After three days, the count is finally over. There was one big loser in this election and it wasn’t the Green Party. It was Irish conservatism.
The semblance of a conservative movement has poked its head from obscurity recently. Different elements were encouraged by different events. Abortion attracted the social conservatives. The lockdowns brought out the libertarians. The Hate Speech legislation compelled the liberals. The migrant crisis moved the nativists. Alas, the conservative movement (such as it was) is long dead and gone. It’s with Burke in the grave.
Aontú: the hope of conservatism
Aontú, the best hope for Irish conservatives, is no longer viable. Peadar Toibín is easily one of the best politicians Ireland has produced in recent times. This election – after the failures in the North, the lacklustre performance in the Locals, and Toibín’s own disaster in Europe – proved he is not a good leader. The party is six years old. Any leader unable to get more than two seats in that time is ill-equipped to lead a party. Toibín’s insistence on being the only spokesperson for the party will hold it back. Its only hope is that Paul Lawless will fight him for the spotlight behind the scenes.
A missed opportunity
The tragic outcome of the election is not merely the lack of growth, it’s how close the party was to getting more TDs. Less than 1,000 votes in two constituencies (Cavan-Monaghan and Dublin West) would have doubled the party’s seat count. A further seven candidates were eliminated within the final three counts. A better, more professional national campaign would have made Aontú the fourth-largest party in the Dáil. With similar first-preference vote share to Aontú, both Labour and the Social Democrats returned 11 seats each. In any other party, this level of performance and missed opportunity would lead to leadership challenges. In Aontú, there is no succession plan so the momentum will just fade.
But the momentum will fade slowly. Party members are ecstatic. They don’t realise that the post-election parties they attended were Irish wakes. In 2029, they’ll all be scratching their heads wondering where all the 2024 votes disappeared to. The answer, of course, is that they will go to whatever the next potentially viable option is as voters realise that Aontú was not the answer. This election result benefits two people: Paul Lawless finally gets his shot in the Dáil; Peadar Toibín gets €250,000 a year to fund his own career aspirations. Irish conservatism, however, faces yet another disappointment.
Independent Ireland
Independent Ireland did well but not well enough to lead a conservative movement. Still recovering from the Ciaran Mullooly fiasco over the summer, the party lacks any sign of coherence or organisation. Mere days before the election, they pressured a candidate to leave the party over allegedly unknown connections with Conor McGregor. The party has been successful in every election this year but it’s hard to see how the success is party-specific: a significant portion of their candidates were elected as Independents. In many ways, their focus on candidate over party is the opposite to Aontú. Independent Ireland has various individuals flying an undefined banner; Aontú has a single party leader erecting posters with other people’s faces around the country. Both options are equally unhelpful to building Irish conservatism.
With only four TDs (an increase of one), Independent Ireland is making noises about government. It’s understandable for a small party to encourage government-related conversations to position itself as a viable voting option. To do so with any seriousness after an election, though, is a strategy deficiency. As with Aontú, five years of government at this point would kill Independent Ireland.
Conservatism failed by Independents
Independents and other small parties were similarly unsuccessful in the election. Despite the currency of anti-immigration sentiment and a strong showing in the Local Elections, the total non-feature of these parties over the weekend is yet another clear indication that Irish conservatism is dead. In fact, the only remotely conservative candidates to do well in the entire election were Rural Independents. To suggest that Mattie McGrath or Carol Nolan are elected as ideologues and not as every constituent’s local fixer is to miss the entire point of parochial politics. These TDs help conservatism only insofar as they will stand against the attacks on traditional values as they come. There will be no Irish Conservative Party following Michael or Danny Healy-Rae into the culture war battle in this or any future Dáil.
The solution: real conservatism at last!
What Ireland needs is a single, united source of conservatism from which real political change can spring. The key aspect missing from the old movement is a professional approach. Successful parties have a clearly defined mission, cohesive branding, and a level of organisation that puts its people where they do best. Backroom operators are in the back room, operating. Charismatic and eloquent speakers are to the fore, speaking charismatically and eloquently. There must be constant development of the youth to be the next generation of the movement – not merely to be young faces on social media posts. An effective party would have a strong intellectual basis for its policies. A shared basis for policies will push the best ones to the top. The thriving think tank culture in London, Brussels, and Washington DC is proof that an intellectual basis for policies results in the most defensible proposals.
A new movement of Irish conservatism is not a resurrection of a censorious McQuaid era. It is the intellectual heritage from Edmund Burke that has been absent in Ireland since he left it. It is the freedom that the Irish Revolutionaries never quite achieved.
