Shane Ross - Forming a New Political Party of the Centre-Right

[C. Flower]

Shane Ross was open about his intention to start a new political party before he was elected.

This weekend, he's reported to be intending to start up a party in 2014, by which time I guess he assumes that all the existing parties will have totally failed and been rejected by the public.

Is this Libertas Mark 2 - a businessman's party for the business class? And why do they not think that Fine Gael will do the job for them. Not tough enough ?

http://www.hotpress.com/news/7494272.html

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Just what Ireland needs- another party jostling to lick IBEC's already well-licked arse.

[Ah Well]

Is this the new political party as per the Sunday papers?

[culmore]

Would he call them the Muppetts

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Getting a bit crowded on the centre right. When you consider 'the centre' in Ireland is at least 25 years socially behind everwhere else in western Europe then you get the picture about the Irish centre right.

Its about copying the UK thatcherite template in various shades without excluding too many potential voters in a land where radicalism doesn't exist outside university playground politics.

[Baron von Biffo]

The NDs will be like the PDs, a vanity party begun by someone who couldn't make it in an existing party. We can but hope that it will never wield the power of PDs.

[scrawledincrayon]

Shane Ross was open about his intention to start a new political party before he was elected.

This weekend, he's reported to be intending to start up a party in 2014, by which time I guess he assumes that all the existing parties will have totally failed and been rejected by the public.

Is this Libertas Mark 2 - a businessman's party for the business class? And why do they not think that Fine Gael will do the job for them. Not tough enough ?

They want a right wing party untouched by the decisions which got the country into this mess and by government in its wake. Fianna Fail and the Greens are already toxic and there are reasons to believe that the same may be true of Fine Gael and Labour by the time they've spent a few years hammering people. Sinn Fein have shown their "responsible" right wing credentials in government in the North, but their populist tack in the South makes them unsuitable (and their past makes them distasteful to many of these right wingers).

The left needs to understand that the likes of Ross and Donnelly and the right wing "critical" economists are not our allies in any way shape or form. They are our bitter enemies.

[bormotello]

Absence of policies about generous welfare benefits and excessive PS payroll bill is a clear indication that it will be another populist party without clear vision how to save country

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

No centre right party in Ireland is ever going to have a vision beyond the same old same old. It'll just be a new brand name for the same old forked tongue message about 'trickledown economics', the benefit of not taxing the wealthy and following IBEC around in case it bawls for a change of its nappy.

Centre right in Ireland means 'no change'. It means looking up to the professional class no matter how obviously corrupt they are as a vested interest, rebranding everything it sees in the UK Daily Telegraph as an original idea in Ireland, hoiking UCD and Trinity graduated political families into appointments and looking down on the working Joe and Josephine.

Same old shyte. Same old day. The only reason someone would imply their new party is 'centre right' in Ireland is a dogwhistle to the sort of politics based in facial recognition. By that it means we hope to have our own Willie O'Dea some day but he won't look a bit like that last one.

It is a way of saying 'we are a civil war politics party without making any reference to the civil war- otherwise we are the same as Fine Gael or Fianna Fail'.

It'll probably be a roaring success right up to its first junior coalition partner status in government and will then be used as a mudguard and will fall apart.

[C. Flower]

Absence of policies about generous welfare benefits and excessive PS payroll bill is a clear indication that it will be another populist party without clear vision how to save country

It's very hard to see any political gap between Labour/FF and FG. They pretty well cover all the centre right angles. They would have to head off to the stratosphere of Libertas to find space for themselves. And look what happened to them.

[C. Flower]

They want a right wing party untouched by the decisions which got the country into this mess and by government in its wake. Fianna Fail and the Greens are already toxic and there are reasons to believe that the same may be true of Fine Gael and Labour by the time they've spent a few years hammering people. Sinn Fein have shown their "responsible" right wing credentials in government in the North, but their populist tack in the South makes them unsuitable (and their past makes them distasteful to many of these right wingers).

The left needs to understand that the likes of Ross and Donnelly and the right wing "critical" economists are not our allies in any way shape or form. They are our bitter enemies.

The PDs reborn in all but name ?

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

just in case the above gets misconstrued into a dogwhistle for socialism- it isn't. ULA will probably immolate themselves via philosophical arguments based on whether Trotsky's pet dog was gender free and fed by Syndicalists or Communists and what that might mean for the future of the left in Ireland.

One of these days we'll get a simple start up with policies based around;

(1) Absolute transparency in government spending where any citizen can walk into a library and see what was spent on their behalf yesterday and who signed it off, with an explanation next to the sum.
(2) Risk Assessment in decision making
(3) Minimising the state out of people's lives
(4) Constitutional barriers on government borrowing
(5) Factual means testing to get the leadswingers off disability allowance and habitual hypochondriacs out of the faces of emergency services
(6) Destruction of monopolies operating off public funds
(7) A ban on family and crony appointments
(8) A move to a merit system of promotion in the civil service
(9) A raft of penalties of increasing severity for corruption and a proper transparent disciplinary system for public representatives and public servants
(10) Wide ranging legal reforms to eliminate political appointments to the judiciary and governance of the legal profession to be taken away from Kings Inn and other legal insiders.

In short, policy based appeal and not some vague promise of lukewarm reaganism/thatcherism adapted for Tir Na No'g.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

I could have easily summarised all the above by saying I want the Irish balance sheet to balance without creative accounting and I want the 'right wing' and the 'left wing' removed from what should be a standalone checkable system of spending of public money.

Remove political philosophy from government spending.

[scrawledincrayon]

Remove political philosophy from government spending.

What a wonderful idea. Perhaps you could combine it with a policy of removing oxygen from breathing while you are at it.

[LGriff27]

Can't see Shane Ross' ego fitting in a political party even if he's the leader.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

If you try to run a company based on philosophy you'd soon see the result and it wouldn't be pretty.

I don't mean to say that Ireland should be run as 'Oireland Inc' but I'm saying that public money being spent on the basis of bribing supporters of a political philosophy means public accounts will always be corrupted.

In a sense some things would carry a harsh message. The reality for example that if you move 70 miles out in the country as a lifestyle decision you cannot and should not expect city style public services. Once that reality has been explained then a proper examination of what can be done locally to link the location into the nearest hospital system is. That may mean a reduction in central taxes for rural taxpayers with a local tax to provide cottage hospital/ambulance service to the general system instead.

In other words stop with the rubbish that everywhere in Ireland should have high-population services at the doorstep. Politicians are as guilty as the consumers for that nonsense arising.

I use this as an example of practical application of taxpayers money fitted to a reality and not to some vapid promise by a politician who knows that there is an air of unreality to the promise.

Fakery abounds in Tir Na N'og. From the candidate who stands up to promise they will represent local people in their constituency and then gets to Dail Eireann and smoothly transitions into representing only the national party- that happens time and time again and always will. Parties have people called 'party whips' to ensure that happens.

We have a quaint idea that there is a socialism or 'left' in Ireland. Which is nice but it is mainly a University debating club. Always was and based on the knowledge that socialists/left have never so much as threatened to arrive in government in Ireland mainly due to the fact that they are never in any danger of connecting with a socially conservative and cautious electorate and they are unlikely ever to do so.

Which leaves various shades of socially conservative and cautious imitation of what we see abroad- every Irish government apes either what they see in Westminster or Washington, suitably watered down for the socially cautious and conservative electorate.

No new idea has ever emerged in terms of public administration in Ireland. It simply doesn't have the conditions for analysing a problem, sifting solutions and applying them on a costed and scoped out basis.

Wheelie bins. Private rubbish collection. These are money making wheezes for the political class who recognise that there are subcontracting opportunities for cronies and family out of them. Portakabin classrooms will never disappear as long as there is a vested interest somewhere living off the rental contract. So the way public money is allocated and spent feeds in a loop back to corrupt Irish politics. Its a vicious circle.

[Dr. FIVE]

Has Cox been seeking the presidential nomination yet?

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

He's waiting for it to go on the 'approved party' list in Brussels before he applies.

[bormotello]

It's very hard to see any political gap between Labour/FF and FG. They pretty well cover all the centre right angles. They would have to head off to the stratosphere of Libertas to find space for themselves. And look what happened to them.
FF nearly destroyed and there is no real opposition to FG/LP coalition.
New party can use old FF infrastructure and offer some alternative(the same policies, but under different sauce)

[LGriff27]

FF nearly destroyed and there is no real opposition to FG/LP coalition.
New party can use old FF infrastructure and offer some alternative(the same policies, but under different sauce)

Nah FF infrastructure remains intact,can't see them lending it to anyone. They are "down but not out". Cass is right Ross' party may as well head off into the Libertas stratosphere. The media will love them of course but will they attract footsoldiers ?

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

I think it is going to take something drastic to change the game in Ireland. Default might do it.

If the Irish Government try to borrow another 100billion and impose harsh austerity measures on the population that might wake enough up to say 'no'. Ireland badly needs a violent revolution which is too big to be hijacked by university lecturers various with their passionate dialectics that no-one is interested in at tea time in the majority of Irish homes and stops being framed by the bastardspawn of Fianna Fail or Fine Gael failed social conservatism.

Seems terrible to wish for some serious upheaval doesn't it? But when you consider that the alternative is forty shades of the same old corrupt fields of green it would be better to have a cathartic kicking over of the whole applecart. It would instil the correct level of respect we've never enforced previously over the gombeen familes as well.

[ang]

Not anything surprising about Shane Ross and a new political party this Country is ripe for picking.

[Ah Well]

FF nearly destroyed

They are in their butt ... merely lying in the long grass waiting to attack from behind ... extinct and subdued are two entirely different things

[Holly]

Since the voting electorate overwhelmingly support right-wing parties, his might not do so badly.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Centre-Right Ireland. Slogan; 'Same Shyt Different Day'

[Ruaidhri]

Who would join this party though? Himself, Donnelly and Somerville. After that I imagine that it would just become a home for right-wing politicians who jumped off the Fianna Fail sinking ship and dissatisfied Fine Gaelers.

[antiestablishmentarian]

Ruaidhri, I'm not so sure FF is a sinking ship given their latest opinion poll figures, and FG are still well up too, so I'm not sure what niche exactly Ross and his group will inhabit and who they'll attract. Probably the likes of Matt Cooper. I'd say any group along these lines will be in the style of UKIP.

[Dr. FIVE]

Michael McDowell not welcome at the party according to Phoenix

[Baron von Biffo]

Michael McDowell not welcome at the party according to Phoenix

Ego driven parties don't work too well when there's more than 1 ego doing the driving. :)

[Dr. FIVE]

Ego driven parties don't work too well when there's more than 1 ego doing the driving. :)

Precisely

[C. Flower]

Heard Donnelly today on the radio, talking about progressive taxation. Not an idea that I can see going down to well with Ross.

[ang]

Maybe MR Ross is awaiting Peter Matthews:-


Shane Ross
Michael Noonan / Peter Matthews have delicious spat in Dail chamber yesterday evening over the Greek bailout. Unreported but FG split??

[C. Flower]

Maybe MR Ross is awaiting Peter Matthews:-

Yes, I think a head of steam is building up there.

[Buddha]

It, the new party, would have to be on a par with Loony Tunes in Norway for anyone to notice a Centre Right Party in this country.

The eFfers are never going to die. They'll be back. Labour will sink into oblivion for a few years after this coalition goes, as it always does, especially with Joan Burton spouting off her fine rhetoric on how people choose a lifestyle. What a horrible woman. Fine Gael are the usual disgrace apart from the latest heavenly inspired attack on Paedophile City by Enda. So can't see it myself.

Shane Ross I like, as long as he is just spouting off about banking and slipping in and out of places of ill-repute. But leader of a party? Never! There's not enough money in it.

Now a far Left Party, no, a complete bloody revolution, that would get my vote. I'd man the barricades anyday for that. As long as Gerry Adams was not let in.