Matt Carthy should learn from Starmer’s mistakes

It is rare for two bye-elections held on a single day to provide a glimpse into two very different profiles of Irish voter. Dublin Central is urban, working-class – with ever-growing pockets of gentrification, 76% white, and has one of the highest proportion of renters in the country. Galway West, meanwhile, is 40% rural, 91% white, largely middle-class, and well over half of its voters own their home.

You might think this would make it hard to extract a single set of conclusions from the bye-elections, but the data actually tells a different story. The first, of course, is that Micheál Martin’s leadership of late has led Fianna Fáil into a single digit cul-de-sac.

The second, and arguably more important, is that—when it comes to trusting people with our votes, at least—anti-immigration sentiment remains a minority camp in Ireland.

In Dublin Central, anti-immigration candidates (Hutch, Steenson, and Smyth) failed to get a quarter of the public behind them, stacking up only 22.7% of votes.

In Galway West, anti-immigration candidates (Thomas, Welby, Nugent, Cahill, and Ryan) fared marginally better, collectively polling 32%. On this snapshot, then, anti-immigration sentiment is far from being a majority view in rural or urban Ireland. 

National polling reflects this too: the latest polling suggests 75% of voters supporting ‘pro-immigration parties’ (broadly defined as Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Social Democrats, Labour, Green and PBP-S), with only 25% supporting ‘anti-immigration parties’ (Independent Ireland, Aontú, and giving the anti-immigration camp the benefit of the entire 11% who intend to vote for independents).

None of these hard, irrefutable facts, of course, have stopped a coordinated online push from the far-right to pressure Sinn Féin into a further swing to the right in light of a weekend of poor results for the party. 

Hundreds of accounts—some not even based in Ireland—have taken to Twitter over the weekend to claim to be lifelong Shinners who will never vote for ‘Muslim Mary Lou’ again because of her positions on immigration and ill-defined ‘wokeness’.

Sadly, Sinn Féin’s response to previous pressure of this kind suggests that a significant group—believed to be led by Matt ‘Carbon Tax’ Carthy, with little resistance from Mary Lou’s weakened leadership—will argue passionately to walk straight into the trap set for them by the far-right. 

Carthy would do well to heed the old adage that a “a truly wise person learns from the mistakes of others”. Across the Irish Sea, Keir Starmer has spent the first two years of his premiership fruitlessly chasing the mythical Reform voter. 

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood (whose parents are from Mirpur, Pakistan) has announced plans to end permanent asylum status and double the qualifying time for British citizenship. The government has banned all visas for social care workers in the biggest social care crisis Britain has ever faced.

They have even introduced a blanket ban on visas for people from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar, and Sudan.

None of this stopped British voters abandoning Labour in droves: with Reform, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats all taking council after council from Labour in the local elections earlier this month.

Beyond vacuous twinks-in-suits in thrall to social media being afraid of real people, it’s hard to understand the logic behind Starmer or Sinn Féin’s moves. There is, admittedly, a demand for right-wing, nativist politics in both countries, but it is far from a majority demand.

More pointedly, it is also highly unlikely that right-wing nativists want their demand fulfilled by left-of-centre parties – in much the same way as only children and freaks order chicken nuggets and chips at an Indian restaurant.

Voters on opposite sides of the country last week abandoned Sinn Féin for parties of the left who are not suffering an identity crisis. Daniel Ennis, not Janice Boylan or the Monk, will take his place to represent Dublin Central in Leinster House this week. In Galway West, meanwhile, Helen Ogbu looks to be a transfer friendly shoo-in for the next general election.

Left-wing politics is about people, not the corridors of power. If Sinn Féin get out of Leinster House and back onto the streets, they might realise what the people really want.