Whichever party ends up running Ireland, there’s no escaping the complications of Brexit

Editorial: It was hardly on the agenda in the recent poll, but given how much it matters to the Irish economy, it will be back soon enough

Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein leader, celebrates with supporters (AFP/Getty)

After its near-death experience during the financial crisis a decade ago, followed by a couple of short, sharp, recessions, Ireland’s economy has returned to healthy economic growth. The Celtic Tiger isn’t roaring again, but neither is it suffering from mange any longer. It enjoys higher GDP per capita than the UK, unemployment lower than the EU average, and attracts an impressive rate of foreign inward investment, thanks to a business-friendly environment and low-tax regime. The national record over the past few years is a testament to the sense and resilience of the people of Ireland.

Why then, such a substantial vote for Sinn Fein, a radical socialist party with a violent past and revolutionary traditions? Few argue that the Sinn Fein surge is anything other than a protest vote. Ireland has not suddenly become convinced that solving the national question – the status of Northern Ireland within the UK – is the most urgent facing the country.

Rather, as is also widely recognised, only Sinn Fein seemed to have the answers many voters were looking for on the bread-and-butter issues that dominated the campaign – housing and health. Nothing else came close, and the fact that Sinn Fein just edged the two mainstream parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, into the lead on voters’ first preferences was as much a vote against the old guard as much as a vote of confidence in the still relatively untried Sinn Fein.

Like Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in 2017 (though not last December), the population seems to be turning, at least in part, to a left version of populism, for the want of anything better. What did not happen in Ireland, tellingly, was any upsurge for a nationalist party of the right, though some accuse Sinn Fein, notwithstanding its woke vibe, of sharing some of the same instincts as hard nationalist parties of the fascistic right elsewhere in Europe.

According to the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, it may take months for Ireland to form a new government in such a fractured environment. As with other such insurgencies in Sweden, Italy and Germany, the insertion of a party surging from one wing or other of politics in a system of proportional representation tends to distort the normal shape of politics. In particular, it forces the main centre-left and centre-right parties into “grand coalitions” – huddling together for warmth. However, this rarely makes for stable government and vacates the role of a principal opposition party to the extremists – with all the recognition and perks such a role usually entails. All in all, it would be preferable in the wider Irish interest to have Sinn Fein come to terms with the challenges of government coalition rather than have them showboating as the principal opposition to a jaded Fianna Fail-Fine Gael not-so-grand coalition.

The lesson here is what has been happening in Germany. There, the social democrats have gone into successive coalitions with the Christian Democrats, and as a result are facing extinction. Allowing the neo-Nazi AfD to dominate the role of opposition has simply allowed them to grab profile and recognition.

In Ireland, the dynamics of a grand coalition could play out in something like the same sort of way, albeit with a left bias. So, just as the republicans in Sinn Fein marginalised the moderate nationalists of the Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland, so too they could push Fianna Fail to the margins of Irish politics, eventually going head-to-head themselves with the more conservative Fine Gael in a new two-party system. Far better to have Sinn Fein “tamed” and tutored in the realities of government with Fianna Fail than promising everyone the earth. It might even make for better, more responsive government, more homes and improved health outcomes, just as the Irish people demand. To be fair, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald seems up for it: “we want to talk to anyone who is interested in delivering a programme for government.”

Even though Brexit was hardly on the agenda in the recent poll, it still matters a great deal to the Irish economy, and it will be back on the agenda soon enough. Thanks to the Northern Ireland protocol in the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement, the so-called Irish “front stop”, under no circumstances should there be a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, even in a no-deal scenario. The border checks will instead be conducted at the Great Britain-Northern Ireland border, within the UK, where they will be inconvenient but not so politically insensitive.

The problem, though, remains what a no-deal Brexit at the end of 2020 would do to Irish trade with the UK, which still takes around 11 per cent of Irish exports and through which many more flow en route to France, Belgium, Germany and so on. There are also still close corporate and financial links between the UK and Ireland. A hard Brexit would hurt Ireland in all sorts of ways, not least by holding up her intra-EU exports while they pass through and out of the UK. This is where British negotiating leverage lies – as a brutal matter of realpolitik. Priti Patel, now home secretary, said so a while back, in words clumsy even by her standards. Noting a Whitehall report waning about food shortages in Ireland under hard Brexit, Ms Patel said in 2018: “This paper appears to show the government were well aware Ireland will face significant issues in a no-deal scenario. Why hasn’t this point been pressed home during negotiations?”

Sinn Fein can very well declare that they never wanted Brexit, that Brexit is a British-created fiasco and that it is not Ireland’s job to sort out Brexit for London, or, for that matter, for Brussels. But that is what all the Irish parties say, and Sinn Fein cannot, for once, blame partition and the border with Northern Ireland for the problem. Hard choice, and hard bargaining lie ahead for Ireland, whoever ends up running the country.