Gript Media received a press release yesterday – as we do most weeks – from Michael Leahy, who is the candidate in the Ireland South constituency for the Irish Freedom Party. To Leahy’s credit, he has been that relatively rare thing on the populist wing of Irish politics: A genuinely hard-working candidate who has been taking his campaign to every corner of his constituency, focusing more on meeting voters than on issuing tweets, often using old-fashioned campaign methods which have included, on at least one occasion, standing on a literal soapbox with a microphone to address passers-by.
As candidates go, he’s an interesting fellow: Soft-spoken, genteel, and eloquent. He is, also, if such things matter, a very nice man, and one who is impeccably polite and respectful to his opponents. If one was to muster a criticism of his style and approach, it would be that he can often be long-winded, rarely using one or two sentences to describe an idea where a thirty-minute speech will do.
Nevertheless, it is hard to listen to him and come away with the impression of a hard-right fire-breather. That is simply not his demeanour, or his character. He is distilled sincerity, even if some of his ideas – particularly his conviction that Ireland should leave the European Union – might be well out step with “middle Ireland”.
Leahy also has a simple message, and he’s sticking to it: Yesterday’s press release was, as most of his statements are, on immigration. Ireland, he said, should opt out of all EU migration arrangements, including the emergency EU provisions for displaced persons from Ukraine, which Ireland signed up to in the aftermath of that war’s outbreak. Immigration, he says, is a purely sovereign matter on which the EU should have, and be granted, no say.
There are echoes there of the “take back control” campaign that proved so successful in the Brexit referendum, and it should be noted that Leahy’s party leader is a former advisor to Brexiteer Supremo Nigel Farage, so that’s probably not a coincidence.
In other countries, this message has been tried and tested and successful. In Ireland, to date, it has never worked. This is not to say that it won’t work this time, but it would be remiss not to note that for decades, Ireland has been stubbornly resistant to politicians who argue for less EU integration.
I write all this neither to praise, nor to condemn, Mr. Leahy or the campaign he is running: He is just one of the many options that voters will have, on their ballot paper, come June 7th. Like every single candidate – most of whom by definition will be unsuccessful – he is pursuing his political aims peacefully and by attempting to persuade his fellow citizens of their merits, and is taking much time out of his life to do so. Like all those running, he should be applauded for that.
I will, however, note the following: Mr. Leahy has disadvantages that are not of his own making. He is running for a very small political party that has no Dáil representation and no elected representation, right now, of any kind. He is, and will be, underfunded in relation to his major party rivals. As the media makes choices about who to cover, as we approach polling day, he is likely to lose out on relative coverage for two reasons.
The first is the conviction that will be shared by many journalists that he is destined to be an “also-ran” unlikely to feature much beyond the early counts. The nature of political journalism (and Gript Media is not immune to this) is that reporters tend to make judgements about who is likely to feature in the final shakedown for seats, and focus on those candidates, whereas those who are seen as less likely to be in the race tend to get ignored.
The second is that many reporters will share a prejudice about his candidacy and his party: That he is a representative of the “far right” with links – albeit indirect links – to the kind of UK Brexiteers who are anathema, in Irish polite society, to all that is good and decent. Not only will many reporters expect him to lose, they will be desperately rooting for him to lose and are unlikely, as such, to do him any favours. He is one of those candidates whose unlikely victory would cause a genuine political earthquake, were it to transpire.
Last week, I received a number of complaints that a particular candidate – a radio personality seeking election in Dublin – had received excessive coverage from Gript Media relative to other candidates. There’s probably some truth to that, but not for the conspiratorial reasons that some readers might assume. It’s simply a fact of life that well-known candidates will be taken more seriously than those who are little-known, and those who are little-known will have to work much harder to garner attention and credibility from reporters. Even reporters from outlets like this one who do not share the rest of the media’s hostility to certain ideas.
All political campaigns – though they are sometimes presented as dark scientific arts – have the same basic aim: To ensure that, by polling day, every single voter knows who the candidate is and what they stand for. That’s it. After that, it’s only – and solely – about having a message that is appealing to a sufficient number of voters to get you elected. Having the perfect message is no use, if nobody knows who you are and sees your name for the first time on the ballot paper.
And so, this much can be said for Mr. Leahy: He is working very hard to accomplish that basic goal, in a tough environment. There are a great many “populist” candidates who, frankly, are not, and who seem to be labouring under the delusion that tweeting to their 10,000 followers on social media is enough to get them elected.
In the end, I suspect, Mr. Leahy’s electoral disadvantages may simply be too great to overcome: He is running in the same constituency as Clare TD Michael McNamara, who, when they were on the same ballot in the 2020 general election for the Clare constituency that is their shared home, polled some 7,300 votes to Leahy’s 704 votes.
Or to put it plainly, did about ten times better.
All things being equal, and in the interest of being objective, I’d expect a repeat of that performance differential in June. Mr. Leahy will be entitled to dunk on my analysis with great glee if he proves me wrong.
McNamara is a more natural communicator and a more seasoned politician, who will get far more media coverage and access to the airwaves. With no disrespect intended to Mr. Leahy, McNamara is probably also more skilled at communicating an immigration-skeptical message without “scaring the horses” than Leahy is.
Nevertheless, Irish democracy is full of people like Mr. Leahy: Sincere people, taking time out of their lives to try and do something they think is important, and struggling against a media environment that refuses to take them seriously or treat them fairly. Journalists should probably be fairer to such characters and such candidates than we are.