Gilmore faces Labour rebellion
It follows a dramatic implosion for the party, which has been left without any MEPs, has lost more than half its representatives in local authorities, and been completely wiped out in some councils, including Cork City.
The collapse of Labour’s support to just 7% means it would be left with just two Dáil seats if a general election were called.
The position of Mr Gilmore was last night discussed by a group of party TDs who plan to communicate their concerns to him in the next 24 hours — before the parliamentary party meets on Wednesday.
Sinn Féin was poised to take the first of the country’s 11 European Parliament seats last night when Lynn Boylan topped the poll in Dublin as the party trebled its representation in city and county councils.
Counting continued through the night for two of the three European constituencies with the battle for final seats expected to go down to the wire.
Brian Crowley of Fianna Fáil appears to be topping the poll in the South with Sinn Féin’s Liadh Ní Riadha likely to take the second seat. Independent Luke Ming Flanagan is on course to top the poll in the Midlands North-West.
The most notable victory was that of Ms Boylan, who was relatively unknown until recent weeks and got just 300 votes when she contested the South Kerry local election in 2009 — but topped the poll on the first count in the Dublin European constituency last night.
Arriving in the count centre in the RDS, Ms Boylan said she was “overwhelmed” with her party’s success, which she put down to a “team effort”. She said she hoped Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore would “listen to the real anger” people are feeling across the country.
Party leader Gerry Adams described the Sinn Féin success as a “community backlash” and a “step change” in Irish politics.
Writing in today’s Irish Examiner, he says his party “begins fighting for the next general election now”.
“Recent times have exposed serious failings in many of the institutions of Irish life. There is a great demand for real change in society, in the economy, and in public life,” he writes.
“Politics in Ireland must change too. Some combination of Fine Gael, Labour, and Fianna Fáil has been in government since the foundation of this State. The old way of doing politics, as practised by these parties, has clearly failed.”
The implosion of Labour left it without a seat in Cork City Council for the first time since 1979, with Lord Mayor Catherine Clancy one of the highest profile casualties.
The party also suffered a crushing defeat in Dublin City where Lord Mayor Oisin Quinn lost his seat, and its number of councillors dropped from 19 to eight — leaving Sinn Féin the dominant party.
The redrawing of the political landscape has resulted in a massive increase in the representation of independents who were poised to take more than 200 local council seats — with a bigger percentage of the vote than any single political party.
Labour’s Michael McNamara last night said Mr Gilmore should be replaced, with a new leader coming from a different generation. The Clare TD also accused the entire frontbench of being out of touch with voters, while Kerry TD Arthur Spring said that “no positions, ideas, or strategies in the party are beyond scrutiny at the moment”.
After an electoral devastation of truly Biblical proportions it was fitting that the Labour Party turned to the Good Book for solace.
“Not even John the Baptist could have saved Labour,” Pat Rabbitte mused.
It was an unfortunate analogy as John the Baptist ended up having his head served on a platter — and clearly voters wanted the party decapitated as well.
In the Bible, John’s gruesome demise was brought about by the scheming of Salome, who danced for King Herod.
And was that a similar rhythmic manoeuvre at the count centre as Labour’s Joan Burton unleashed the Shellacking Shuffle? After using the Americanism for a crushing defeat, Ms Burton was coy on whether she would launch a heave: “I’m not going to call anything like that until we have all of the results in.”
The epic Sinn Féin flood of votes had swept much before it, but there were also Lazurus-like rises from the political dead.
The Greens tentatively emerged from the shallow political grave voters unceremoniously tossed them into. And Mary Hanafin stormed to victory in the battle of Blackrock, and referring to the media huddle which swirled around her, she declared “Oh, I like being doughnuted — I haven’t been in a doughnut for so long!’
Well, she certainly made a donut out of Fianna Fáil leader Micheal Martin after his run/don’t run pleas to her which he followed up with threats of disciplinary action when she cashed-in the nomination papers, and then demanded back.
Mr Martin has once again fought off the threat to his leadership by taking the party back to top dog in local government, but a failure to cement the restoration of an urban footprint with a Dublin Euro seat on the back of a by-election loss could leave his medium-term future in doubt.
Tripling their tally of councillors to 150 and in with a strong shot at securing a Euro seat in all three constituencies, Sinn Féin showed they are now the masters of vote management, though their claim to be the only all-island party was somewhat let down by their lack of reach in parts of the South.
Those who wanted to attack the austerity consensus but not go Sinn Féin chose the independents as the repository for their rage. The Indies and Shinners secured nearly half the popular vote in a harbinger of the future which may well see the only viable outcome of the slated 2016 general election being a Fine Gael/FF accommodation in the centenary year of the Easter Rising.
Enda Kenny would love to be at the head of such a score-settling arrangement and although he took heavy local losses, the Taoiseach managed to avoid the mid-termination result experienced by the previous administration.
Whether Mr Gilmore escapes the fate of John the Baptist and keeps his head, Labour has been shown the Book of Revelations by voters and now face Armageddon at the next Dáil election.
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