As predicted, the radical far-left has emerged victorious from Ireland’s farcical presidential election, leaving the ruling coalition parties humiliated and obliterated in a shambles of their own making.
Catherine Connolly, Ireland’s 68-year-old answer to Jeremy Corbyn, will be Ireland’s next head of state. But large swathes of middle and rural Ireland who feel disenfranchised by this two-horse derby are seething. The number of deliberately spoiled votes reached a historic high, and in some constituencies, outpolled the Fine Gael candidate. This points to a dangerous polarisation for which the Taoiseach Micheal Martin and Tanaiste Simon Harris are entirely responsible.
The backlash, when it came was as swift, harsh and deserved. Peadar Toibin TD, leader of Ireland’s only conservative party, Aontu, described it as ‘a political earthquake, the result of an FF-FG diktat to its members not to nominate any independent candidate.’ Ireland’s system requires presidential candidates to secure the nomination of 20 members of the Oireachtas or four county councils to get on the ballot.
The most credible alternative candidate, the social conservative and barrister Maria Steen, failed by two votes, yet the number of spoiled votes marked ‘Maria Steen 1’ suggests she would have fared very well. Her transfers would have drifted to Fine Gael candidate, Heather Humphreys, rather than Connolly, and helped get Humphreys over the line. The fact that Simon Harris lacked the wit and political nous to foresee this speaks volumes.
Micheal Martin angered Fianna Fail by parachuting former Gaelic football manager, Jim Gavin, to stand for them. The stunt backfired spectacularly when it emerged that Gavin owed a former tenant €3,300 which he failed to repay for 16 years. He crashed out of the race, but his name remained on the ballot and his votes counted. An unmitigated disaster.
The tallymen were shocked at the sheer volume of deliberately spoiled votes tumbling out of the boxes. But why? Anyone with half an eye on the campaign would have detected the unprecedented level of anger that would play out at the ballot box. The total number of combined soiled votes (spoiled ballots plus Gavin’s count) was 317,675, the highest on record.
And of Connolly herself? Behind the soft-spoken Mother Superior persona is a politician whose views on Gaza are more hardline than the Palestinian Authority. A steel hand in a velvet glove. She is hostile to the UK, on which we are heavily dependent on for security should we find ourselves in a pickle, and hostile to the US, on which much of Ireland’s economy is levied. Her loathing of Israel is deep-seated and long-standing. She accused Nato of warmongering, wrongly accused Germany of Nazi-era military spending – resulting in a public admonishment by the German Ambassador to Ireland – and reproached Keir Starmer for ruling out a role for Hamas is any future Palestinian government. Hamas, she insisted, is ‘part of the fabric of the Palestinian people.’
Connolly also never apologised for meeting an aide of Bashar al-Assad during her ‘fact finding mission’ to Syria in 2018, partially financed through her taxpayer-funded parliamentary allowance. Saed Abdel Al-Aal was the commander of the Free Palestine Movement, a pro-regime militia. Connolly later said did not know who he was and abhorred what he stood for. This scandal was met with a shrug of the shoulders by Sinn Fein and the other radical left parties who nominated, funded and campaigned for Connolly.
On the domestic front, it emerged that as a barrister Connolly acted for banks in repossession cases – banks doing the same work that she has called ‘criminal’ in the Dail. That would normally have the radical far-left reaching for the pitchforks. But no. Connolly also thought it fine and dandy to hire a convicted republican gun runner as her parliamentary assistant. Every day for six months, she signed Ursula Ni Shionnain into the Dail. No matter she was once filmed at a mock beheading of Queen Elizabeth II.
Political commentator Owen Jones and the odious Kneecap rappers are already drooling over Comrade Connolly’s victory. ‘I always liked President Higgins’, Jones crooned, ‘but I think Catherine Connolly will be better.’ The best we can hope for is that she dials back the rhetoric and that, seven years from now, we have hung on to at least a handful of our friends and allies.
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