There was a classic piece of journalistic gaslighting in the Irish Times last week. It said that immigration is not fuelling Ireland’s housing crisis and that in fact by any measure, “immigrants come out much worse than Irish – born households” (you sense the Irish Times would like it to be the other way around). It was also noted that “here in Ireland, while we don’t have a prominent anti-immigrant party, grassroots and online-based groups appear to be growing in size and confidence.” That’s exactly how FF, FG and the Irish Times like it.
There is no coherent anti-immigration party in Ireland. Unlike the UK where Reform have just enjoyed a huge victory in the local elections and gained an MP. Reform gained 677 seats, won eight councils from the Tories, two from Labour, and won two mayors. They also won the byelection of Runcorn and Helsby by just 6 votes. Labour had won this seat at the general election with a majority of 14,696 and more than 50% of the vote. Reform’s narrow win set a new record for the smallest majority at a parliamentary by-election since the end of the second world war.
What of Ireland? Just yesterday an opinion poll in the Sunday Independent put housing and immigration at the top of voters’ concerns by a clear margin (they are, of course, linked). Do not expect action on either issue anytime soon. Ireland is locked into the European Migration Pact which means border control is out of our hands.
And we do not have to rely on the opinion polls. Two weekends ago thousands of people took to the streets of Dublin to protest the current immigration policy. This was a culmination of lots of local protests that have taken place in various towns over the last few months.
This is how the Irish Times reported it “Thousands take part in anti-immigration protest in Dublin. Protestors carried Tricolour flags, wore ‘Make Ireland Great Again’ caps and shouted ‘get them out’.”
The problem for the Irish anti-immigration movement is that they struggle to turn this protest movement into electoral success, first because there is no competent organiser that doesn’t repel the middle ground, and secondly even if there was one the vote gets sliced and diced by the ludicrous voting system of proportional representation with a single transferrable vote.
This adoption of proportional representation with a single transferrable vote after Independence was a big mistake. The new Republic adopted the British parliamentary style for the Dail (but with blue benches instead of green), retained all of the English common law and statutory law until repealed or replaced but for some reason adopted the PR system of voting which I have long believed is a bad idea.
Ireland with this dangerous continental voting system means that any sane organiser who can somehow bring together the rag-bag of characters in the anti-immigration movement will have their party split at the first sign of dissent. There will be split after split as the purity test becomes stricter. This then splits the vote because of the voting system.
In the UK there were complaints at the last general election that the Reform vote share was not converted into seats in the House of Commons and therefore Britain should have PR. This is an argument for lunatics. What ‘first past post’ does is say to a party, if you want to win you have to be disciplined, serious, organised and in the words of Malcolm Tucker you have to really, really want power.
And Nigel Farage MP, leader of Reform, really wants number 10. Nigel is as “hungry as a Hutu in the jungle with a big machete.”
Labour although disciplined have their problems. It is not helped when you have Lucy Powell MP running around BBC Radio 4 Any Questions dismissing the problem of Muslim rape gangs as ‘trumpets and dog whistles.’ That’s three days of damage control right there.
As for the Tories, they are so useless they are not even worth writing about. Their only hope is Robert Jenrick MP who I expect to be the one leading them in the next general election.
So that leaves Reform. Yesterday I read an interview with one Zia Yusuf, the chairman of Reform, in the Sunday Times. Yusuf made a six figure donation to the party which was just the start.
The Sunday Times, “Zia Yusuf is the chairman of Reform and the man behind the machine that is ushering in a new era in British politics. For most of his adult life, the 39-year-old voted Conservative. He is a former Tory party member. But now his main ambition is to make Farage the country’s next prime minister. In the party’s turquoise boardroom, he gushes: “Look, there’s no two ways about it. Nigel, I think, is the most extraordinary British politician of our lifetime.”
Also, “Speaking about the party’s by-election victory in Runcorn & Helsby which Reform won by just six votes, Yusuf, smartly dressed in a dark suit and crisp white shirt, says in years gone by the party would have lost. “But the ending was different this time because we have built something quietly in the background, without bigging it up to people, which is supported by real infrastructure and machinery,” he says. “What we have done in the space of ten months is something we’re extremely proud of. One of my jobs as chairman was to professionalise the party. But what does that actually mean? It means turning it into a really formidable election-winning machine and I want to be really clear, we’re just getting started.”
But this is what it takes to run a successful political party – professionalism, organisation, infrastructure and the knowledge that it all must be done while wearing a dark suit and a crisp white shirt and tie. (In all the photographs, it is all suits and ties, not an open neck collar or rolled up sleeves in sight. Praise be to God.)
Reform has plans for a patriotic school curriculum, a ban on transgender ideology in the classroom and two-year undergraduate degrees. Farage has also pledged to establish a mini-version of Elon Musk’s cost cutting Department of Government efficiency (DOGE) in the 10 local councils his party now controls, where working from home, climate projects, and diversity and inclusion schemes, will be banned.
And on the big issue of immigration, the only issue voters are really coming out for and voted Reform, – the talk is tough. “Among the more radical proposals being drawn up by Reform is a bold zero-tolerance plan to deport all illegal immigrants in five years in a move he compares to that undertaken by Barack Obama.”
There is also talk of declaring a national emergency in order to get to grips with the scale of the problem. It is critical then that these proposals are included in the Reform manifesto when the general election eventually comes around.
Irish voters who believe immigration is too high can only look across the Irish sea and ask, where is the Irish Nigel Farage? Currently, the anti-immigration movement is exactly where the establishment wants them: on the streets, well away from the levers of power.