Sewing The Seeds of Their Own Destruction
The local elections are a warning sign for Irish politics
Buoyant from their large and almost equal share of local & European election seats, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael might be thinking that they’ve withstood the Sinn Féin barbarians at the gates and can go back to being the frenemies that tag each other in and out of the Dáil for the upcoming general election cycle. Little do they know that they have sewn the seeds of their own destruction, and while they’ve been breaking the social contract and focussing on the Sinn Féin bogeyman, the far-right have found the back door unlocked.
RTÉ Prime Time last Tuesday night did a piece on the rise of the independents in these elections, in which they beat a large path around the bush of the subject without stating the obvious, that the government’s social-contract breaking policies have emboldened the rise of the independents, especially those of the far-right. Not all independents were far-right, but all the far-right that stood were independent. The journalists and commentators talked about how if the far-right got organised they could take a large share of the vote, but that would depend on them agreeing with each other, which the journalists seem to think is unlikely. I beg to differ and think Ireland has just been lucky so far.
If you want to see how easy it is for the far-right to agree, then look across the water, on either side of the country. In the campaign game of draughts that is playing out in the UK, Nigel Farage’s piece has just been kinged by Rishi Sunak simply by turning up in Farage’s case, and not turning up in Sunak’s case. The Tories in their power hungry group think and racist driven incompetence have handed a probable reverse take-over and the opposition benches to the oil & gas funded private company trading as a political party, with majority shareholder Nigel Farage as chief racist propaganda officer. Turn to the other side and we see the Republican sharks sniffing the power in the water and rowing in behind the convicted felon, who makes no secret about wanting to row back 200 years of American societal & institutional progress with Project 25, among other things. That is what organisation looks like, and it doesn’t take much organising unfortunately.
It is easy for the far-right to gain traction in Ireland calling for “common-sense” politics because Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’s austerity driven and neoliberal market reliant policies have served the far-right up a golden ticket. Systematically transforming the housing sector into a private pyramid scheme run for the profit of investment funds, while selling the dream of the small landlord seeing returns on their modest investments as a smoke screen, is the bread and butter of the neoliberal con. Add to that the scapegoating of immigrants and people seeking international protection, and you have the perfect front to hide the syphoning of private profits from a public good. The reality behind the con is that people at the bottom of the housing pyramid are made homeless in record numbers, and everyone else is encroaching on lower levels of the property ladder because of price stress, while soaring rents and house price profits rise to the top. Unfortunately, the neoliberal need to squeeze a rentier asset has produced so much pain, trauma, stress, and anger, that it has brought the far-right running and made it easy for them to co-opt the government’s tools of distraction into fascist tools of manipulation.
The culture of austerity introduced in the wake of 2008 and the neoliberal reliance on the private market have been embedded as the only way to do things for so long across areas of government responsibility that they have created similar fundamental operating crises in health, education, and public-sector partnerships to name but a few. In a recent episode of his podcast, David McWilliams argues that Ireland is not a neoliberal country because of the progressive tax system and widespread coverage of the welfare system in the country. While this is the case, thankfully, that doesn’t stop other aspects of neoliberalism, such as the prioritising of delivery using the private market, seeping in across the state apparatus. Take the recent off-shore windfarm licences being awarded to private market providers as an example, where wind-farm proposals from private energy companies were scored based on a guaranteed unit price in locations decided by the companies, rather than prioritising the environmental sustainability and bio-diversity impacts of the locations, all led by a Green party Minister that should know better. We can also look at the inhumane direct provision system that uses private accommodation at the lowest cost to deliver the bare minimum, and the more recent complete lack of planning to process and accommodate international applicants seeking protection, leaving the government again to scramble for stop gaps delivered by private providers, resulting in not-fit-for-purpose solutions that only provide further fuel for the far-right.
The end results of the austerity mindset and the neoliberal reliance on the private market are rising inequality in Irish society, lack of investment in public infrastructure, totally inadequate measures in meeting climate targets and delivering a just transition, and the ridiculous situation of being a paper-rich country with billions of Euro in an unspent rainy-day sovereign wealth fund while also having record homelessness, a cost of living crisis, not to mention missing all of our climate targets. No wonder the public are angry, and no wonder it is so easy for far-right agitators to rile people up, on the streets and at the ballot box. Unfortunately for the people voting for far-right candidates, they are trading the neoliberal con for fascist and racist lies, and the election results of the last few days have shown how quickly it can happen.
PR-STV has thankfully shielded us from a far-right glut in some constituencies, but we can only rely on it for so much and for so long. Take Niall Boylan being overtaken in the last transfer count and thus being denied a European seat. He ran his store-brand version of a Farage campaign calling for us to “get back to common-sense” in politics. Apparently, common-sense to him is being anti-trans, anti-immigrant, a climate-denier, and involves parroting the same lies we see in the UK from the Tories, Reform, and UKIP before them, such as climate change can’t be stopped and we can only adapt to it, climate policies caused the energy price shock, immigrants are invading the country, being anti-trans is just biology, and anyone who is far-right is wrongly labelled far-right by the establishment and mainstream media. This guy got 50,000+ votes in Dublin, more than 13% of the vote, and beat two incumbent MEPs by being a bad photocopy of Farage and having a recognisable radio voice and public profile. What happens when a larger party sees the ballot-box success of these gobshites and decides to copy what the Tories did with UKIP and become a fully fledged far right party? Out of desperation that could be Fine Gael in 4 years time, or Sinn Féin now if they take to heart their lower than expected local election results.
If they have any sense, the large parties will see how it is playing out now for the Tories in the UK and decide it’s better to beat them rather than join them. To do that, they need to take away the source of the far-right’s power and influence, and that ultimately means reducing inequality. Thankfully, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit to be had in this area. Build more houses. Properly process and accommodate international protection applicants in fit-for-purpose long-term accommodation, not tents in the Dublin mountains. Pay above the odds for teachers, nurses, doctors, firefighters, Gardaí, and other public servants, to attract and retain talent. Invest in public infrastructure that will also accelerate the transition to a low-carbon and green job economy. Take responsibility and ownership for the fundamental services and institutions that maintain the social contract in society. Spend more rather than save more.
I don’t think the current incarnation of Fine Gael can unlearn their austerity and neoliberal ideologies quickly enough, but the big question is will Fianna Fáil now break ranks in order to challenge Sinn Féin, and will they both avoid the populist and far-right trap?
Hopefully the local and European election results will kick-start these types of questions and “common-sense” discussions in the respective party HQs this week.
If not, we’re all in trouble.
The Irish Tricolour