Over the past few decades, one of the electoral attributes of the Irish centrist parties – Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – is an ability to gauge where the majority of the population are on big issues and align with them. As we saw with the abortion referendum, when the centrist politicians are worried about being out of step, they outsource the decision making to an innovative focus group called a Citizens’ Assembly. Once they know which way the wind is blowing, they act. The result of this has been a gradual but obvious progressive shift in Irish economics and politics – the type of steady incrementalism that would make Edmund Burke proud.
In contrast, Irish radicals who covet extreme social, political or economic change have (so far) found their aspirations rebuffed by an electorate that appears to be happy with measured adjustments, rather than rapid transformation.
Ireland was, until recently, pretty much in step with western democracies where the “mainstream” parties, reflecting the middle-of-the-road voter, slugged it out for modest supremacy. Elections and voting blocks were framed and defined by the traditional economic and social left v right arguments. They fought over people’s perception of taxation and welfare spending. You could identify two major electoral blocs: one the low tax -small government group and the other the high tax-big government gang. On cultural and social issues, typically, the low tax group veer a bit more to traditionalism, while the high tax gang tend to lean more towards liberalism. Professional politicians also lined up broadly on one side or the other, giving the voter a home to go to at election time.
In recent years, this has changed. The most obvious example is the victory of Donald Trump, where a radical vision of the future, backed by the majority of democratic voters, is not just in power, but is using this power, radically. If Trump 1 was an aberration, Trump 2 is the confirmation of this global trend. In the UK, Reform is cut from the same cloth, as are the European parties of Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni, Geert Wilders and the AfD in Germany, not to mention the nativist leaders in central and eastern Europe. The shift has occurred not in economics but in culture. The right-left, capitalist versus socialist framework is being replaced by a much more visceral setting, which pits the “corrupt elite” against “the real people”, where the corrupt elite are depicted as venal, self-serving and cosmopolitan in nature and the real people are honourable, decent and rooted in their locality and traditions. The “corrupt elite” can come from the tax-cutting corporate right or be free-spenders from the trade unionist left, but what distinguishes them is they have a stake in society. The “real people” on the other hand are always portrayed as being locked out of the system, waiting for a Messiah to liberate them and reveal their genuine strength.
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Elections today are increasingly set up as a battle between the establishment policymakers and the popular will. The gap between the establishment views of the elite and the popular will of the real people is the place where ballots will be won and lost. If a gap opens up between the political mainstream and the average voter, new nativist parties can exploit this, in effect filling the gap.
Following a tip-off in an interesting article in the Financial Times (FT) I came across a recent academic paper which tries to measure this gap between the European establishment and the European street when it comes to big cultural issues, such as immigration and law and order. The survey data reveals that on the old issues of taxation and spending, professional politicians and the average voters are not too far apart. This means that if you are a tax-cutting, small government voter, you can find your electoral home in one of the major established parties. The same goes if you identify as a high-tax, big government type of person – you will find your home somewhere in an established party manifesto. But on cultural issues such as immigration and law and order, the average European voter and the average professional politicians have moved miles apart.
‘If the mainstream political system and the professional politicians are out of step with the mainstream voter on big cultural issues like immigration, law and order and the make up of the society, those voters will find a new home’
Across Europe, the average professional politician is far more liberal on immigration and on prison sentencing than the average voter. The average voter wants limits on immigration and, perhaps even more critically, where there is immigration, the average voter wants new immigrants to assimilate into the local culture, rather than multiculturalism becoming the objective of policy. Similarly, when it comes to sentencing, the average punter wants longer and harsher sentences for criminals than the typical politicians. So a gap has emerged, which is being filled by populists across the continent. The mainstream voter, who wants less multiculturalism and a tougher criminal justice regime, has nowhere to go in the established political parties, so they go for the new so-called “radical” options.
In Ireland, the data provided by the FT suggests the same gap has opened up. When surveyed on the issue of whether immigrants “should adapt to the customs of the country”, just half of Ireland’s established politicians agree, whereas 70 per cent of voters want immigrants to adapt to Ireland’s norms. This gap between the politicians and the voters will be filled. On the issue of policing and law and order, 57 per cent of politicians favour tougher sentences for criminals, whereas 82 per cent of voters want harsher sentences. Again, these voters are looking for a home and can’t find it in the political establishment.
The recent unwillingness of mainstream parties to back Maria Steen in the presidential election has been cited as an example of the “locked-out” voter who can’t identify with what is being offered by the establishment. There is a vocal minority who see her as a victim of the mainstream parties and the entrenched political institutions. They argue that the unwillingness of the political system to facilitate her is a clear example of the political elite stymying the real people.
You can make up your own mind about that example, but the direction of travel is obvious. If the mainstream political system and the professional politicians are out of step with the mainstream voter on big cultural issues like immigration, law and order and the make up of the society, those voters will find a new home. Up to now, they’ve had no home to go to. That will not always be the case.
