Oh, that magic feeling: nowhere to go

Reflections on the 2024 Irish General Election

Since my last post I’ve written for Polygon about a presidential race simulation game, for the Guardian about the Apple tax case, and a few other bits and pieces. I thought I’d take the longest and most complex one as a jumping off point to talk about the Irish General Election, which just happened.

For the last print edition of the Baffler, I wrote a long piece considering the possibilities of Irish unification. Looking over Sinn Féin’s rise and stall, I said:

The party displayed impeccable timing in the 1990s and also benefited from remarkable luck, coming to the negotiating table with the British and Irish governments while they had maximum leverage and before the war on terror would make any paramilitary force lose influence in Washington. In the first years of this decade, however, that luck has run out. Sinn Féin’s polling began to decay last year, and that decline has accelerated in the last twelve months, driven by the rising salience of immigration as a political issue and the emergence of an active, violent far-right as a live force in Irish politics. Rather than double down on the issues on which they hold a commanding lead, namely housing and health, Sinn Féin have instead engaged in amateurish overtures toward the right, attempting to define themselves as “serious” on immigration in the manner of center-left parties across Europe. This appears to have led to a further softening of their support on the left, while winning them few votes from the immigration-fixated center and right. The same ideological flexibility that once allowed them to grow rapidly now looks like cynical opportunism and political incoherence. An older generation of Republican activists are dying or retiring, and with them, some of Sinn Féin’s commitment to being a real social force, rather than merely another electioneering political party.

Their performance in June’s local and European elections in the Republic was disappointing: they polled in the low teens, below the two main, center-right government parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. With a general election due no later than March 2025, and likely happening in November of this year, Ireland is, as it stands, looking at a reelection of the current government, possibly supported by new right-wing party Independent Ireland and various clientelist and xenophobic independents. While none of the current government parties are explicitly against a united Ireland, there is precisely zero chance that this coalition would push for unification in anything like the medium term.

Well, the election happened, as predicted, and the outcome was pretty much exactly that. Sinn Féin did a little better than expected, but were still miles off being able to govern in any realistic scenario. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have been comfortably reelected, needing only a handful of independents, who they will no doubt get for a sack of magic beans and the right to dump more nitrates in the groundwater. As all the seats are filled and we’re in that strange interregnum before a government is formed, I thought I might offer some lightly focussed thoughts on the state of Irish politics after this latest anticlimactic election.

I have been wrong about a great many things, but I never bought the inevitability of a Sinn Féin government. It is a boring aphorism that I repeat too much, but no political outcome is inevitable. Sinn Féin’s breakthrough in the last election was genuinely astounding, shattering a hundred years of political duopoly and forcing the two civil war parties into coalition for the first time. Sinn Féin then soared to new polling heights, touching the upper thirties in vote share. In April of last year – last year! – B&A polled them at 37%, one percentage point more than FF/FG combined, a result that would have netted them over 70 seats, and left them in spitting distance from a majority.

Were these numbers real? Who knows, because by the time this vote rolled around they were lucky to scrape the 19% they did. So why did I never quite believe it? Well, for one thing, Fine Gael also polled in the high 30s in the last election cycle. An electorate that oscillates across the political spectrum like that is not ideologically committed, and cannot be relied upon to deliver votes at the time you need it. Sinn Féin’s numbers always felt a little overinflated, not reflective of how recently they were a small party, or how shallow their roots were in certain parts of the country.

The most remarkable thing about this election is that it wasn’t worse for Sinn Féin. Beset by inscrutable scandals, internally and externally incoherent, they spent the last year losing votes from left, right, and centre. They fought a decent national campaign, though as ever their ground game remains frustratingly patchy for a major party. Given the low turnout, some Sinn Féin strategists will be happy that their core vote is now in the upper teens. They returned a healthy number of seats on a reduced vote, reflective of the increased size of the Dáil, but also a smarter selection policy and, I suspect, a greater transfer friendliness than they historically experienced. Ultimately, there are 39 Sinn Féin TDs in the next Dáil, and they are the main opposition. Old heads in the party will surely be saying that it could be worse, and reminding the younger types of a time when it was just Gerry and four other lads.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have been engaging in mutual back patting, Fianna Fáil with considerably more reason. For all the supposed new energy of their dilettante Taoiseach, and the elevated poll numbers it brought, Fine Gael’s vote declined yet again, albeit marginally. This was their worst vote share since 1948, though you wouldn’t know it to look at their smug faces. They ran too many candidates and a fairly anemic campaign most defined by Simon Harris’ inability to appear even vaguely human when confronted with a member of the public. Had the Dáil size remained static they would likely have lost net seats, and are sitting in third place yet again. After almost fourteen years in power they are listless, shorn of their big personalities and liable to be rolled by their more powerful coalition partner. Still they managed to replace their ranks with AI generated backbenchers, so that’s something.

Speaking of same, you’ve got to hand it to Micheal Martin, the man knows how to spin shit into gold. Eighteen months ago I tried to gauge the position of the party:

Fianna Fáil has recovered from its lowest point in 2011, but this has mostly been achieved by clawing back some older voters from Fine Gael. It is true to say that the Fianna Fáil brand remains toxic to younger voters, but for most under 30, it’s truer to say that it is increasingly irrelevant. It remains the most generationally polarised party in the country, with candidates occasionally garnering margin-of-error numbers among young voters. It would be a struggle for many people to name a single, notable, unique Fianna Fáil policy. To return to the question of who Fianna Fáil is for, the answer appears to be a steadily dwindling, increasingly regionalised demographic.

Taking the exit poll data with a grain of salt – considering its larger than usual error – FF remain a party of older people, with a hefty 27% of over 65s, and 22% of 50-64s. They remain unsurprisingly unpopular among my own cohort of millennials, for whom they will ever be the party that, as the saying goes, fucked the country. But they’ve made a modest recovery among Gen Z, too young to appreciate the splendour of Brian Cowen’s brief tenure. Their vote has remained remarkably static since the last election (down 0.3pp, from 484,000 to 481,000). These are not wholly the same voters, of course, in five years people move, die, change parties, become old enough to vote etc. But they have managed to replace supporters at approximately the same rate as they have lost them, assisted by the higher voting propensity of older voters. Much rests on the personal popularity of Martin himself, widely perceived as a capable, humane Taoiseach; a decent man, as he has been described perhaps one million times, notwithstanding his actual positions in governments which have overseen immense human misery.

Fianna Fáil are becoming a party that you vote for when you can’t think of anything else to do. They landed on an absurd 48 seats, though Mary Fitzpatrick was shafted, for what must be the tenth time. Their seat-getting is bolstered by the remnants of their legendary turnout machine, as well as a breakdown of the old civil war divide that now sees them add a hefty chunk of Fine Gael second and third preferences to their harvest. They still have an ideological problem, of course, but electoral success can paper over those cracks for a while longer. The real fun will begin when Martin steps aside, or is pushed. I’ve long bored everyone around me with my prediction that Martin will run for, and win, one of the next two presidential elections. As ironic as this sounds about a Fianna Fáiler who has been around since Haughey, there is simply no other obvious figure who can attract as broad based support for a role that largely hinges on being seen as stately and dignified. Absent Martin, however, Fianna Fáil are, to put it kindly, thinly stocked with personality and ability. Who is Peter “Chap” Cleere? We may never know. An ideological war will likely not break out among the contenders, that will have to wait until one of them leads the party into a truly catastrophic election result. We await the day.

It was a very strange election for PBP/S, in which they lost seats, gained a seat, had near misses, increased their overall vote share, and ultimately ended up down 2, from 5 to 3. It didn't feel like a disaster but it didn't feel great either, particularly combined with the loss of left independents like Thomas Pringle and Joan Collins. They feel simultaneously like they’ve really deepened their roots in certain constituencies and at the same time completely failed to make any headway in most of the country. I would love to know what their strategy is for the next Dáil because I couldn't even begin to guess. Nice to see Seamus Healy get back in down in Tipp, a bright spot in a dark local political landscape.

The modestly impressive vote for the Social Democrats appears to be in large part leakage from Sinn Fein and the Greens. A considerable number of voters are angry about Sinn Féin’s posturing on immigration and general drift, as well as the Greens’ time in government, and the Social Democrats are relatively unblemished so far. Their position of party to vote for if you want a Sinn Féin government but don’t want to vote for Sinn Féin is a smart one. That’s quite a few people in this country. They have been genuinely fortunate that FG/FF are so close to the numbers they need, because they will hardly be tempted by a spin on the party-killing carousel that is coalition government.

I have nothing to say about or to the Greens except, if you go to dinner with a cannibal, you can’t be surprised if they eat you. At least the trains are sort of cheap now. As for the question of who votes for Labour, I’ve been trying to answer that my entire life and have never come up with an answer except “me in 2011”. They appear to have run a smart, targeted campaign that netted big seat numbers on a modest vote, and if Alan Kelly doesn’t get to go into government soon, blood is going to start pumping out of his ears.

Which leaves us with the right. There are essentially four categories here, the anti-choice loopers in Aontú, the curdled clientelist right Independent Ireland, other right and far right independents, and the fascist microparties. My boundaries on right independents are somewhat arbitrary, but adding up all these categories, the right and far right have 10 TDs, and about 10.5% of the vote. There was no explosive far right breakthrough in terms of seats, but this does represent a solidification of the reactionary forces in the Irish system. Aontu by rights should have had more seats, given their vote, but for now there's plenty of more transfer friendly parties out there. Their candidates are also, to not put too fine a point on it, absolute freaks. Independent Ireland gained a seat, and remain a strange outfit. Technically part of Fianna Fail (and Emmanuel Macron’s) centrist grouping at European level, their TDs have more or less openly fraternized with the far right, and their clientelist appeal now has the explicit admixture of faux-community anti-migrant politics. This goes for the unaffiliated right independents, too, all four of whom are explicitly anti-migrant. There are others - like Kevin “Boxer” Moran - who I could have included but chose not to, as their commitment to anti-immigrant politics seems more opportunistic than sincere. As always, the permanent coterie of clientelist independents serve as a useful buffer zone for the government. They don’t even have to support FF/FG, as those parties know they will never support a government of the left.

I saw some talk that the far right had been defeated, or even vanquished, in this election, but I don't see it. They appear stuck in the same stasis as everyone else. The potential is still very much there for a wider and more serious breakout. 235,000 odd people voted for the right and far right in this election, which if united could return as many as 20 seats. The explicitly fascist parties didn't return any seats, but they weren't a million miles off. A right vote in the country is not new, exactly, but it used to be mostly contained within the two major parties, especially their youth wings. The Progressive Democrats had an extremely right wing streak on immigration, and managed to make their mark through the removal of birthright citizenship in 2004. Since their demise there have been several attempts to create a vehicle for the right, from the Atlanticist astroturfing of Libertas to the Fine Gael breakaway Renua Ireland. Many personalities have remained constant through each cycle. To be frank, each was doomed by just how incredibly weird and creepy the leadership presented. This is what makes the relatively sober-seeming Peader Tobín such a dangerous prospect as leader. The settling point for a modestly successful Irish right appears to be an ECR-like party akin to the Polish PiS, deeply socially conservative and anti-immigrant with bland economic centrist offerings, and a foot in both fascist street politics and “respectable” electoralism. There is plenty of money to go around on the right, between mysterious funding sources and the more banal state financing that both Aontú and II will be entitled to, having crossed the 2% vote threshold. They have a media outlet in the form of Gript, and remain well placed to grow beyond the benighted little pool from which they spawned.

In the end this election was notable for what didn’t happen, rather than what did. No Sinn Féin government. No bounce for Simon Harris. No Fianna Fáil implosion. No huge breakthrough for the far right. No defiance of gravity for the Green Party. Many of the political currents that influenced the last few years feel as if they spent themselves before election day. The water charges and Repeal movements built a new Irish left politics, but the high point of the former was ten years ago, the latter six. The Climate Justice protests that brought the Green party to its best result ever feel like distant history. Covid welded together a psychotic conspiratorial reaction, but the last lockdown restrictions ended two years ago. Even the noxious anti-migrant agitations declined somewhat in the wake of last year's riots. Despite the fact that housing is unmistakably the biggest issue in Irish society, a sustainable, effective social movement around it has remained frustratingly unachievable. If you could sum up the election in one word it would be: exhaustion.

With the lowest turnout since the 1920s, the electorate was disproportionately old and, I suspect, affluent. A short, uninspiring campaign, with two incredibly familiar party leaders and one incredibly unimpressive one. A lot of people simply sat this one out, and it's hard to blame them. The left parties didn’t offer anything like a united front. The establishment parties showed resilience, but not strength, and would surely be vulnerable to either a major economic shock or a new charismatic leadership on the left. As to the latter, the wait goes on.