Events overseas can sometimes make national politics look trivial. But as Tip O’Neill said, all politics is local, and the focus of politics here in the coming year is likely to remain overwhelmingly domestic.
One of the questions at the start of the year is whether the incipient alliance of left-wing parties can continue to grow and deepen its co-operation over the course of 2026.
On two principal occasions last year, the parties of the left co-operated to significant effect. The first was when the Coalition was formed and tried to pull a fast one in providing Opposition speaking time to Government-supporting Independents. The Opposition – literally – shouted it down, preventing the Dáil from doing its business on a couple of occasions by disrupting parliamentary procedure to such an extent that Ceann Comhairle Verona Murphy, then newly minted in her role, was forced to adjourn proceedings.
Two things can be true at once. The Government was in the wrong and the Opposition reaction was completely hysterical. The changes in Dáil speaking arrangements were certainly a bit of a stroke, but they weren’t a threat to the very future of Irish parliamentary democracy.
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Over the top it might have been, but the Opposition’s campaign – more by accident than careful prior design – rattled the Government and put it on the defensive from the start. That would turn out to matter. It also showed the parties of the left that they could be more effective acting together than separately.
The prospect of left-wing co-operation moved closer for the presidential election when neither Sinn Féin nor Labour could come up with a better idea, or candidate, than Catherine Connolly. Having ruminated at great and tedious length on the question, both eventually piled in behind Connolly, for want of an alternative. Sinn Féin’s curious prognostications on the subject were an opaque window on to the subterranean processes of that party, but no matter – as Tony Blair used to say, what matters is what works. Never mind that the left’s greatest allies in the election were its opponents: elections are a results game. The potential left alliance finished the year on a high; the centre/centre-right Government ended it on the back foot.
So what now? The challenge for the putative alliance is to show the public that they can co-operate consistently on substantive issues, that they can go beyond political tactics in Leinster House and start presenting something that looks like a potentially governing alternative.
We know they can co-operate in the Dáil on shouting things down, but what about proposing policies? Nobody expects a programme for government four years before an election. But the bottom line is that if you want to be an alternative government, sooner or later you have to behave like an alternative government.
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The crucial question is: can they co-operate on policies where choices are required? When decisions must be made between alternatives which are both desirable – more funding for public services or fiscal caution, for example – can they agree? The parties of the left don’t have to figure that out immediately. But they will have to do it at some stage.
A number of related questions present themselves for the left, jointly and separately. Can Labour and the Social Democrats be persuaded that a left-wing alliance with Sinn Féin will work to their electoral advantage, and not just result in Sinn Féin hoovering up the gains that Labour and the Social Democrats hope for?
Some Labour people were deeply uneasy with the visuals of Ivana Bacik nodding supportively while Mary Lou McDonald addressed the media last year, in the manner of a government backbencher doughnutting the Taoiseach at an ardfheis. There is, remember, deep residual suspicion of Sinn Féin in Labour. Not so in the Social Democrats. But ultimately, the parties will make selfish judgments about their own interests.
Labour and the Social Democrats will also have to accommodate themselves to the reality that Sinn Féin will very likely have an each-way bet on government – ready to lead a coalition of the left if the numbers are there but, if not, ready to do business with a Fianna Fáil not led by Micheál Martin.
A delicate question is posed by the role of People Before Profit-Solidarity, early cheerleaders for Catherine Connolly and among the most enthusiastic proponents for a united left. But none of their putative partners believe for a moment that any imaginable programme for government would be sufficiently left-wing for People Before Profit-Solidarity to support.
In other words, nobody expects People Before Profit-Solidarity to be in government with them. That being so, a break is inevitable – and better to have it sooner rather than later and before the left-wing alliance has been dragged too far to the left, the argument goes. That would deprive the left alliance of some of its most effective media performers, though. People Before Profit-Solidarity TDs continue to enjoy a media profile that Government backbenchers can only dream of.
[ Post-Connolly alliance seeks long-term change to left-wing politicsOpens in new window ]
Across the chamber, the Taoiseach begins the year still somewhat battered by the events at the end of 2025. The politics of this week’s decision on Mercosur is divorced from its reality. Voting against it is performative and not without cost. The fact that Martin had no choice – despite hints to the contrary in China – but to oppose the agreement tells us something about how his freedom of movement has been constrained by the challenges to his leadership.
But the single biggest question for the course of Irish politics this year – more important than left-wing co-operation or the Taoiseach’s authority in his own party – applies to everyone. Does the river of corporation tax revenues continue to flow in 2026? The exchequer figures for the last year, published this week, show that revenues again beat expectations. This amazing good fortune, unique in Europe, has enabled the large public spending increases of the last decade. If that changes, everything in Irish politics will change too.
