In national elections last week, the Irish electorate proved itself either the most level-headed or the most lunkheaded in the world. A wave of political discontent has been coursing through the West all year, with entrenched parties and politicians being ousted in the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. Ireland appears to have as much to grumble about as the others do. Its generation-long experiment in converting an agricultural island into a global-economy tax shelter is producing frictions. People are tired of rising rents. They’re tired of mass immigration—North Dublin saw violent riots a year ago after an Algerian-born man stabbed several children. They’re tired of progressive constitutional changes—passing abortion and gay marriage by referendum in the last decade is about as far as they’d care to go.
Unsurprisingly, the two political clans that have divided power since the country’s civil war of the 1920s—the vaguely progressive nationalists of Fianna Fail and the vaguely nationalistic progressives of Fine Gael—have seen their vote share dwindle, and have lately fused into a de facto establishment party. When this happens in other countries, voters complain. Not the Irish. They voted the establishment back into office—though they did obliterate its coalition partners, the Greens, and this time gave a considerably higher vote to the nationalists than to the progressives. This makes it likely that, when a government is formed sometime in January, foreign minister Micheál Martin of Fianna Fail will return to the top office of taoiseach, replacing (maybe even simply swapping offices with) the present taoiseach, Simon Harris of Fine Gael.
And yet, those who have been awaiting an upheaval in Irish politics may soon be vindicated nonetheless. There is something stirring amid Irish society’s silent majority. There is also something stirring on the world stage. Something named Donald Trump.