Survey responses often depend on how the question is framed.
Like me, I am sure many readers are sick and tired of tactics used by many mainstream media organisations to bolster a sinister racist agenda. This is a drum regularly beaten by friends who post at two excellent blogs : Irish Election Projections and the Cedar Lounge Revolution
Sources :
Further demonstration of how dependent issue polling is on the way the question is phrased.
Positive questions about migration (as seen here) yield positive answers, while negative questions (as typically commissioned by newspapers) yield negative ones https://t.co/LPHAnW4fTc
— Irish Election Projections (@irishelectproj) August 29, 2024
A Sinn Féin councillor has resigned from the party, saying he took the decision to do so after being “silenced” by his party on the migration crisis and the recent referendums on family and carers. Long-serving Laois county councillor Aidan Mullins announced his resignation after he was told he would be suspended from the party for three months.
Sharon Smith, writing for International Socialism, explores the control wielded by the Democratic Party establishment over the nomination process in her article, “The (undemocratic) Democratic Party machine lurches toward the election.
Foreword : USA Presidential elections are shit-shows – mud-slinging works.
Readers may know a famous Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) quip about why he called his opponent a pig fucker. Johnson admitted it wasn’t true, but “I want him to have to deny it,” he explained.
Mr Johnson became President of the USA in November 1963, taking over from the assassinated John F Kennedy.
Johnson won an election landslide in 1964 claiming his opponent Barry Goldwater was a fanatical warmonger. By 1968 demonstrators all over the globe were marching against the USA invasion of Vietnam – a favourite chant was :
“Hey, Hey, LBJ
How many kids did you kill today”
Donald Trump (age 78) looked more mentally capable than President Joe Biden (age 82) in a recent TV debate. The New York felon, convicted in a jury trial and fined 86 million dollars for sexually assaulting the writer E Jean Carroll, is now up against a more formidable Democratic party opponent Kamala Harris (age 59). The gloves are off :
“Ms Harris, speaking at a private fundraiser headlined by singer-songwriter James Taylor in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, said much of the rhetoric coming from Mr Trump and his running mate, US Senator JD Vance, was “just plain weird.”
Her use of the word “weird” to describe her opponents was part of a new strategy from Democrats.
The Harris campaign called Mr Trump “old and quite weird” following his appearance on Fox News on Thursday, and at least one supporter showed up outside the event yesterday holding a sign proclaiming “Trump is weird.” – RTÉ News Report
The (undemocratic) Democratic Party machine lurches toward the election – by Sharon Smith
What the Democratic Party establishment wants, it gets—and that includes its chosen presidential candidate. It had anointed Joe Biden well before the election primary season got underway in early 2024. This is why Biden ran virtually unopposed and predictably won every Democratic primary.
But the path to Biden’s reelection was not as smooth as Democratic Party leaders envisioned, mainly because Biden’s cognitive decline—underway for several years—has accelerated in recent months. Perhaps the leaders of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) believed they could shield the public from Biden’s decline through the entire election cycle by limiting his time in the public eye. That strategy backfired badly. The Party leadership is entirely to blame for the ensuing chaos. But don’t expect them to change course.
An article from the Financial Times journalist Edward Luce, which should be a wake-up call.
Donald Trump’s running mate opposes abortion and aid to Ukraine and says he would not have certified results of 2020 vote.
With Vance, Trump is doubling down on Maga
Ohio senator is an intelligent and forceful exponent of the Maga movement — and maybe also its future
If there were any doubts that Donald Trump would go full “America First” he banished them on Monday with his vice-presidential pick. JD Vance is the most high-profile Trumpian cheerleader among senior Republicans.
Trump could have held his nose and chosen Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, who gave him the biggest run for his money in the Republican primaries. Haley is a relative moderate on abortion. Selecting her, or a like-minded figure, would have signalled that he wanted to broaden his appeal to wavering suburban female Republicans.
Vance, by contrast, is an unapologetic Christian conservative. If Joe Biden can find a silver lining in the gathering storm clouds, Vance would be it. Biden’s vice-president, Kamala Harris, is an effective campaigner on a woman’s right to choose.
The main lesson of the first results of this second round is the setback suffered by the Rassemblement national and its allies. The defeat of the hundreds of fascist, racist, Islamophobic, antisemitic and ultra-racist candidates put forward by the RN is a huge relief for racialized people, women, LGBTI+ people and workers. This victory for the united left has halted the momentum of the far right, which nonetheless won around fifty more seats. This defeat of the far right of Bardella and Le Pen is the fruit of the popular mobilization that took place thanks to the unitive impetus provided by the creation of the New Popular Front.
This is already a victory for the New Popular Front, which was made possible by the rallying of the entire left – political parties, trade unions and campaigning groups – , but also and above all by the grassroots mobilization of large sectors of the working classes, in particular racialized people and young people, who committed themselves everywhere to blocking the RN. This made it possible for a very large number of New Popular Front MPs (including a relative majority for LFI) to be elected to the National Assembly on the basis of a programme that breaks not only with Macronism in the service of the ultra-rich, but also with the liberal left of the Hollande mandate, which had followed the policies of the right.
When you listen to this June 25 car-crash interview with former Leicester South Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth, you would be forgiven for thinking he was a member of the far-right racist party, Reform.
Jonathan Ashworth's car crash interview on returning asylum seekers to their country of origin
Jonathan Ashworth, "Rather than sending flights to Rwanda, we're going to be sending flights to the countries these people came from"
Shockat Adam was not alone. Five pro-Gaza independent candidates (including former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North) are members of the new Westminster parliament :
Paul Murphy’s opinion piece in the July 4 2024 edition of the Irish Times makes a strong case :
“Another five years of FF/FG rule would be disastrous for the country. Left parties and Independents must come together to stop it happening”
There is a bottom line :
No coalition with Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael.
The Irish Left must unite to break the old stranglehold, Paul Murphy TD (People Before Profit, Dublin South-West), Irish Times, July 4 2024
Time for a new united left alliance to topple Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael
Another five years of FF/FG rule would be disastrous for the country. Left parties and Independents must come together and stop this happening
A general election is looming. If the local election results are repeated, it will mean a return of this Government but with the Greens replaced as the third wheel by right-wing Independents. The 100-year rule of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will continue.
This would be a disaster.
Another five years of their rule would mean a deepening of the crises in housing and health, with more children growing up in emergency accommodation, more adults trapped in their childhood bedroom unable to move out, as well as growing hospital waiting lists. It would mean continued inaction on the climate and biodiversity crises and large numbers of workers in low-paid, precarious employment without the right to collectively bargain.
There is more to this story than initially meets the eye. Much capitalist development is based on Ethnic Cleansing of original populations and the plantation of new non-indigenous populations – it happened in the United States of America (USA) and Australia – naming just two. It did not happen so brutally in Ireland – but British imperialism made a significant effort.
The Northern province of Ulster was “planted” in the 1600’s, but the native Irish were not completely exterminated. Waves of native Irish emigrated – especially in the 19th century after a misnamed Famine (in reality a “Great Hunger” caused by British Imperialist Policy) drove millions of the native Irish to the four corners of the globe. These emigrants kept alive the idea of Irish freedom, and played a significant role in every attempt to rid Ireland of British rule.
The stubborn Irish “national question” remains on today’s agenda because of the 1922 Anglo-Irish Treaty which divided Ireland into 2 sectarian states. A key feature of extreme Irish Unionism is identification with plantation/ethnic cleansing forms of capitalism – and that goes a long way towards explaining Irish far-right Unionist sympathy for the present day attempted ethnic cleansing of Palestine and Ukraine. We should situate recent pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine statements by the British far-right politician Nigel Farage and Sammy Wilson within this framework :
Nigel Farage Endorses DUP Antrim MP’s Wilson and Paisley, Dumping a different extreme unionist, Jim Allister
The Russian imperialist occupation of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk is ethnic cleansing capitalism in action – accompanied by child stealing and abuse similar to the behaviour of the Catholic Church in the 26 county bit of Ireland from the 1930’s to the 1990’s.
An excellent Ukrainian blog, Ukr-Taz, covers the story of Putin’s ethnic cleansing dreams in Ukraine, and Donald Trump’s enthusiastic support :
For all that can be said about Thursday’s debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump — including about the former’s dismal performance and about the boundless creativity of Trump’s fabrications on almost every topic under the sun — Trump’s curious note about Putin’s “dream” stood out to me:
Abstention lowest since 1997 at 32.5% (cf 53% in 2022)
Macron’s big gamble has failed. By calling a snap election, he thought the French people would rally around his centrist party and the moderate left to put Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN, National Rally) back in its box after its victory in the recent Euro elections. He assumed a bigger turnout would not favour Le Pen’s extreme right-wing, post-fascist party. On the contrary, 20% more people turned out than in 2022. The RN consolidated its Euro vote and successfully allied with a split from the mainstream Les Républicains (LR, the Republicans). In terms of actual votes – around 12 million if you add in the votes of the Zemmour current who got less than 1% – this is a massive breakthrough. Previous scores in legislative elections were less than half this.
“Macron’s gamble has backfired spectacularly, with the Rassemblement National consolidating its Euro vote and securing an unprecedented number of MPs in the first round.”
The RN has never had so many MPs elected in the first round. They were already the biggest single party in the National Assembly, and it is probable now that they will maintain that position with even more MPs. However, it is still uncertain whether they will get the 289 MPs needed for an absolute majority, which would guarantee them the premiership with their young leader Bardella.
Everything depends on what happens in the second-round run-off. The top two stand automatically, but the third candidate can run in the second round if they have more than 12.5% of the registered voters. All the discussion immediately following the election focuses on whether the best-placed candidate to defeat the RN is given a free run by any eligible third-place candidates stepping down. Leaders of the Nouveau Front Populaire (the New Popular Front-NPF) from the Socialist Party, the Ecologists, and La France Insoumise (France Unbowed – LFI) led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, have all called for this ‘barrage’ (bloc) to stop the RN winning.
En cas de triangulaire, si le Rassemblement national est en tête et que nous sommes troisième, nous retirerons nos candidatures.
However, leaders of Macron’s Ensemble (Together) party have been much more equivocal. Some have called for blocking the RN with a single candidate, while others have said they will judge on a case-by-case basis. Bruno Le Maire, current economics minister, and Edouard Philippe, former Macronist prime minister, hold this position, saying they will vote for the social democratic left but not for the LFI. They refuse to support second-placed candidates from the LFI, whom they consider as extreme as the RN. These people do not like the way the LFI have supported the Palestinians and condemned the Israeli state or criticised police actions in ethnic minority neighbourhoods. This vacillating position could help the RN squeeze past both the Left and the Macron parties in a three-way race in some areas.
The decision by President Emmanuel Macron to hold snap legislative elections in four weeks’ time, a move taken on Sunday immediately after the landslide victory of the French far-right in European Parliament elections, has had the effect of a political bombshell. Not least because it now appears possible that the far-right Rassemblement National party, riding high on the results of Sunday’s poll, may gain enough seats in parliament to form a government. For some in France, that prospect has made them fearful over their future. Mediapart has been listening to their concerns.
Since the victory of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party in Sunday’s European Parliament elections in France, and the subsequent decision by Emmanuel Macron to call snap general elections, in which the RN is hoping to gain an absolute majority, Oumar fears the worst.
“We’ll no longer have the possibility of getting our papers sorted out,” he said. “We risk being massively expelled.” The “we” he refers to are the ‘undocumented’ immigrants who hope to one day receive legal residency and working status. Oumar arrived in France from Mali in 2017. In his thirties, living in the Paris region, he finds work on a temporary basis, most often in logistics. “We come home late in the evening, we pay contributions, but we have no right to anything if we have an accident,” he said. “But the far-right, through populism, presents us as people who want to profit from [social] aid.”
Nouveau Front Populaire – New Popular Front – Left Alliance Campaigning in French parliamentary elections against the right-wing Macron government and the Far-Right RN led by Marine Le Pen
As the father of a child who has French nationality, Oumar officially applied for residence and work permits in February, but has not yet been given a response. Since Sunday evening, his concerns have heightened.
Many potential targets of a far-right government are unsure of their future. Smail, a 36-year-old Algerian, said that on Sunday evening he told himself “it was perhaps the moment to request French nationality, because afterwards the doors will be closed”. He has a renewable ten-year residency permit, has a full-time, open-ended working contract in the fibre-optic cable business, and owns a property.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 