As Europe rushes to the fringes – with incumbent governments shedding voters at unprecedented speed and British conservatives lurching rightwards to neutralise the Reform effect – Ireland is entrenching itself in the centre. The country’s first general election since 2020 will be held on 29 November, and all signs point to the continued dominance of Ireland’s liberal centrist establishment.
Since the state’s inception in 1922, only Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil – which form the current governing coalition – have ever commanded enough support in the Irish parliament to produce a taoiseach, in spite of the multi-party state. Even Sinn Féin, a party born out of Ireland’s irredentist national movement, once an alternative to the status quo, is courting voters in the middle ground. Ireland’s mainstream political culture is homogeneous, centrist and conformist, while its edges remain fragmented. The general election will not stress-test that arrangement; Ireland will likely continue – as it did at this summer’s local and European elections – to stave off the populism that has crashed over much of Europe this year. But this surface-level stability lulls the nation into a false sense of security: the chasm between government and its electorate is widening.
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