The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Seems to be what this piece suggests:

The Rassemblement National is not invincible. A year out from a make-or-break presidential vote, that might be the main lesson (though there are others, which may prove more significant) from last weekend’s local elections in France. What’s more, news elsewhere – Giorgia Meloni’s referendum defeat in Italy, Janez Janša beaten in Slovenia, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán in trouble, the left bloc largest in Denmark – might suggest the rest of Europe’s far right are not having it all their own way, either.

And:

More broadly, there were other tentative signs this week that Europe’s populist far right may be encountering headwinds – perhaps due, in part at least, to what might be called a Trumplash. Ask Giorgia Meloni.

The Trump-whispering Italian prime minister lost her high-stakes referendum on judicial reform, seen as a de facto vote of confidence in her government, on a record-breaking turnout and, notably, with 61% of 18- to 34-year-olds voting against it.

The vote has few immediate consequences for Meloni, though she fired a few ministers. But an electoral law change that could help her in next year’s election now looks doubtful, and as one analyst said, when you start losing in politics, “people look at you differently. You’re not invincible.”

In Slovenia, meanwhile, the centre-left incumbent Robert Golob managed a one-seat win ahead of Janša, a far-right nationalist; and in Hungary, Viktor Orbán, despite the shrill backing of his European populist allies and of Trump, could well be ousted.

It stands to reason on one level. Those most closely associated with a figure so profoundly unpopular in Europe are unlikely, bar one or two exceptions, to find it a profitable association. There are deeper aspects too. US national interests and those of Europe, let alone individual states within Europe, are not identical. Never more so than now. And this is evident not just in the instance of tariffs and Greenland. There’s no question that the Trump administration was a shot in the arm on certain levels for the global hard and far right – tonally if nothing else. But politically, that may be a different matter.

Look no further than this example:

Nigel Farage has been accused of making a U-turn after he said Britain should not get involved in Donald Trump’s war with Iran.

His comments on Tuesday contrasted with his previous assertion that the “gloves need to come off” when dealing with Iran.

Anna Turley, chair of the Labour party, said: “Reform wanted the UK to go to war in Iran and are now trying to cover up the consequences for British families, including higher fuel prices.”

While Farage has insisted he does not heed public opinion, a YouGov poll showed Reform’s 2024 voters are split, with nearly a quarter (24%) wanting the UK to actively join the attack on Iran and 63% supporting either a retaliatory or defensive position.

The conflict has exposed existing fault lines among senior Reform figures over foreign policy and the extent to which the UK should take a more isolationist “Britain First” position – an echo of splits in Trump’s own conservative base in the US. Here is what key figures have said.

Entertainingly Robert Jenrick of the same party has said:  “I don’t like to see our prime minister be berated by foreign leaders.” The same Robert Jenrick had berated Starmer over his handling of the war on Iran only a fortnight ago (granted one could do the latter, but in Jenrick’s case it was due to a lack of enthusiasm on Starmer’s part for the US adventurism).

A more pressing poll number than the above of Reform might be that of all voters. 58% opposed to the US being allowed to launch strikes from RAF bases at the beginning of the month.

There was much made in the last few years of how the Danish Social Democrats hard-line approach to immigration had garnered them political strength, and yet, given the narrowness of their partial victory and the centrality of the political centre to their prospects of future government it’s nowhere near what most of us would consider a sweeping win. And they may yet be locked out of government entirely.

The real oddity is when one examines their track record across the last four years since the last election. The graph here on Wiki for polling notes that from the 2022 election when they gained 27% of the vote their vote declined sharply down to 22% and then saw a continuing mild decline thereafter to about 20%, with a rise in their rating mid-2025 followed by another decline and then something of a recovery, albeit to around 22-23%. In the end they won 22.4% at the election this week. That’s quite the slump from 27.50 at the 2022 election. Granted they remain in polling the largest formation in Danish politics, their nearest rivals would be the Green Left on 11.8%, all others poll at lower numbers than that. It’s a complex, for which read entirely fragmented, situation with multiple political parties of left, centre and right.

Yet the question remains, if this is success – if indeed this political approach by the SDs was such that it fended off all others how does one explain the recovery (albeit from a low base) of the Danish People’s Party – hard-line anti-immigrant – which saw its vote increase from 2.64 to 7.6? How did the SDs lose 5% or so? Why did they begin to lose support from the time of the last election? Success measured by resuscitating a hardline hard right party and losing support doesn’t seem like success at all.

For a government that loudly proclaims its attachment to neutrality the current one of this state sure has a funny way of going about such matters. For example, this week brings news that:

State agencies will no longer require government sign-off before investing in companies in the defence and military sectors, under new plans to go before the Cabinet.

Enterprise Minister Peter Burke is requesting approval to get rid of the rule that mandates the IDA and Enterprise Ireland to get full cabinet sign-off before working with a company that may be involved in the defence industry.

It is understood the amendment to the 1987 Science and Technology Act is being made to allow Irish companies working on defence crossover areas, such as cyber security, to access the €409bn European Competitiveness Fund in 2028, which is focused on defence.

And:

The current law says a state agency “shall not engage in or promote any activity of a primarily military relevance without the prior approval of the Government”. Mr Burke is bringing an amendment to remove that line from the act.

Government sources have said Mr Burke considers this an “outdated constraint that no longer fits today’s economic and technological landscape”, particularly because Irish companies have gained experience working on technology that interacts with defence, such as cyber security, AI and space systems.

What isn’t clear is why the state cannot have a dedicated oversight mechanism whereby any such instances were immediately engaged with and then forwarded to the Cabinet if found to be worth moving forward on. One might think that were neutrality, and matters of defence of such central importance to the government then such an approach would be both a sensible and appropriate one.

…must be this (as noted in comments by Banjoe):

Lord Mayor of Dublin Ray McAdam has been selected by Fine Gael as its candidate in the Dublin Central byelection. 

The party held its selection convention in the Ashling Hotel on Monday night but the outcome was a foregone conclusion as McAdam (42) was the only person seeking the nomination.

Speaking of Dublin Central, Una Mullally in the IT notes this in the course of a piece on betting ‘markets’:

Although blocked in the United Kingdom, Polymarket is not blocked in Ireland. At the time of writing, there was a trading volume of $125,000 on the Dublin-Central by-election, of which close to $80,000 related to Gillian Sherratt, who didn’t secure the Sinn Féin nomination.

There was a curious piece in the Independent earlier in the month about spoiled votes. It sought to present the situation at the last Presidential in the following terms:

The Electoral Commission published valuable research last week on the huge number of spoilt votes in last year’s presidential election. Unsurprisingly, an overwhelming majority of the 13pc who spoiled their votes say they did so because of the lack of choice or because the nomination process was too restrictive.

As it analyses these results, however, the commission should reflect on the inappropriate attempts it made in the dying hours of the campaign to persuade people not to spoil their vote.

And it continued:

As polls opened on October 24, Art O’Leary, the commission’s chief executive, told The Irish Times that a person “can choose to spoil their vote… All we say in response is that one of these candidates will be elected president, and if you want your voice to be heard then you should vote for a candidate”.

Later that afternoon, RTÉ News quoted the commission as having told them that any vote that was ­deliberately spoiled “would simply be cast aside, and the voice of the voter won’t be heard”.

The conclusion being:

By any yardstick, these comments were inappropriate, since they were made with the clear intention of ­encouraging people to vote (or rather, not to vote) in a particular way.

Interesting. The problem being that factually the Electoral Commission’s calls were factually correct – spoil a vote and that vote isn’t counted.

But the author of the piece argues:

By stating in unambiguous terms that voters should not spoil their votes, the commission was making a value judgment on what trans­pired to be the democratic choice of 213,738 voters.

The presidential contest was the first Irish election to feature an ­organised campaign calling on ­voters to spoil their ballots. The Government and almost all opposition parties were openly hostile to this, so it is deeply concerning that the Electoral Commission thought fit to row in behind their position.

The problem being that doesn’t matter. Since a vote is spoiled and there is no means to determine (broadly speaking) what the intent of the voter was – or indeed whether they aligned with the ‘campaign’ to spoil the votes, or not, and even if it was and they did, it is irrelevant. A spoiled vote has no power in our system. A ‘campaign’ is not a political party, or even a political position. It is not on the ballot, it is impossible to clearly determine, in the way that a candidate for election can – since a voter can choose to vote for them, what the intent of the voter is. And this effort – which we’ve seen from certain quarters, to paint this non-vote as somehow indicative of more than it is is equally pointless.

The truth is that at the last election and the one before that there were multiple candidates – thrown up by exactly the same system of nomination as was used this time. That Fianna Fáil would select a candidate of almost unparalleled inability to contest the election was unforeseeable. That Catherine Connolly would corral so much support from the opposition ditto. It was touch and go whether SF would contest the election or not until quite late in the day. A small change here or there could have seen four candidates, possibly more if nominations through the council route had been successful. Or as has been noted, had a certain candidate of the conservative hard right moved into the field even a couple of months earlier it is entirely possible that they would have been successful in being nominated.

For those of us with not that long memories, as in this instance, many times when just two candidates graced the ballot papers. Most of us, even those bitterly opposed to the lack of other candidates, understood that that was the way the system worked. None of us ever expected Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael to nod towards some sort of pluralism and assist political rivals nominations because that’s not how politics functions – it is about contending worldviews and building sufficient support in councils and the Oireachtas. One can go further, all this is an essentially childish and entitled view of political activity which doesn’t understand, or pretends not to understand the competitive nature of political activity.

In the 1970s and before the left was too marginalised to be able to nominate candidates. Thankfully those days are now over, but they could come again. If so it will, once more, be the task of the left to build up the support it can to ensure that its candidates are on the ballot paper.

The piece continues:

The Oireachtas has not given the commission any role whatsoever in policing “traditional” campaigning in the form of the contents of posters, leaflets or statements made by campaigners. The campaign to spoil votes was none of the Electoral Commission’s business. So why did it feel the need to intervene?

Well, that’s a curious question because it takes all of ten seconds to discover this. May 2024 and the Commission released this:

Let’s Have No Repeat of 100,000+ Spoilt Votes in June’s Euro & Local Elections

Don’t Spoil Your Day’ Voter Education Drive Launched in Empty Croke Park

27 May 2024 –  An Coimisiún Toghcháin, Ireland’s independent electoral commission says there should be no repeat this June of the 108,488 spoilt and ineligible votes in the last European and local elections, and has kicked off a voter education drive to help voters avoid unintentionally spoiling their votes on 7 June.

This number of votes is the equivalent of the full capacity of Croke Park stadium with another third of the stadium again, or put in another way the equivalent of the combined population of Drogheda, Dundalk and Sligo. The vast majority of these votes were not intentionally spoilt (see tables below). The people who cast them have no idea that their votes did not count.

Of the spoilt votes in the 2019 local and European elections, evidence shows that 34,618 such votes were not counted in the local elections and 73,870 were uncounted in the European elections held on the same day.

Ireland’s independent electoral commission is determined to lower this number on 7 June when European, local and Limerick mayoral elections take place. To help achieve this goal, it has kicked off its “Don’t Spoil Your Day” Voter Education Drive.

A new 3-minute and 1-minute video showing what you need to vote and exactly how to properly fill in your ballot. The video takes people through the voting process from entering the polling station to successfully completing your vote.

The Electoral Commission is sharing the video and associated materials with Local Authorities, community groups and organisations across the country to support voters ahead of polling day.

Ms Justice Marie Baker, Chair of the An Coimisiún Toghcháin, stated:

“It is such a disappointment to see the scale of spoilt and invalid votes – 108,000 is a huge number because the nature of our electoral system means that for many candidates, these votes could be the difference between winning and losing a seat.

“On June 7 there will be many people who have not voted before or have not voted in the 4 years since the last General Election. To some, it may seem a straight forward process, but the evidence is that many people who go to the polling station don’t fill in their ballots correctly. Their voice remains unheard.

“The voters whose votes were not counted would fill every seat in Croke Park and there’d still be many more standing outside.

“In Dublin City alone, over 3 per cent of votes cast were deemed invalid. This uncounted mountain of ballots is shocking when we know that in Ireland’s elections, many seats are won by a mere handful of votes.

“Don’t spoil your day on 7 June, get out and vote and make sure that your vote counts by completing your ballot properly. Your vote is your voice”.

Among its functions, An Coimisiún Toghcháin, Ireland’s independent electoral commission, is tasked with building awareness of Ireland’s elections and increasing the numbers of people voting through education and information campaigns

The Independent piece argues, with no evidence supplied, that:

The worrying impression is that the commission is flexing its ­muscles for interventions in future campaigns. This would be a corros­ive development for Irish democracy, and one that the Oireachtas should seek urgent clarification on.

We are no many months beyond the Presidential election. Those spoiled votes had no power, have seemingly had no influence whether in narrow or broader terms. Do I think that next time around there will be more candidates? Sure. Most likely. Perhaps there will be a bit more latitude given by FF or FG, or perhaps – and this would be better, their cohort of councillors will be smaller and less well placed to stymie other nominations.

And perhaps it is time to look once more at the actual result. Catherine Connolly gained 63.36% of the vote. Heather Humphreys gained 29.46% of the vote. Gavin gained 7.18% and spoiled votes were 12.9% of the vote. In no instance, in no constituency did spoiled votes come close to Connolly’s number, indeed Connolly’s vote was in most constituencies close to 63% or more (and tellingly those where her vote was closer to 50% was in Dun Laoghaire and Dublin Rathdown where Heather Humphrey’s was somewhat stronger than elsewhere – and only in Cavan-Monaghan did Humphreys outpoll Connolly). Worth noting too that the overall vote was up somewhat from the last Presidential election.

Catherine Connolly enjoyed a decisive win, but that was not a foregone conclusion either. It was the culmination of months of hard work and effort and discipline. The reality remains that if people want other candidates on ballot papers they have to work for them. Not arrive late in the day to a campaign, not depend upon entreaties to TDs who do not want and are under no obligation to support them, not ignore the tedious but essential process of building support. There’s no other way around this. Trying to parse through spoiled votes seems like a futile exercise.

As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

From the National, an observation about the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg:

LAURA Kuenssberg asked a UK Government minister “why would Israel say something that is not true” after he contradicted the country’s claim that Iran has missiles capable of hitting London.

The leading BBC host was interviewing Housing Secretary Steve Reed on her flagship Sunday show when she raised the war in the Middle East, which was sparked by the US-Israel attacks on Iran on February 28.

On Saturday evening, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) had claimed on social media that Iran has “missiles that can reach London, Paris or Berlin”.

However, Reed – a close ally of the Prime Minister – suggested that was not true, telling Kuenssberg: “There is no specific assessment that the Iranians are targeting the UK or even could if they wanted to.”

Asked if that meant the IDF’s claims were untrue, Reed said: “You would need to ask the Israelis, but whatever people might say, the UK is not going to be dragged into this war.”

The BBC host then said that Israel’s statement was “not speculation” but an “on the record statement from one of our allies”.

“Why would Israel say something that is not true?” she asked.

Reed said: “You will need to ask the Israelis why they are commenting in the way that they are.”

The National suggests that’s the dumbest question ever; credulous is the word that comes to mind.