A general election was held in Ireland at the end of November 2024 and the outcome seems to be that the two main parties of the outgoing coalition will be set to form the next government. As such, the electorate voted for continuity rather than change; clearly without much enthusiasm as evidenced by a particularly lacklustre campaign and with a low turnout of below 60 percent. Housing (lack of) and the cost of living were the two top issues. While there was nothing surprising about the result, the outcome has confirmed the solidity of a number of trends in the Irish political scene that have been apparent for some time.
The Government
The two centre-right parties of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have continued to maintain their hegemony over government in the Republic. Both parties achieved approximately 20 percent of the votes cast with the former winning 48 seats and the latter 38 seats in the 174 member parliament. Both parties have been around in some form since the formation of the state in 1921 and there has never been a government since that did not include either or both of them as the dominant component. In fact, for the first 60 years of the state’s existence, general elections were primarily a contest between them with Fianna Fail having the edge and being capable of forming a single party government with over 50 percent of TDs (MPs). By contrast, Fine Gael always needed some additional support from smaller parties to form a government.
Originally Fianna Fail were more interventionist in terms of the state and the economy (erroneously and opportunistically labelled as ‘socialist’ by some commentators of the time) while Fine Gael were a little more socially liberal and also had more of a classical free enterprise philosophy which supposedly favoured the wealthier end of society. But both parties were never dogmatic in their approach to managing the Irish economy and over the years the economic differences between them have narrowed. One other point of divergence between them was that Fianna Fail was more stridently nationalistic in terms of the constitutional position of Northern Ireland and Ireland’s relationship with the UK while Fine Gael adopted a more conciliatory position. However, since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, these differences too have diminished and now there remains relatively little antagonism between the supporters of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. So much so, that their voters now transfer votes to each other, reflecting their similar approach to politics, and this transfer of voter preference is crucial to a party’s success in the version of proportional representation that Ireland uses in its elections. Inevitably since they are now generally seen as two sides of the same coin by the electorate, their combined share of the vote has progressively fallen, so together they can expect to receive just over 40 percent of votes cast, whereas less than 40 years ago they would achieve over 80 percent of the vote between them. However, because the opposition is fragmented, they still dominate government formation.
Although they were the incumbent parties of government, they both had a reasonably good election by recent standards. The economic background to the election is that currently Ireland has a strong economy, tax revenue to the government is high and there’s quite an amount of money to be distributed to the electorate. With capitalism in a boom phase, governments without much difficulty can plausibly claim to be excellent managers of the economy and reap the electoral rewards. The two parties produced very similar manifestos and campaigned on a ‘more of the same’ ticket. Much of this largesse is due to corporation tax from the many US multinationals in the pharmaceutical, biomedical and financial technology fields that take advantage of Ireland’s low corporate tax regime. Whether Trump’s return and his protectionist statements will threaten this, remains to be seen. He made similar noises about American multinationals avoiding tax through their Irish operations when he was first elected in 2016 but never followed through on his rhetoric.
The Opposition
For the opposition parties, the outcome of the election was mixed. Sinn Fein retains its position as the main party of opposition having about as many TDs as Fine Gael on 19 percent of the vote and giving it 39 Dail seats. However, the party was at over 35 percent in the opinion polls just two years ago and could then confidently have expected to form the next government. It proved unable to even replicate its performance at the last general election of five years ago. Its relentless upward trend has certainly stalled but has not been reversed. The party stood on a centre-left platform: more government spending on affordable housing, cheaper childcare, reducing taxes on the low paid, more help for carers and of course advancing a united Ireland. While the optimism that they were on course to form the next government has diminished, they still remain poised to take electoral advantage of any future downturn in the economy.
Also in this centre-left political space are the Irish Labour Party and the Social Democrats (the latter essentially a breakaway group from the former). These parties are equal with 11 TDs and five percent of the vote each and stood on almost identical platforms: greater effort to meet Ireland’s climate change targets, more spending on disability support, a stronger stance against Israel with regard to the Gaza war, building more affordable homes and increased funding of the health service. Compared to its recent fortunes this was a ‘good election’ for Labour but overall it has been in a long-term steady decline. Sinn Fein and the more recent Social Democrats have usurped its claim to be the standard bearer of left-wing opinion in Ireland. One other centre-left party, the Green Party, did very poorly, lost nearly all its seats and its votes seemed to have moved over to the Social Democrats. It was the small, third leg of the outgoing government and seems to have paid the price for resentments about the costs associated with dealing with climate change; by contrast Fianna Fail and Fine Gael were more adroit on this issue and cynically managed to project the unpopularity of some green policies implemented by the whole government solely onto the Greens.
Away from the centre-ground there is another small party, technically an alliance between two parties, People Before Profit-Solidarity that in the usual terminology is described as ‘hard’ left. They are descended in part from various Trotskyist groups that have entered mainstream politics allied with popular protest movements and want to see much more substantial and direct state involvement in the provision of housing, energy and healthcare; a type of state-socialism. After the election they have three TDs, down from five previously.
At the other end of the spectrum, the ragbag of far-right, anti-immigrant micro-parties had a very poor outing with their self-proclaimed imminent breakthrough not materialising. The last remaining group that can be considered are the Independents who can be more accurately termed non-party TDs. They are almost 20 in number, some of them former mainstream party members, preferring to stand as independents for the freedom of manoeuvre it gives them without the constraint of having to stick to a party line on any issue. Generally these politicians never reveal any explicit ideology apart from a nebulous populism and focus on selling their parliamentary votes to the main parties to ‘deliver’ for their particular constituencies. While a few are seen as left, most of their vote is conservative in nature and they share the same views as Fianna Fail and Fine Gael on most matters.
Government formation
In summary then, the general election delivered a fragmented outcome with the three largest parties each receiving about 20 percent in the polls and roughly obtaining 40 seats each. The era of single-party government shows no sign of coming back. Clearly the electorate is more fickle with traditional party loyalties continuing to decline. The combined Fianna Fail / Fine Gael vote is decreasing but the opposition is fragmented; there was no left surge and the electorate has so far proved resistant to right-wing, nationalistic populism. As for the previous 40 years, the general election is followed by a prolonged session of horse trading where the parties initially speed date each other to ascertain whether any compatibility exists and then the serious negotiation ensues between like-minded partners. With pre-election polling a reasonably accurate predictor of the broad levels of support for each party, even before the results are known, the parties were posturing about the demands they would make of other groups before considering entering government. Sinn Fein went through the motions of exploring a ‘government of the left’ although even at the outset this seemed highly unlikely and right now it seems the next government will be a Fianna Fail and Fine Gael coalition augmented with eight, mostly rural, like-minded Independent TDs. With government coffers in a healthy financial state, their straightforward pork barrel demands should be deliverable without too much difficulty.
In fact a noticeable feature of this election is how similar in content were the manifestos of all the six larger political parties; Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Sinn Fein, Labour, Social Democrats and the Greens, with the differences being more to do with presentation and style. They would all like to be in government (especially as times are good) and they don’t want to be constrained by awkward manifesto commitments that could rule out any potential coalition partners. All six parties made promises about providing more affordable housing (the only difference being the precise number of houses to be built each year) and greater funding of healthcare and disability services. The two centre-right parties talked more about support for business and farmers while the four leftish parties made a case for devoting more resources to the low paid.
Plus ça change
The general election of 2024 in Ireland is unlikely to be remembered for its exciting political campaign, vigorous and inspiring debates or momentous outcome. In spite of the strenuous efforts of the rival parties to fabricate a sense amongst the electorate of there being substantial difference between their offerings, people could see that all that was really on offer was more or variants of the same. The only question was which particular set of politicians would implement it. The process was a vindication of the socialist position that under capitalism, elections involve rival parties, all who want to administer capitalism, engaging in a manufactured popularity contest with the winners chosen by the electorate. The incumbent parties stress their proven competence in government which is not difficult if the economy is going well. Equally the opposition parties have a greater challenge to replace the government in good times. So the main factor in all this tends to be the state of the economy. Simply if the economy remains strong, the government should be able to deliver some of what was promised; the promises themselves were not too extravagant. If the economy worsens, they will not be able to do so. However, the state of the economy, particularly in Ireland, really depends on external factors and is set by the international operation or health of capitalism and no party can control this.
The best illustration of why the system itself is at fault and cannot be fixed by the electoral scheming of conventional party politics is that even though the economy has been buoyant for over 10 consecutive years, on such a basic need as housing, many Irish workers have had to live continuously with the insecurity of short term accommodation and rents that swallow up most of their disposable income. Unfortunately, there is no sign this will end any time soon.
Kevin Cronin
No comments:
Post a Comment