Business as usual: that’s how many Irish people will have felt about the large anti-immigration protest that ground traffic to a halt in Dublin last month. Since Covid, the Irish political system and establishment has reeled from one political explosion to the next, with the overlap of immigration and housing as the key explosive material. There’s been a consistent thrum of unrest accompanied by flashes of serious and sinister violence. Every poll shows that on these two issues there is a chasm between what the public want and the policies the government are forcefully pursuing.

But recent polling also shows that the possibility of change is, if anything, receding. While tensions in the system remain undimmed, energy is gradually leaking away from the political alternatives and back to the legacy parties of Fianna Fáil and in particular Fine Gael. Thus, on any given day, an Irish reader can open the newspaper to read that a 75 per cent of voters believe that Ireland takes in too many refugees, or that the government is sourcing water cannon from the Netherlands to deal with impending civil unrest on the topic; but also that government insiders are pushing for an early election to capitalise on their surging popularity. How can that possibly be the case?

For Sinn Féin, both their polling slide and the recent local election results have cemented a feeling that immigration has exposed an inherent instability in their coalition of nationalist-inclined working-class voters and young middle-class people who can’t afford a house. While immigration remained in the background and was understood as an issue distinct from housing, that coalition held. That isn’t the case anymore.

SF has tried to square the circle by pivoting back to housing as a distinct issue, while backing off from and semi-apologising for some of its cultural missteps. On immigration itself they’ve attempted to turn the tables by making it an issue solely of class (and there’s lots of ammunition with which to do that). But the difference with the government is one of tone and focus, not a fundamental rethink. The polling reflects it is satisfying nobody so far and may in fact be hurting.

For the smaller right-wing parties and candidates who sprouted up like mushrooms on foot of the immigration crisis the results of the June local elections were mixed, and the period since has been turbulent. A small number of key candidates were elected. But overall, there were too many competing for the same small slice of the vote; and many of them seemed unprofessional or at least unable to communicate their views in a way more suited to the doorstep than to social media.

This culminated in events in August, when a small number of southern protestors marched alongside loyalist ones at an immigration protest in Belfast, while carrying a “Coolock Says No” flag. People unfamiliar with Irish politics mistakenly viewed this as an omen of an epochal realignment of politics in the face of immigration. Irish people themselves saw it for what it was – an industrial-strength dose of electoral poison. Regardless of how many people participated or their real links to the larger protest movement, it was received by the public as confirmation that these are fringe people alienated from normal opinion.

In summary, the period since the June local elections have reinforced amongst the public the feeling that there is no alternative to FF and FG that is both professional and serious on one hand, but which offers a truly different perspective to those parties on the overlapping issues of immigration and housing on the other.

If the public feel a disconnect between this approach and what they want, they themselves must shoulder a large part of the blame

Where does that leave those establishment parties, other than happily bewildered by their improved fortunes? On immigration their stance has been to tighten up around the edges — introducing basic and undemanding changes like amendments to lists of safe countries and increased security checks at airports. As with SF, this is accompanied by continuous acknowledgement on the need to engage (but not act on) on the “legitimate concerns” that everyone agrees exists but that no one can articulate. One of the key actions taken by the government during this period was to opt in to the EU migration pact, ending Ireland’s discretion to set its own immigration rules. That is indicative of the overall strategy of managing the conversation, changing superficial details but otherwise staying the course on these issues.

If the public feel a disconnect between this approach and what they want, they themselves must shoulder a large part of the blame. It remains true that politicians respond to incentives. If they hear on the doorsteps that “I won’t vote for you unless some action is taken on this topic”, and see that flowing through to electoral results, some level of change would happen.

But that would require a real willingness to vote for candidates as they learn to become more professional and serious. A safe, non-system alternative isn’t going to sprout up out of the ground fully formed. The public are frightened of that risk, instead they’ve settled for adopting toward the political system the attitude of a resentful spouse who is just going to put up with a bad marriage until one of them dies. For their part the legacy parties sense that risk aversion, so have no incentive to change.

What we have with the decision of the public to filter back to FF and FG is best summarised by the timeless Irish political phrase “an Irish solution to an Irish problem”. This means both a solution to a problem that fits our local circumstances, but also a response “to a controversial issue which is timid, half-baked, or expedient, which is an unsatisfactory compromise, or sidesteps the fundamental issue.” Faced with the incomplete revolution of Sinn Féin, the unseriousness of the insurgent right and the zombie status quo, the public have chosen nothing: which is effectively the same as choosing the latter. There’s been a failure of nerve by everyone, and everyone may live to regret it.