As the dust settles on the local and European election cycle, the summer arrives, the Dáil prepares for next month’s summer recess and the political cycle enters general election mode, there are three Vs that characterise electoral politics in Ireland.
There’s volatile voter behaviour, a political vacuum and the verve of public sentiment. The last general election took place pre-pandemic. Society has changed.
Volatility, vacuum and verve are not just down to the impact of the pandemic, a war in Europe, online conspiracy culture and the growth of right-wing populism and far-right anti-immigrant sentiment across the UK, mainland Europe and the US. In Ireland – which deals with all of those issues too – it’s also a response to what’s on offers to voters here. Ambiguity breeds unpredictability.
For generations, ideology in Irish politics was curiously hidden behind cultural and social veils. “Middle” is the eternal prefix to describe nothing and everything. Transposed to the political spectrum, the same goes for “centre”.
Stefan Müller and Aidan Regan’s 2021 paper, Are Irish Voters Moving to the Left?, used survey data from 1973 onwards along with all Irish election studies between 2002 and 2020, to demonstrate that the average Irish voter now leans to the centre-left. Yet much of the commentary in the aftermath of this election cycle orientates around the “centre” holding (despite obvious indications, across messaging and policy, that the so-called “centre” is moving to the right), and also musings over who will press the big red button of right-wing populism first. Where is the actual average Irish voter in all of this?
Sinn Féin’s success in recent years has been down to its insistence that it is an alternative to Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, but it has also occupied a policy space that could be kindly referred to as liminal. Perceptions of U-turns also cause confusion. They could be seen as responsive (“we’ve listened to the people”), or populist (“give the people what they want”). But all of it generates an uncertainty among the electorate: who are you really? What do you stand for? What will you do? Who will you go into government with? Time is running out for clarity on these questions. In fact, they’ve been hanging in the air so long, many voters didn’t wait for answers, and drifted to Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in numbers that – although they lost seats – finally dragged both parties out of their existential doldrums.
The gloating that followed is probably a little premature. As is oft-repeated, general elections are different. That’s when the brand, not the candidate, really comes in to play. The 2020 general election was especially significant, not just because of the three-way split between Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and Sinn Féin, but because it demonstrated that voters were broadly thinking nationally, not locally. This is a shift that demands more attention.
There are now new questions, questions about which part of the electorate Sinn Féin will actually listen to in plotting its short-term future for long-term gain. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have, in part, already answered that. They are reasserting themselves as centre-right. Should Sinn Féin enter that space, then all three will be scrambling for the same votes.
There are two themes emerging for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that speak to their rightward assertion: hardening a line on “immigration” (right-wing populist), and attempting to undermine or even attack “the green agenda” (right-wing populist), in particular in relation to farming, although Regina Doherty certainly made a pitch for being the second shock jock in the European election with her ridiculous comments on cycle lanes.
From the nitrates derogation to addressing the intensification of agriculture, from biodiversity to emissions, from getting cars out of cities to forestry, it would make sense for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to align themselves with Independent Ireland and other right-wing Independents as potential coalition partners, and jettison those pesky Greens. That’s probably quite a depressing vista for plenty of people. But hey, who cares about the planet when there are votes to be got?
Sinn Féin will not be able to sell its message of “change” if it is offering something similar. To capture volatility, vacuum and verve, it’s pretty obvious that presenting a left-wing coalition to the electorate before the general election would immediately define a Sinn Féin-led government as the “change” it speaks about. Then everyone will know: it’s one or the other. This would probably never happen, but if you wanted to build a progressive movement that mobilised voters, then clearly outlining the potential, the intentions, the ambitions and the composition of a New Ireland Coalition, or whatever you want to call it, does that.
The optics are obvious: for example, Mary Lou McDonald, Holly Cairns, and Ivana Bacik side by side, versus Simon Harris and Micheál Martin. Which one looks like “change” to you?
Ideology is going to have to enter the chat at some point. That’s not an argument for polarisation or binary partisan fandom. It’s actually about pragmatism and clarity for voters. We are already in an era where the far right is moving the dial into the danger zone, globally. Ireland can do things differently. It’s about time the left asserted itself with a cohesion it rarely manages.