The Case for Consolidation: A Reflection on the 2024 Elections

Nationalists have had unimpressive performance in the recent local and European elections. You’re better off looking elsewhere for the nitty-gritty, there’s no shortage of articles about it. What I want to talk about here starts with a few retrospective impressions about the nationalist campaigns. I say campaigns rather than campaign because the most striking thing about the nationalist movement is its disunity. The movement is fractured to a ridiculous degree. You have the Irish Freedom Party, the Irish People and Ireland First. You have the National Party, which is itself divided into two warring factions that both hate the other and claim to be the one true national party. And then, probably outnumbering the previous lot of them put together, you have the independents. On every local election ballot there materialised a bunch of nationalist candidates that nobody has heard of outside of a couple of election leaflets with very questionable grammar.

The election campaigns were generally not highly effective. Most people went into the voting booth with no clue about who any of these nationalist parties are. It’ll be important to examine what was done right and wrong by each party and candidate, but ultimately most of this lack of voter knowledge can be attributed to the tiny size of all these parties. The only people who know anything about the so called “for roight” parties in Ireland are their most zealous supporters and their most driven enemies. I should temper my harshness with a caveat. It is good that people are getting involved. The people out there with their boots on the ground are putting in far more effort and taking a far greater risk than most of us, myself included. But having your heart in the right place is not enough to win elections, admirable though it is.

Having such a fractured movement is perhaps not as inherently fatal as it is in other countries. In Ireland our voting system gives candidates from smaller parties and independents a better chance. In fact, it’s probably as good a voting system as you can get - but in the true Irish tradition I’m here to complain, not talk about what’s being done well. The lack of unity in the movement is a huge impediment to becoming anything more than a tiny collection of loonies on the political fringe. Successful political organisations have a unified message that resonates with the public, and they have the resources to get that message out to the public. In Ireland, the nationalist movement already has a large pool of people to draw support from. Discontent with mass immigration is widespread as is a growing sense of betrayal by mainstream politicians. Nationalists lack the unified platform and resources necessary to capitalise on the general public’s hostility to mass immigration.

By now the permanently online among us will have started to notice a message. Whispered by dusty 0 follower twitter accounts, faintly echoing in the replies to larger posts. Consolidation is the name of the game, and it leaves us at a crossroads. On one side we could opt for some more independent candidates, further national party style mitosis, and future on the fringe. The other opportunity is we consolidate the chaotic and divided nationalist political sphere, pool our resources, and maybe start getting somewhere. A consolidated nationalist party will need to set aside egos and realise that our movement is not a drama school for middle aged fellas to act out their little Napoleon fantasies (not naming any names here). Such a party will need a platform that compromises on a lot of issues and is completely unwavering on others. The party MUST acknowledge the existence of and prioritise the native Irish ethnic group. It MUST acknowledge that immigration is a problem and seek to reduce overall immigration, not just illegal immigration.

While the party should be firm on some issues, it should also allow for individual variation between members on other issues. For example, abortion. There tends to be an overlap between nationalist candidates and those who are on the pro-life side of the abortion debate. However, we should not assume this means that everyone who wants less immigration is also pro-life. This is not to say that our movement should be explicitly liberal on social issues, it shouldn’t be. What we should do, however, is realise that there are plenty of issues that are a great way to lose a lot of support and gain very little. Frankly, we can argue about those when we have time to. Right now, we are facing rapid and unprecedented demographic change. Every single year that goes by the balance continues to shift away from the native Irish. Now, don’t let that urgency psych you out too much. There is a fine line between “doomer posting” as the young call it and realism. I’m trying to tread it. My point is that we need to realise that time is very much not on our side and to break up the movement by arguing over issues that are frankly not as time sensitive would be foolish.

The months between now and the next general election are going to be a crucial time for the nationalist right in Ireland. If we want to be a force to be reckoned with, we need to get to kick into top gear right now on consolidating and organising the movement. If instead we would like the next election to be another barrage of candidates with vote counts in the double digits, then we just need to stay acting the same.