All politics is local, Tip O’Neill used to say. But local – and European – politics can also be national – big time. Angry voters have delivered themselves, like it or not, of a scathing judgement on the Government, its performance, and what they see as its austerity politics, a verdict that will shake up the national political scene as dramatically as it has reshaped the politics of local government.
Fine Gael and Labour will have to re-energise/reshape the Cabinet and their programme for government, and answer hard questions about their own internal organisation and direction. Not least will they – and Fianna Fáil too, despite its resurgence – have to face up to the worrying and continued deepening of an anti-politics climate among voters since the general election, reflected in a growing rejection of what are seen as the establishment parties in favour of Independents and Sinn Féin.
Yes, voters have been angry about austerity, but they are also deeply disappointed in the apparent abandoning by the political class of the great political reform project that became the catchcry in 2011. If politics felt different, less removed from their concerns, less them and us, the pain would not be as bad. The fall in turnout to around 50 per cent from 58 and 60 per cent in 2009 and 2004, respectively, also an unhappy sign of that alienation.
Little wonder Sinn Féin has been able so successfully to embed itself as the third party. The test will now come for the party as it manages expectations in councils where it has the chance of becoming part of a governing majority. Indeed, there is a paradox too in that popular frustration's expression – have voters clutching at anti-establishment panacea actually pushed us towards greater ungovernability?
The elections have produced a particularly bleak result for Labour with the halving of its council representation and almost certain loss of its European seats. The party may face a leadership challenge although it is doubtful whether a new leader could reverse the party’s decline between now and a general election. And Labour will also be asking itself altogether more profound questions about whether the traditional electoral hammering it gets for participating in coalition is actually reversible this time as Sinn Féin sinks its roots effectively in to old Labour heartlands.
As for Dublin, it is another country. An angry, anti-establishment majority in Dublin has voted against the three mainstream parties of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour – the combined vote of Sinn Féin and Independents amounts to 54 per cent, with former emerging as the largest party in the capital. Meanwhile the hard left parties, the Socialist Party, People Before Profit and the United Left, saw a substantial breakthrough, emerging with a combined vote close to 11 per cent, neck and neck with Labour in the city.
