One of the consequences of calling an election to take place towards the end of the year is that people are worn out. The implicit declaration from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, bosses for a century, is that the window for change has narrowed; that there’s only one show in town, and it’s a rerun.
Throughout the campaign, Fine Gael has been asking the electorate to go along with a series of framings so inauthentic they amount to delusions. The self-declared party of stability has caused chaos in people’s lives when it comes to housing. The self-declared party of law and order stands by a candidate, John McGahon, who repeatedly punched a man in the head outside a pub. The self-declared fiscally responsible party engages in reckless auction politics both in the recent budget and during this campaign. And no party wants to talk about the impact of a Donald Trump presidency on Ireland’s economy when there’s the short-term populism of tax cuts to tempt the public. The public response has not been a “new energy”, as Fine Gael declares. A new lethargy is probably more accurate.
Both parties have also positioned themselves as foregone conclusions. They have not so much run campaigns as performed them. There has been plenty of phoney sniping. Attempts to put some distance between each other and carve out separate identities feel akin to drawing a line in water.
Along with an insistence that the status quo – not working for so many – will prevail, what also wears people down is the disaffection that emerges from a lack of accountability. In Government, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil often adopt a “don’t ask me, I just work here” stance. This immaturity and petulance were on display during RTÉ's 10-way leaders’ debate, when Simon Harris attempted to shirk responsibility for the astonishing waste of public funds on the budget-blowing national children’s hospital. Dismissive and testy, his irritation around a mild statement regarding accountability on that matter revealed a different personality. It was one that rarely emerges from behind the facade that communicates to the electorate as though we’re one giant junior infants class – happy with a lollipop while a chilly breeze blows through a crumbling prefab.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil need a few things to fall into place for them to be back again. They need young people to stay away from the polls. They need people to vote from a position of individual self-interest. They need a large chunk of the electorate to not just overlook the housing emergency, but to endorse the policies that created and compounded it. They need voters to accept a special, self-satisfied brand of hubris, underpinned by pocket money. They need a belief to prevail that we can’t do things differently, so there’s no point trying.
Interestingly, in the final week of the campaign, I know plenty of people who still don’t know how they’re going to vote, people who previously would have rattled off their voting preferences weeks out from polling day. Excitement and enthusiasm are in short supply. What’s behind that? Probably a bit of everything: lingering post-pandemic existential angst; a feeling of being ground down by the Irish housing crisis; the cost of living; miserable global events; the evaporation of an energy for change that emerged from the referendum era of the previous decade; and the feedback loop of polls that appear to declare – although a little uncertainly – that the status quo may prevail.
I think that the real story of this election may be the widening political vacuum in Ireland. Votes may scatter in rather unpredictable ways and Independents could benefit from that vacuum. Independence from the political establishment itself is increasingly attractive to voters who are politically homeless and distrustful of politicians as a whole. Turnout may fall as people switch off and view engaging with an election as a fruitless endeavour. This would be a dangerous development, reflecting a distrust in the systems that govern our lives. Nihilistic and divisive forces who scapegoat people rather than systems are now a feature of our political landscape. This is another dangerous development, and the mainstream political landscape appears to have little success in countering it. I also believe there is a strong left-wing vote in Dublin especially that is going underreported.
Perhaps it is the case that an atmosphere of low energy is also one of reflection. Irish society doesn’t necessarily buck global trends, so much as lag behind them. If the global allergy to incumbents doesn’t pan out here this time, this election could be seen not as an endorsement, but a stopgap. There could also be a scenario where right-wing, socially conservative politicians potentially prop up a Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil government, despite all of the social progress Ireland has made. For many people, that would be a depressing vista.
Polling data shows that the most popular political entity in every province in this country is Independents combined with “other” (small) parties. That’s the story. Ultimately, there is probably a twist in the tale of this election. After all, it’s always the quiet ones.