May 6th; Good Local Elections for Theresa May but the Conservatives should be cautious and another Irish Health Scandal…

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United Kingdom

The Local Elections last week didn’t produce a very clear narrative and all parties are scrambling for their own spin. The general consensus seems to be that Labour mis-managed expectations and the Conservatives did the opposite, therefore when results weren’t as clear cut it looked more like a success for the Tories. I’ve included the key results below;

I don’t see it exactly like that. It’s clear former UKIP voters will mostly vote Conservatives over Labour or Liberal Democrats as the UKIP vote and party collapses. However, we have already seen a cycle of tis impact in the General Election in 2017.

At the moment, Labour and the Conservatives are very close in the polls albeit with the Tories currently enjoying a slight lead.

The votes on the major amendments to the EU Withdrawal Bill could have much more serious impacts on the British electoral landscape and could lead to major fissures in Labour, the Conservatives, the Conservatives-DUP supply and confidence deal as well as Scottish politics.

Until we can get a clearer indication of the dates and numbers for each side on those votes, I’m holding off on many articles on British politics for now.

Ireland

Unfortunately, there is another scandal in the Irish Health Service as many women were given the all clear for cervical cancer checks where this wasn’t actually the case.

The Health Service Executive Director Tony O’Brien is coming under massive pressure to resign immediately, even tough he only has four months left on his contract.

Sinn Fein have tabled a motion of no confidence in him for the coming week, but it may be not pass if Fianna Fail abstain.

This is a horrible, tragic scandal but the political fallout for the main parties may not be significant as it does appear as if the government were blindsided. Furthermore, it doesn’t appear that Fianna Fail currently have the appetite for an election, regardless of the upcoming referendum.

One final note this week on Irish politics is that a Sunday Independent poll gave 57% to 43% (excluding undecided voters) support repealing the Eighth Amendment.

With undecided voters the results are much closer with 45% in favour, 34% against, with a considerable 18pc undecided and 4pc who did not express an opinion.
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This will be a very interesting few weeks with nothing yet decided…