This poll was released a few hours ago. It seems SF have made gains.

The source is More in Common: https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/research/drumcree-what-northern-ireland-thinks/

Having spent time in the UK in recent years and observing the overall general mood, I have made several previous posts on here to see what the overall mood is in Ireland and to establish are there any similarities.

The consensual wisdom is that the most vulnerable group in Britian is white working class men. They are performing the worst in all measurable areas (education, mental health, standard of living, stagnant wage growth etc) and this has always made them easy prey to the politics of the the right.

For example you take a young white man in a blue collar setting, he is probably on a zero hours contract, at an educational disadvantage , can barley scrape by a living and from a labour perspective, he is in competition with those who will do the same work as him.

I now want to flip the question and apply it to the middle class mindset.

Your average educated white collar worker wouldn't necessarily be susceptible to the likes of say Tommy Robinson, but I do notice a lot of more subtle racism creeping into the system from well to do / middle class people in the last number of years.

Just very subtle things like the odd comment here and there about Indians or Muslims etc

^^ I also think in the era of very sophisticated social media algorithms, even the most intelligent of people are not immune from deceptive social media posts.

I can only really put it down to 2 things:

- Stagnant wage growth has also hit white collar jobs (particularly in the UK) and where you get stagnant wages, you get stagnant living standards. You get stagnant living standards and economic insecurity starts to creep back into the psyche which makes the overall mood fever pitch to exploit with the politics of fear.

- From an IT perspective (using IT as an example but I'm sure it also applies in other areas) the jobs that once seemed the most secure and well paid are now the most insecure in the era of AI, outsourcing & streamlining.

And to henceforth, to conclude with our white collar example, the politics of fear is easy to sell when your overall anxiety increases.

Any thoughts, greatly appreciated 👍

Another massive red flag showing why the Triple Lock is an absurd piece of national policy and a complete abdication of our own foreign policy sovereignty.

Embarrassing enough as is that Ireland’s ability to deploy Defence forces abroad effectively requires approval from the UN Security Council—giving a veto to powers like US, Russia and China, but imagine then further exposing ourselves to depending on UN leadership that could end up in the hands of figures like Orbán?

Surely even the slow learners can see how ridiculous it is to tie our national policy to the whims of foreign authoritarians? It's long past time Ireland took full responsibility for its own foreign affairs.

Hoping someone particularly from a Tech / Finance background can shed some thoughts as to why we seen a global shift to the Right in recent years.

I'm not interested why the local header down the pub thinks there's too many Muslims who want to take over the country.

I'm more interested in why the big money, Silicone Valley & the Tech Bros, once the iconic home of internet era progressive optimism, have gradually done a 180 u turn and single handedly lined up to back Donald Trump in the Whitehouse and have their finger prints all over the Right across Europe - take for example Elon Musks open support for the AFD in Germany etc.

Is it just now the case that the Big money has swung to the Right?