Una Mullally: SF is tapping into young people imagining something different

On the eve of the election, two leaflets dropped through my letterbox in Dublin Central in quick succession. One was a letter from Joe Costello, thanking residents in the area for their courtesy towards him and his canvassers in the course of the campaign. The other was from Paschal Donohue, which concluded “protect our country and your job from Sinn Féin”. Maybe that message would work in a middle-class area where Sinn Féin had a marginal chance of nicking a final seat, but this is Mary Lou McDonald country, where thousands would be voting for her the following day.

What this demonstrates is how Fine Gael had lost it. When their campaign flopped in the initial days, they spent the remaining weeks attacking both Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin, and forgot to tell the electorate what they were about. For his part, Leo Varadkar had a decent campaign, appearing personable and competent. But Fine Gael’s problems run far deeper. The party pretends not to have an ideology, that its aura and experience of privilege is merely the default, but the electorate has clearly objected to how the country is being rebuilt after the initial recession-era emergency.

It is not acceptable to people that we’re told the economy is booming and that we’re a wealthy country, yet people’s quality of life and their interactions with public services don’t match that narrative. If we’re so successful, then how can there still be a multifaceted housing crisis and extreme stories of homelessness? Fine Gael might be good at the macro maths, but on the ground it didn’t add up.

A rallying call began to develop online about voting and transferring left. The landscape of Irish electoral politics was being redrawn before our eyes

What did people vote on? In the exit poll, 58 per cent said health and housing and homelessness. There was plenty of time in debates allocated to details of various parties’ tax plans. According to the exit poll, 4 per cent said tax was their reason for voting a certain way. It didn’t matter.

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What did matter? Some 65 per cent said they were in favour of increasing spending on public services instead of tax cuts. Voters in Ireland want better public services, a better quality of life, a dramatic change in housing policy, homelessness eradicated, and a health system that functions far better than it does now. That’s what matters. In essence, people want a more equitable society where everyone is taken care of.

Grassroots activism

This election is rooted not just in the financial crash, the recession, and the ensuing new brand of housing crisis, but also in the politicisation of young people through grassroots activism that occurred around marriage equality and Repeal, as well as the rental crisis, which young people suffer the most. You cannot have a decade where all of those things are in the mix, where discussions about equality and empathy form the national conversation, and that not have an impact.

Ultimately, this is an occasion where public sentiment overrides all else. No matter what campaign you were running, unless you were tapped into that sentiment – which Sinn Féin and left-wing parties were – you were going to end up talking to the wall. McDonald connected with voters. A rallying call began to develop online about voting and transferring left. The landscape of Irish electoral politics was being redrawn before our eyes.

Ireland imagined things into being with grassroots graft, standing on the shoulders of those who went before them. Sinn Féin is tapping into that sentiment.

On Friday night, Sinn Féin posted a video online. A McDonald speech declared “the past was for those who seek to divide, the future is for those of us who seek to unite. So the old guard can have yesterday, but tomorrow is ours”. Stirring stuff. Whatever you think about Sinn Féin – call them populist, opportunistic, nationalistic, scant on detail, “not a normal party” – they offered a vision for Irish society during this campaign. What was Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’s vision? Does anyone know?

Now, whether Sinn Féin’s vision is practical, doable, realistic, or just designed to suck up votes, it’s at least something that looks to the future and displays the type of ambition and scope that the electorate was looking for. The scaremongering about Sinn Féin amongst the political and media establishment did not connect. Comparing voting for Sinn Féin to voting for Donald Trump, Brexit, or other right-wing forces is simply wrong. People might be motivated in part by a populist sentiment, but it is a left-wing one.

Since 2011, the Irish electorate gave two successive Fine Gael governments a chance to clean up the initial mess. But what we’ve been experiencing since then has felt like our own brand of disaster capitalism, where global capital calls the shots, buys the plots, and a sense of community and future begins to feel unsettled. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil point to the outside forces that bolster our economy, saying we have to keep them on side to succeed. Sinn Féin appeals to a renewed sense of ambition and self-belief from within the country, underpinned by the values of the republic. The left appeals generally to the desire for another way forward, bolstered by people-powered social change. Which vision do you think people are going to respond to more?

When the crash hit, lives were upturned. For young people, futures evaporated. What happened next was remarkable, because young people in this country imagined something better. If everything had been lost, then what can be gained? Ireland imagined things into being with grassroots graft, standing on the shoulders of those who went before them. Sinn Féin is tapping into that sentiment. So, has this power of the imagination momentarily lapsed into fantasy? I guess we’ll see. But don’t be surprised by the lust for change. Electoral politics is the easy bit. Try changing a constitution. Try changing the course of history. Try changing the world. Voting a different way isn’t exactly a mammoth task after that.