The Irish Euro and local elections were full of surprises. They left pollsters with a headache, but Sinn Fein has the biggest one. The messianic movement’s historical determinism met the laws of political gravity and gravity won.

The Irish pollsters were still reeling from their referendum polls being completely wrong. In terms of the local and European elections it was a confused picture. Pollsters had predicted Sinn Fein’s nose-dive in support, just not the scale of it. Online polling has problems with the over-attraction of tech engaged urban youth and all forms have a problem with rurality. However, the polling for the three mega constituencies of the European elections (using the candidates’ names) proved much more accurate.

As for Sinn Fein, from the heady days of polling in the mid-high thirties, there was a gradual decline in their support into the twenties, which then became a dirty rush as the campaign progressed. Although Dail polling would have predicted a SF result in the low twenties vying for first with Fine Gael, they in fact crashed to 11.8 per cent in local elections (and less again in the Europeans: 11.2 per cent). Which meant a distant third behind both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. How has what seemed like the politically inevitable become the indeterminate? 

Broken dreams

The official aim of the republican movement is not just a 32 county republic but a socialist republic too. However, in its history it has treated these twin aims more like their bass and treble — rising and lowering the emphasis on socialism or republicanism as needed for the times or the audience. As the space on the left grew in Irish politics, SF cranked up the socialist treble. Its policies became standard issue European leftism, including on social issues and immigration. 

The received wisdom for Sinn Fein’s implosion in the Republic is that it was the issue of immigration that did for them, but it may well go back to the referendum (which was on modish changes to their constitution). Exit polling showed it was the current cohort of SF voters who opposed these the most. The “Irish mammy” is the source of much internet and inter-generational mirth, but it is part of the familial and community glue, and even more so in working class communities. They were not going to vote for gobbledygook even if SF said to do so.

The arch progressive consensus coalition government had played games with the recommended wording, so SF had a political out — they could have postured as being for change, just not this change. Extremely foolishly they chose not to exercise that option. An insurgent socially conservative campaign had learned lessons from the failures of the abortion referendum. It was homegrown (no overt American influences or approaches that had cost votes), able spokespersons, built alliances outside their core community (segments of the non-conservatives disliked the new wording) and as the campaign closed, the actual anti-establishment rebels successfully linked the changes to the hot button issue of immigration. In no constituency did the proposed amendments to the constitution get a majority.

Who they really are

As the voters rebelled, Sinn Fein looked like what they are: part of the establishment, not any sort of serious alternative to it. 

When immigration exploded as a voter issue, Sinn Fein’s flatfooted response was in keeping with its new left plumage. When it took a polling hit, it tried toughening its position, then it tried riding both horses (attending pro-migrant rallies in Dublin and local protests against migrant accommodation). Mary Lou McDonald had to dig out a 2007 Irish Times article to claim an older position hoping to throw the intervening years down one of their many memory holes. However, this sudden change in tack lacked any credible meaning. It called for a system with “fairness, efficiency and transparency” – a system that let few in or many in could of course have those very same principles.

The dominant news story and genuine concern of voters was a wedge issue between the party and its long-standing nativist base. In a working class estate in Limerick, Sinn Fein activists had to abandon their canvas after meeting a wall of abuse on immigration. This estate had been voting SF since the days it only polled a few percentage points. In other areas, long-standing activists refused to canvas knowing what they would face.

Meanwhile, under Simon Harris’s new leadership, Fine Gael pivoted and toughened up its approach including dubiously blaming the UK as the source of its problems, placing extra resources for checks on the Northern Ireland border (a hardened border obviously only being a breach of the Belfast Agreement when the Irish say so) and breaking up tent encampments in Dublin. 

As voters turned on an establishment consensus, Sinn Fein looked a full believer and then cack-handed at pretending it had not been.

The third shoe was housing. This was the issue that made Sinn Fein in the 2020 election. First, whatever think tanks, activists or others try to claim the average voter will see immigration and housing demand as intrinsically interconnected. However, Mary Lou basically exploded their credibility on the issue when she pledged to reduce the average Dublin house price to €300K. The scale of housebuilding required to achieve that in a city with massive infrastructure pressures being ludicrously improbable. 

With voters united on establishment failure, SF had become unbelievable, and risibly so.

Changing horses

The week after the election Mary Lou McDonald went straight to economic populism. Ireland has at least a paper budget surplus. The result of global corporation book movements that cannot be considered permanent. She advocated spending it. This new profligacy contrasts with the past visits to various multi-nationals to soothe any concerns about a Sinn Fein government. This confirms the impression of not being a government in waiting but an opposition party flailing as it loses popularity.

Issue mismanagement is, though, not the fundamental problem. What the mishandling represents is that they have lost that secret sauce that a party seeking to overtake the political establishment needs most – authenticity. 

As a movement that lives by the myth of the latest thing it too can be harmed when the latest thing doesn’t go its way. 

The results push them back to their Northern Ireland redoubt. They sold a narrative to northern separatists of a 2030 referendum driven and delivered by Sinn Fein led governments in Dublin and Belfast. This self-soothing fantasy lies in tatters. The latest historical determinist plan to abolish Northern Ireland has joined so many others in the bin of history. In SF’s Westminster manifesto there was no mention of 2030 anymore.

Will British Sinn Fein suffer in the Westminster election for the failure of their latest con trick or will the battle for sectarian hegemony save them? Or can a divided and distracted Unionism press the advantage gifted to them from the south and shift the narrative?

Northern Republicans will look to Ireland’s Future to keep the con alive. However, if Unionism was picking who they would want to run their opposition Ireland’s Future should be it. It’s a vapid and repetitious series of PR events with no political substance: a circuit of the same people, same audiences and same tropes. Its big idea is a “citizens’ assembly”. This is a mickey mouse proposal to let them hide away from the herculean problems that taking Northern Ireland into the Irish state would face. However, they have a core problem they cannot acknowledge, but which Unionism fails to press home. 

Especially B-team

The 3rd of February 2024 was as historic as Sinn Fein claimed but not in the way they spun it. It was the day the separatist case for the abolition of Northern Ireland died. Michelle O’Neill got in a car under the protection of the Police Service of Northern Ireland to be driven to the Northern Ireland Assembly to become the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For a century they had claimed Northern Ireland was an irreformable entity in which no one from a catholic and/or republican background could ever be treated equally. On that day Northern Ireland proved it was a lie. It proved itself fully reformable, even by Sinn Fein’s insincere standards.

The surprise SF candidate for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Pat Cullen, is a walking talking example of this change. From a republican village in Tyrone her abilities saw her rise to amongst the highest levels of her profession in Northern Ireland and then further still in the United Kingdom, to become Head of the Royal College of Nursing. Now she is reduced to parroting republican truisms and refusing to condemn PIRA murders of health workers. 

Yet it’s the political convulsions in the Republic which are of course the true sign of a deeper disjoint in the fundamentally partitionist Irish Republic. Electorally, maybe about half of the old Fianna Fail voter alliance are looking for a new home. They split with the party following the global financial collapse, the death of the Celtic Tiger and the resulting extraordinary measures imposed by a “troika” of the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund. Their motivations are fundamentally patriotic, suspicious of smartarse foreigners, and many, for want of anything better, had settled on Sinn Fein to be the repository of their hopes and dreams. But these guys are now on the move again. 

In the local and European elections, the disenchanted, sometime FF base block appear to have gone for the various independents and new right-wing parties. They are the greatest political prize, but can the Irish political mainstream re-connect with them in the few short months before their general election? They certainly don’t seem to consume mainstream media and despite spending heavily on social media Sinn Fein could not reach them.

Socially what these alienated voters symbolise is in part the old Ireland, but perhaps more accurately, the often left-behind, non-FDI Ireland. The Irish story of economic success is true but only a partial truth. Economically, there is the Irish FDI economy and the non-FDI economy. This is reflected in the Irish government not taking its own GDP figures seriously and having to create different measures to create a true picture. These alternative measures paint an economy with levels of growth more comparable with the UK’s. Whose growth rates have been notoriously anaemic.

The Irish boast how quickly they got their national debt back under control but if they believed that, they would be borrowing to build the infrastructure and new homes the Republic needs to solve its housing crisis.  But they are very pointedly not doing this. Why? As their own economic advisers consistently warn, Ireland’s tax take is heavily reliant on three MNC’s. The loss of one or all would send cataclysmic shockwaves through the real economy and public finances alike. Critically this would happen with no realistic way of repairing the harm: it certainly wouldn’t come care of a magic wand waved in Brussels.

The Celtic Tiger was proven to be a paper tiger. Political Ireland crosses its fingers that sensible investments in skills will build a new more sustainable economy before the cards fall again (though the housing crisis results in many of the newly skilled leaving). It is also why the Dublin establishment fears the economic shock of trying to absorb Northern Ireland.

This dual track economy produces Brown Thomas fur coats for some but Penneys knickers for many or as a twitter joker put it: “This neighbourhood’s per capita GDP is €267,273 but everyone living here earns €13/hour.”

What to do about smaller problems?

Should the government parties be rushing to the polls? These last election results would encourage it, but some thought is needed.

Fianna Fail’s leader Michael Martin is the epitome of the FDI wing of the party in the time of the Celtic Tiger. He was the post-collapse caretaker leader who never left, partly as no new credible leader came forward and partly by the protection of party HQ. However, in government his rump-FF comes across as making up the numbers. FG manages to claim more of the credit for what progress the government has made, and the Greens get their policy agenda embedded (its undeliverability and likelihood of a farmer/rural rebellion comparable to the Netherlands will come later). FF’s local results were the worst in their entire history and still may well flatter their Dail support. 

Fine Gael’s new leader, Simon Harris, has the essential characteristic of a hungry leader looking to win his first election: a healthy appetite. He was not the first choice of most FG TDs. However, he moved hard and fast completely outmanoeuvring likely opponents and had sealed the leadership within 36 hours. He has not been idle in Government either and his poll bounce proved to be real. He is a much more natural campaigner than Varadkar and can offer a fresh face unlike Martin and McDonald. 

The prize of the largest party and most likely to form a government is who can rally non-FDI Ireland to their banner or to that if an “FDI” party which somehow plausibly recognises the divide and makes a credible pitch to some or all of these voters, so screamingly similar to the “never had” voters who are upsetting elections across the West. 

In 2019 Sinn Fein had a disastrous Irish local government election but bounced back to be the largest party in the 2020 Dail elections. They will cling to the hope they can repeat this. But time, credibility and the narrative are against them. Equally can Fine Gael or Fianna Fail step out of their FDI comfort zone? Harris perhaps. 

Sinn Fein will try to pick themselves off the canvas, the ten count buzzing in their ears knowing a mainstream party has the chance to knock them out. Who will come out swinging?