'sawake  Fairpoint, but could I ask you HBAP, seeing as Gilmore said the Lisbon Treaty is dead, is Labour, pro or Anti Lisbon now? Do you think those who voted Labour consciosuly though they wre voting for a yes to Lisbon party. Do you think Declan Bree supporters in Sligo who gave Susan O Keeffe a great vote are pro Lisbon, regardless of her own views? |
I'm not actually that bothered, one way or the other. My point was that FutureTaoiseach spent the entire election campaign claiming that the huge anti-Lisbon vote would elect Ganley, NcDonald and Sinnott - and I don't think its a coincidence that all three, the most vocal and obviously anti-Lisbon candidates, lost their seats. And as soon as that happened, FT started claiming that Lisbon wasn't an election issue. Now whether it was or it wasn't is beside the point (though the circumstantial evidence at least SUGGESTS it was, particularly when you look at how transfer-repellant Ganley and McDonald were) - my point is that either FT was wrong then, or he's wrong now. Has to be one or the other.
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What you are forgetting though is that there are also a much bigger number of Independents returned and the little tentative research I have done shows that the majority of them are Anti Lisbon. I think we may well have an even stronger grass roots local leaders, non mainstream party effort this time in each county,and whole swathes of working class Dublin motivated by Higgins. Also do not underestimate the local party machines of S.F. Healy in Tipp, and other rainbow type allaince fiefdoms, (Dun Laoighre, Cork North, Limerick East, etc).
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I think that's stretching it a bit. Those "machines" would succeed largely in bringing out the properly anti-Europe vote, the vote that votes against every European Treaty anyway - so there's nothing new for you there. And Higgins got in not on the strength of a great first-preference vote, but I suspect because he became the fashionable transfer for
FG, Labour and Green voters who had strong motivations for keeping both Ryan and McDonald out, but don't share the same antipathy to Uncle Joe. Finally, on the influx of Independents, I think a fair few are basically FFers, so I don't think you can really extrapolate them to be anti-Lisbon.
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Maybe I'm clutching at straws, but I was somewhat comforted by the last MRBI Poll that gave a solid 28% no vote and the Yes only a little above 50%. Sounds familiar doesn't it!
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Its only familiar in the sense that its similar to every poll since about last November - with the Yes vote solidly above 50%, which it never was prior to the first referendum. At best the Yes figure reached about 30% then, while it seems quite solid above 50% now. That is very significant.