A look across the Irish sea
Interesting poll in the Republic of Ireland by RedC. Firstly, there's the voting intentions themselves post Ireland's economic troubles, just as an opportunity to marvel at the complete collapse of support for a governing party. In an election tomorrow respondents said they would vote Fianna Fail 13%(-29), Fine Gael 32%(+5), Labour 24%(+14), Sinn Fein 16%(+9), Greens 3%(-2) - changes are from the levels of support in the last Irish general election in 2007.
To put this in context, the most famous annihiliation of a governing party in a Westminster-style Parliamentary system is probably the Conservatives in Canada in 1993. They went from 43% to 16%, leaving them with just 2 seats. If the results in this poll were repeated at the next Irish general election then it terms of support it would be even worse than the example of the Canadian Conservatives (I couldn't say what it would be likely to do to similar to Fianna Fail's number of seats!)
What has got more attention this side of the Irish sea though is that Conservative MP Mark Reckless commissioned a question on the poll asking if Irish people would support Ireland leaving the Euro and "re-establishing a link with the pound-sterling". The poll suggests 34% of Irish people would support leaving the Euro and having a currency link with the pound, with 62% opposed.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, this was most-popular amongst Sinn Fein supporters, though this may well be purely a result of small sample size - there were only 108 Sinn Fein supporters in the sample (though as Mick Fealty suggests, it could just be the result of Sinn Fein being the party that appeals to Irish Euro-scepticism).
