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Ireland’s Left Should Lead the Campaign for Irish Unity

By
Colin Gannon

Ireland’s conservative parties are weaker than ever, but the forces of the Irish left haven’t been able to cohere around an alternative. A campaign for Irish unity based on radical change in both parts of Ireland could help break the logjam.

Irish presidential independent candidate Catherine Connolly on the campaign trail in O’Connell Street, Dublin, with supporting politicians from other political parties, including Councillor Janice Boylan, Mary Lou McDonald TD, President of Sinn Fein, Ivana Bacik TD, leader of the Labour Party and Holly Cairns TD, leader of the Social Democrats, on October 5, 2025.

An unprecedented alliance of Irish left-wing parties, from social democrats to Trotskyists, came together to elect Catherine Connolly as president last year. Translating that unity into a push for Ireland’s first left government is proving much trickier. (Conor O’Mearain / PA Images via Getty Images)

Earthquake elections are rare under Ireland’s unique form of proportional representation. Trends unfold slowly, and elections yield identikit governments, coalitions after coalitions that do little more than tinker with economic and social policy. But two parliamentary by-elections in May this year did capture a clean snapshot of the country’s main electoral dynamics.

In Dublin Central and Galway East, Fianna Fáil suffered some of its worst-ever election performances, less than two years after it returned to power as part of the latest coalition government. Stuck on a similar path of secular decline, Fine Gael won the Galway West seat by a slender margin in a rebuff to doomy predictions, but its candidate only defeated the ascendant right-wing party Independent Ireland with the help of vote transfers.

Daniel Ennis, a former footballer who entered politics to oppose racism in his inner-city community, took the Dublin Central seat for the Social Democrats, edging past Sinn Féin. His party, known as the Soc Dems, is a rising force in Irish politics and particularly popular with young people.

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