Ireland’s angry election

Irish journalists covering the results of last Friday’s general election were hard pressed to find terms adequate to express the scale of political change that relentlessly emerged. Interviewing on TV Micheál Martin, former foreign minister and now leader of the once dominant party, Fianna Fáil, a journalist had to put it to him that what his party was experiencing was not just a bad defeat but a disaster of catastrophic proportions. A leading historian was comparing it to the famous 1918 election that laid the foundations for Irish independence and for the party system that emerged to structure Irish politics since.  In many ways, Election 2011 marks an even greater change, he argued, due to the scale of Fianna Fáil’s defeat and the likelihood that it will never recover its former hegemony. The reason is simple: the party has presided over and been blamed by the electorate for the state’s worst economic crisis ever. Finally, the public’s anger has been vented.

The significance of Fianna Fáil’s demise is immense. Not only has the party rarely been out of power since first entering government in 1932 but, whenever it was, it regained power again at the next election. Fianna Fáil saw itself as not just one among many political parties, but as a national movement that ruled the Irish state as of right. But this weekend, having since the 1930s been used to getting between 40 and 50% of the popular vote and winning enough seats to form government on its own (at least until the late 1980s), Fianna Fáil received a mere 17.5% of the popular vote and struggled to translate this into seats, finishing with 20 seats in the 166-seat Dáil or lower house. As Fine Gael leader and incoming Taoiseach (prime minister), Enda Kenny, put it, this was Ireland’s democratic revolution.

Commentators are agreed that the dominant motivation for the popular vote in Election 2011 was ‘anybody but Fianna Fáil’. The turnout at 70% was high by the standards of recent Irish elections but as the count came in it was the scale of the rejection of Fianna Fáil that drew constant attention. The party was left with only one seat in the greater Dublin area and with no representatives in a swathe of urban and rural Ireland. Thirteen government ministers lost their seats, including the deputy prime minister. Also among the losers was the party’s deputy leader who suffered the ignominy of being beaten by a left-wing activist for the final seat in her constituency. Outgoing Taoiseach Brian Cowan and four of his ministerial colleagues chose not to stand at all. Not one woman was elected for the party.

The winner undoubtedly was Fine Gael, for long the second largest party in Irish politics, and broadly Christian Democratic or centre right in its identity. Emerging as the largest party for the first time in its history, with 76 seats and 36% of the vote it is short of an overall majority and will need to go into coalition to form a government. Events over the coming days will make clear with whom. The most likely option is that it will ask the social democratic Labour party to share power with it. Labour has had its most successful election ever, with 19.5% of the vote, winning 37 seats and its leader Eamon Gilmore has spoken of a Fine Gael-Labour government as akin to a national government in a time of acute national crisis.

While Labour’s performance signals a shift to the left in Irish politics, perhaps more dramatic has been the performance of groups to the left of Labour. Chief among these was Sinn Féin, already sharing power in Northern Ireland. Increasing its seats from 5 to 14, it exceeded anyone’s expectations on a platform of defaulting on bondholders and reneging on the EU/ECB/IMF bailout of last November. Groups to the left of Labour are the Socialist party (which won 2 seats) and the citizens’ group, People before Profit (which won 2 seats). Adding these victories to those of left-wing independents gives at least an additional ten to twelve left-wing members of the incoming Dáil. Some of these are already speaking of establishing a new left-wing party.

One notable absence from the new Dáil will be the Green party. Having gone into power with Fianna Fáil in 2007, it suffered from its association with the economic collapse and lost all its six seats in this election. One defeated Green minister lamented the party’s Faustian pact with Fianna Fáil. The Greens have vowed to regroup and to continue in existence.

Overall, Election 2011 has shifted Irish politics towards a marked left-right divide. This is bound to strengthen in future years though, with Labour set to enter government, the likelihood is that it is groups to the left of Labour which will make most of the gains.