Sinn Féin has been the shock absorber of Irish politics. It’s worn out – The Irish Times

What is happening today is that Irish politics has lost its shock absorber. In a way, the local and European elections tell us that things are not falling apart and that the center can hold on. But behind this apparent stability lies a new vulnerability.

We must start with what may seem strange: the shock absorber was Sinn Féin. Since the party became an important electoral force in the Republic, it has acted as a buffer between the democratic political system and reactionary radicalism. The election results tell us that this is no longer possible.

What is a shock absorber used for? It takes disruptive kinetic energy and converts it into another type of energy, which it then dissipates. When the vehicle is driving on a bumpy road, the absorber keeps its wheels in contact with the ground.

This is not the job Sinn Féin ever imagined. It is rooted in anti-democratic militarism and considers itself a revolutionary party. Only the particularities of Irish history have allowed such a movement to be effectively stabilizing.

These particularities have created the duality of modern Sinn Féin. On the one hand, it draws inspiration from the same type of ethnonationalist identity politics that today fuels the far right in Europe, the United States and elsewhere. On the other hand, it saw itself as a progressive socialist party, committed to equality and inclusion.

( Live: results of local and European elections )

( Analysis: Moderate Ireland appears to be going against extreme trends elsewhere in Europe )

However, this duality created a kind of ambivalence that was very useful in a society experiencing a very rapid transition from monoculture to multiculture. If you were an ethnonationalist, you might identify with Sinn Féin by wrapping yourself in the tricolor and chanting Ireland for the Irish.

Yet, to Sinn Féin’s credit, it has absorbed this energy while diverting it away from the immigrant population. He could have tried to exploit the resentment of the newcomers, but he chose not to.

And for about a quarter of a century, this accidental mechanism was extremely effective. The main reason Ireland doesn’t have a significant far-right party is not because we are a particularly lovely people. This was (mainly) because Sinn Féin occupied the space where a far-right party would be.

The effectiveness of this policy arrangement made the journey so smooth that it was easy not to notice how bumpy the terrain actually was. The combination of truly large inward migration, very rapid population growth, a two-speed economy, and terrible housing and other infrastructure planning was always going to generate political shockwaves.

But it was too easy to forget that the state has a long history of far-right movements, that prejudice and intolerance have deep roots in sectarian bigotry and violent tribalism, and that about a third of the electorate is deeply unhappy with the sudden implosion of power. Catholic Ireland. It was too easy to ignore the fact that Peter Casey got a quarter of the vote in the 2018 presidential election essentially by casting himself as the anti-Travelers candidate.

( How did immigration-focused candidates fare in the election? )

This vote has always been there – there is as much market for zero-sum politics of scapegoating and tribal resentment in Ireland as there is in Britain, the United States or continental Europe. The suppliers of this product simply had to find a way to get it on the shelves that Sinn Féin was stocking. And they are succeeding now.

It has become quite clear since the pandemic that a sort of separation was occurring: a large part of the ethnonationalist vote was breaking away from Sinn Féin.

It is still a fragmented and conflicting movement. But even if he doesn’t quite know what it is yet, he knows what it isn’t. This is not Sinn Féin. He sensed what much of the political mainstream had not: that Sinn Féin was absorbing and redirecting the raw energies of ethnic resentment.

What we see now in the election figures are the first effects of this decoupling: a decline in the Sinn Féin vote and the emergence of the far right as a potentially viable political force. What makes this latter phenomenon so significant is precisely the fact that the movement is so fragmented and fragmented. It is not a cohesive or well-run organization – and yet it is starting to make its mark.

In the European elections in Dublin, anti-immigration candidates together received around 15 percent of the vote. Dublin City Council will have three councilors elected on anti-immigration platforms. The overall situation in the rest of the country is unclear at the time of writing, but there are similar signs that this type of politics is gaining a foothold, at least in the lower layers of power.

This is real progress. This is not a massive change, but it is balanced by a consolidation of the center field. But the far right has opened up space for itself in electoral politics, and it would be foolish to think that it cannot take advantage of this opportunity to normalize its discourse and expand that space.

It still lacks one of the essential elements of reactionary radicalism: a unique charismatic leader. However, he gave himself room to emerge.

This possibility still lies in the future. The immediate significance of the elections is the loss of the buffer zone created by Sinn Féin. Can this area be reoccupied? Probably not.

If Sinn Féin attempted to take back the ethnonationalist vote from the usurpers, it would lose many of its progressive voters. And moving away from the rhetoric of pluralism and inclusiveness would take it further away from its core goal of a united Ireland.

So don’t be fooled by the success of the existing political establishment, no matter how impressive it may be. The terrain is harsh: Ireland must traverse terrain made irregular by the mismatch between the expansion of the population and the sclerosis of the State. It’s going to be a bumpy ride and from here on out, all the bumps will be felt.