Housing crisis, health crisis, inflation crisis, immigration crisis, and rampant dissatisfaction with the Government. It all adds up, in the most recent opinion poll from gold-standard pollster Red C, to… an eight-point swing from Sinn Féin to Fine Gael and the Greens:
POLL – Dáil Éireann
Red C / Sunday Business Post
SF: 31% (-4)
FG: 24% (+3)
FF: 15% (-1)
GP: 5% (+1)
SD: 4% (nc)
LP: 4% (nc)
PBP-S: 3% (nc)
AÚ: 2% (+1)
I/O: 11% (nc)November 2022
+/- October 2022— Ireland Votes | #Vote2024 (@Ireland_Votes) November 26, 2022
Not only that, but far from the rampant dissatisfaction you might read about or expect, satisfaction with the Government is approaching majority territory:
Poll – Red C / Sunday Business Post
Q: Government performance on key issues.
% of those who answered “handling well” for the following:
Overall running of the country: 48%
Reducing Cost of Living: 49%
Coping with the Ukrainian Refugee Crisis: 46%(1/2)
— Ireland Votes | #Vote2024 (@Ireland_Votes) November 26, 2022
It behooves me, as a writer about politics and society, to try to analyse and make sense of these numbers for you, the public. But I’ll be honest: Buggered if I know what’s going on.
What follows then, are some guesses.
Guess one: Liz Truss
Liz Truss did not last very long as the Prime Minister of His Majesty’s United Kingdoms, but she did make an impact in the short time she was there. In just 45 days, she managed to launch a radical budget where she spent like a drunken sailor, cut taxes, and tried to radically re-make the UK economy. The result, fairly or unfairly, was an effective coup against her led by the global financial markets. The value of the pound dropped. UK bond rates soared. There was chaos. In their desperation, the British Establishment turned back to the dreary old men in suits to try and restore some order.
Now, tell me: Which Irish party is more likely, were it to gain power, to try radical things, and have big ambitious spending plans, and generally “shake things up”?
Memories in this country of 2008 have faded a little, but Liz Truss may well have reawakened some of them. People may well have looked across the Irish sea at the fruits of radicalism and decided that as bad as things may be here, it is always possible to make them worse. Leo Varadkar may not be history’s most inspiring fellow, but then neither is Rishi Sunak. Perhaps more Irish people are Sunakites than they might admit. Radical change probably looks less attractive than it did before Mrs. Truss had a go at it.
Guess two: The Budget
If you are a Gript reader, then chances are you are politically engaged. You have strong views about politics. You think politics is about more than numbers and social welfare rates and the price of diesel. If so, I regret to say, you are abnormal.
You have probably discounted the budget, a giveaway (or, more accurately, a give back) on an enormous scale. Almost everybody benefitted from it to some extent. And, to be fair, in terms of the resources available to it, Government spent about as much on the budget as it possibly could.
“They’re doing their best to help us” is not an unreasonable thing to believe about the current Government, if your concerns are financial, and if you are looking across the sea at Mrs. Truss’s efforts to do more. There’s a real risk for Sinn Féin that promises of even more cash stop sounding promising, and start sounding delusional.
Guess three: The Monk
How much does the, shall we say, whiff of sulphur around Sinn Féin really matter? The conventional wisdom these days is “not much”, because it hasn’t stopped them becoming the biggest party. But I increasingly think that’s wrong.
For one thing, they may be outperforming the Government parties, but they’re drastically underperforming opposition parties in similar positions in other democracies. Boring old Keir Starmer is touching 50% of the vote in polls in Britain. In Germany, recent polls put the opposition Christian Democrats and the radical Alternative for Germany on a combined 45%. The pattern is the same elsewhere. In Ireland, Sinn Féin have been stuck in the mid thirties for two years now. No matter what crisis hits Government, the party can’t break that 35/36% mark.
Could it be that something is holding them back? And could that something be their history? I think so.
In that context, the noises coming out of the Gerry Hutch murder trial are not promising. Talk of Sinn Féin owing certain people for the money and votes they provided might well be reminding some soft voters that the party’s dodgier links did not come to a total, final end with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.
Guess four: Immigration
There’s not a paper between Sinn Féin and the Government on immigration, which is fast becoming an issue in the working-class communities the party purports to represent. For years, Sinn Féin has managed the contradiction between the populism of its base on this issue and the right-on nature of its membership without much trouble. That may be changing.
There is, at present, no nationally viable alternative for the people of, say, East Wall, to vote for. But perhaps a meaningful number of people, disillusioned with Sinn Féin, might decide simply to stay at home. Or vote for independents, or one of the fringe parties that make immigration their signature issue.
When the conversation is about housing and health, Sinn Féin prospers. If the conversation moves to whether housing and health are negatively impacted by migration, Sinn Féin might start sounding less like a radical alternative, and more like Fine Gaelers with Bobby Sands posters on their bedroom walls.
Anyway, those are just guesses. Who knows, maybe the next poll will put them on 40% and the revolution will be back on track.
But for the moment, the Sinn Féin juggernaut is palpably struggling.
Maybe Labour can fill the gap. That party is ideally positioned, after all, for those who want more of the same, but with a bit more finger-wagging.