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ER Editor: Scholz has just announced a series of moves likely leading to an election in Germany for early next year. Now it’s Ireland’s turn to call an election at the end of this month, both announced the day after Trump got elected. Hmmm.
Simon Harris leads the Fine Gael party, in a coalition with Fianna Fáil. He became party leader as well as PM (Taoiseach) this past April, not through election but because WEF Young Global Leader Leo Varadkar ‘stepped down’ for no apparent reason in March. Word is he’s been ‘Gitmo’d’. (Then Varadkar’s deputy, Simon Coveney, also quit shortly after.) So this snap election has been expected for some time. Now, finally, it’s happening. Which sounds like Harris has been pushed.
Ireland: Prime Minister Simon Harris (FG-EPP) has announced that a national parliamentary election will take place on the 29th of November, 2024.#Irelandhttps://t.co/BHuK6bhXbK
— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) November 6, 2024
Ouch —
— J.K. Lunden (@Jklunden) November 6, 2024
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ER: MSM alert for The Guardian —
Taoiseach announces Irish general election for 29 November
Announcement comes as polls show Simon Harris’s Fine Gael and coalition partners Fianna Fáil in position to win fourth term
LISA O’CARROLL for THE GUARDIAN
Ireland will hold a general election on 29 November, the prime minister, Simon Harris, announced late on Wednesday, as polls show his centre-right party Fine Gael and coalition partner Fianna Fáil in position to win a fourth term.
The country has been on election footing for the past month after the taoiseach confirmed he preferred to hold an election this year.
“It is my intention to seek the dissolution of the Dáil [Irish parliament] on Friday, and I hope we have polling day on 29 November,” Harris told the broadcaster RTÉ, with the president to approve the date as a formality.
Harris made the announcement on the eve of a meeting of EU leaders in Budapest where Donald Trump’s election victory will be a key topic, with Ireland particularly concerned over the impact the new US president will have on the country’s heavy reliance on US tech companies for employment and corporate tax.
Harris had until the end of the government’s five-year term in March to call an election but with his chief opposition party Sinn Féin in dramatic decline in popularity, he has decided to go to the nation in just 23 days’ time. (ER: And just after Trump won. He could have called this election already. It was expected.)
Under the rules the minimum notice for an election is 18 days.
Although the country is suffering a chronic housing crisis and has yet to emerge from a cost-of-living crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (ER: Eh?), the slide in euro-region interest rates and a budget of tax cuts and spending increases passing through parliament on Wednesday have laid the ground for an election benefiting the parties in power.
Sinn Féin’s change in fortunes (ER: It’s derided as a globalist party favouring mass migration from which Ireland is suffering greatly) has come two years after it seemed within touching distance of forming its first government in Dublin, with some in the UK likening the party’s grasp of electoral discipline to Tony Blair’s New Labour.
With Sinn Féin already the biggest party in Northern Ireland, this had led to speculation that a referendum on a united Ireland was inevitable within the next five years.
Polling at 37% two years ago, Sinn Féin easily outshone Fine Gael in popularity.
But support has collapsed over its flip-flopping policy on migration and a string of scandals over child safeguarding.
At the same time Fine Gael has been re-energised under Harris after Leo Varadkar’s decision to quit as taoiseach in April.
CONTINUE READING HERE
Featured image source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-06/ireland-to-hold-early-election-as-harris-pounces-on-poll-lead
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Published to UK Reloaded from Europe Reloaded
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