Yet again, the polls are blamed for getting it wrong. Just as with Brexit and the Spanish general election last June, polls seriously misled us on expected outcomes. So the time has come to move beyond a focus on the polls to the phenomenon they are missing. And what a phenomenon! It is hard to grasp the extent of the shifts taking place as a sector of the electorate whose frustrations and anger previously seemed…
Tag: Politics
Unmasking or obfuscating the power of capital?: two populisms in action
It is a weekend calculated to spook the markets, and certainly the first round – the UK Brexit vote – has surpassed expectations. We now await the second round – tomorrow’s Spanish general election – to witness a spooking of a very different kind if Podemos Unidos becomes the leading party on the Spanish left and if they and the PSOE together win a majority to govern. It is a very likely outcome. This is…
Deal making for government: Lessons from Spain
Despite the many criticisms of our new government and the way it was formed, at least we have one. On this score one might argue we are better than Spain where, after almost five months of efforts, they return to the polls on June 26th for a second try. Or are we better? Comparing the multiple deals that have allowed the formation of a government in Ireland (deals with Fianna Fáil and with multiple independents…
Who fears to speak of 1916: Celebrating a neo-liberal Ireland?
The dignified celebrations of the 1916 Rising remind us that celebration reflects as much of the present as it does of the past. And it allows us identify what we are taking from that past as resources to build our future. How we are celebrating 1916, therefore, has a lot to tell us about what sort of future we have in store. Historians point out, for example, how the centenary of the 1798 Rising helped…
The Paris Agreement: a major step forward or ‘worthless words’?
Amid the widespread welcome for the Paris Agreement, what is striking is the lack of consensus on just how significant it all is. James Hansen, former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and regarded as one of the world’s most eminent climate scientists, went so far as to call it ‘a fraud, a fake, worthless words’ while Cara Augustenborg, chair of Friends of the Earth Ireland, said in Paris…