December 1, 2024 - 1:15pm
On Saturday following Ireland’s general election, count centres were full of volunteers tallying votes on their clipboards. In Donegal, supporters of venerable candidate Pat “the Cope” Gallagher wore high-vis vests bearing the legends “Vote Cope” and even “Team Cope“. It was a welcome reminder that even in an election where the results seem to have changed so little, someone is always coping and someone seething. So who is who?
Sinn Féin’s (SF) vote appears to have held strong, and is likely to leave them on roughly the same number of seats as the two big legacy parties, Fianna Fáil (FF) and Fine Gael (FG). A coalition with either of those parties is unlikely, and in reality that’s what it would take to get Sinn Féin into government. The party’s leader, Mary Lou McDonald presented a bullish face to the press yesterday and announced her intention to seek to form a government by cobbling together enough support from smaller Left-leaning parties and independents, but it is not likely she will be successful.
What of those other legacy parties? In the days immediately before the election it appeared that Fianna Fáil was surging and Fine Gael was dropping precipitously. FF did come through with a strong showing but the FG collapse never emerged. The parties will be in a position to freeze out Sinn Féin and then reform their grand coalition, this time with the Social Democrats and/or Labour as junior partners. They are presentable and un-frightening Left-wing parties which either have a stated openness to go into power with the legacy parties or have done it before. In any case, the closeness of the results between the three largest parties means it will probably be the new year before a government is formed.
As usual, the fringes held the most interesting results. Radical Right-wing candidates have once again failed to make breakthroughs. In key areas like Dublin West and Dublin Central cumulative votes of such parties, though still in single figures, have grown noticeably in the last few years. The basis of a larger Right-wing and specifically anti-immigration movement is there but once again was thwarted by vote splitting among too many candidates, and an inability to secure transfers from other parties.
The failed bids include Malachy Steenson, the key mover behind the “Coolock Says No” protest and a recently elected councillor. Interestingly, Steenson’s vote was undercut by late entrant Gerry “The Monk” Hutch, a nationally known figure with a lengthy and gaudy criminal history. Hutch’s success is a salutary warning to the Right that while anti-establishment feeling in marginalised communities can be turned to ideological ends, it can just as often manifest as a middle finger to the system.
One of the few rays of light for any Right-inclined voters is that the third party currently in government, the Green Party, looks to be facing near-obliteration. The Greens and in particular their leader Roderick O’Gorman were the section of the government most closely associated with Ireland’s handling of refugees, immigration and housing during the last government. While it’s tempting to see this as a rebuke to immigration policy, there is a recurrent theme in Irish politics of the smallest party in coalition facing obliteration at the polls. The Green Party’s decline should be understood in that context.
So, what does it all mean for Ireland’s future? From the outside it seemed that this was an election where cultural issues combined with the housing crisis would finally break the stranglehold of consensus politics in Ireland. More than a few people inside Ireland at either end of the partisan spectrum hoped the same, but that hope felt increasingly desperate as a sleepy campaign proceeded, obsessed with trivialities and managing the surface appearance rather than the true substance of various crises.
In a strange way the sleepiness of the contest provided its own sense of closure. Maybe it’s a side effect of the siphoning off of youthful vigour represented by emigration, but radical change isn’t coming to Ireland. Despite their protestations, most voters are at peace with that. But the fact that voters and the system have chosen to sleep through the storm doesn’t mean it’s gone away. Ireland’s economic model is under direct threat from a protectionist US regime, and on the key issues of immigration and asylum they have grown noticeably out of step with the mainstream of European opinion.That’s bad news for a country that has made faithful advocacy of the EU’s goals a key feature of its success.
The fact that neither of these were discussion points during the election is revealing — all parts of the political system decided it was better to hope those storms blow themselves out than to get everyone riled up by addressing them. In time, Ireland may look back on this election as the last chance to grasp those nettles, a chance the system and people both passed on, to who knows what end.
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SubscribeI would disagree with the reasons given for the near obliteration of the Greens in this election. There is a strong move in Western democracies to put them last. They are spoilers in coalition. Their pie in the sky ideological policies cause great harm to working families and good order. Recent experience for them in Australian State elections where they barely gained seats looks to be repeated in the Federal election next year. Good riddance.
The SocDems and Labour, who have picked up the Greens vote, have the same ideology as the GP.
Reminds me of 2007, its like deja vu all over again
A terrible government returned by an electorate who have no clue whats coming down the track, to make matters worse, even if the voters were clued in, the opposition are as poor as the government. In the end people who re elect the likes of Helen McEntee will get what they deserve
I hate to be a black piller here, but Ireland is over. By the time the establishment is kicked out of power, it will be too late. The US may see a second great wave of immigration from Ireland, but this time our immigration policy is likely to be much tighter.
Ireland’s economy is indeed walking the proverbial tightrope – a tightrope that extends from Boston to Brussels.
The very forces of pan-Atlanticism that benefitted it so much are now buffeting it like a sea storm. From one side, Trump’s threats of tariffs; his threats to Big Tech (Pam Bondi’s pick for Assistant AG for Antitrust will be very illuminating for Google and their fellow Tech Titans), and to Big Pharma (RFKJr’s Make Pharma Companies Broke Again) are a real whammy for Ireland Inc’s business model.
The wind that blows from Brussels is no less ill. The EU’s policies of climate zealotry threaten Ireland’s most productive sector in terms of value-added – grazing-based pasture farming, while Brussels’ new found fascination with subsidy races suits the deep pocketed like France and Germany, not the small Member States of the fringes.
But with our global network of fun pubs and our gift of the gab, we Irish will always find a place to put down our leprechaun hats and call home.
Reasonably good article that accurately describes the sleepy campaign that lacked original thought. Ireland does have a reservoir of good parliamentarians but the main parties are lead by slick globalists ( particukatky micheal martin )who get the help of media outlets who police the overton window zealously. Climate change is a religious belief here for example for the most part and no political party or media outlet questions it. There is no room for descussion of libertarian/ free market solutions to the housing crises and migration issues are just pushed on the civil service as politicians avoid responsibilities. In doing so the politicians become representatives of the Government to the people instead of serving the people. I dont know, its a great country though just full of bad ideas at the moment
You are correct about the slick globalists that lead the main parties. Peter Sutherland, once dubbed the godfather of globalism, was recruited from Fianna Fail by the UN. There he became their migration chief from 2006 until 2018. His mission was to spread the word of globalisation and its uptake via mass immigration across the west. In 2012 he lectured the House of Lords saying it was the duty of the EU “should do its best” to undermine national homogeneity in order to ensure the success of globalisation that the prosperity of EU nations depended on them being multicultural. Sutherland, who was also a “non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former chairman of oil giant BP” was ideologically committed to mass immigration no matter “how difficult it may be to explain this to the citizens of those nations.” A report of this speech can be found on BBC news site.
This thinking was embraced by unthinking politicians desperate to make economies buoyant by any means possible, they didn’t consider the consequences or how such buoyant economies could be achieved by such a scheme.
It seems to me the real aim of the globalist agenda is to atomise and weaken nations making them far easier to bring into line and control: divide and rule.
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Nuts…. He was the only Green to keep his seat
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I basically agree with this article, but with a few little caveats.
First, Ken O’Flynn took a seat in Cork North Central, and while the independent nationalists didn’t manage many seats elsewhere, they deprived ‘Finna Blob’ (FF/FG) of seats – e.g. they cost FG a seat in Dublin South Central, for example. So the impact on policy is very likely to be felt. It’s said an Irish politicians can smell one of his constituent’s farts ten miles against the breeze, so Finna Blob will know this is their last election if they don’t change immigration policies.
The ‘union of the two towers’ (FF + FG) into Finna Blob is now near complete. This is shown by transfers – for those not familiar with the Irish voting system (PR-STV) a ‘transfer’ is the 2nd, 3rd… preference votes a voter gives after the candidate to whom they gave their first preference has already won. These transfer votes start to count for the third / fourth / fifth seats in a constituency. In this election, those who gave a first preference to FG gave a second preference to FF and vice versa. This shows they have effectively merged into the monoparty. By the next election, this will be apparent to everyone in Ireland, and anyone seeking real change will know not to vote Finna Blob again.
Sinn Fein also knows they underperformed vis-a-vis expectations. They should be in a position to run a minority government at the very least, but they aren’t because they shed so many voters to right-leaning independents. A good example is the Dublin Bay South constituency, where SF lost its seat, despite a voter share of 12.5%, to the social democrats. The reason why was Nick Delahanty, who ran on an almost Trumpian campaign of ‘Make Crime Illegal’ and absorbed a chunk of the protest vote (4%).
Mary Lou (SF leader)’s late pivot away from open borders wasn’t enough, and the Go Woke, Go Broke saying appears to have some truth in it. Behind the hoopla, there will be some soul searching taking place at Parnell Square West.
So yes, it’s still the status quo. But in Ireland, you can’t hide from the voters for too long. It’s just too small a country.
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