¶ Last Christmas I was at a party in a hotel in Rossnowlagh chatting with a few of the boys. It had been a bad year electorally for the left. Though we’d gained in the local elections (and The Ditch had enjoyed our cut at Fine Gael’s Marian Agrios) Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael remained the country’s biggest parties. We’d lost our anti-imperialists in the European Parliament. Despite our ruling parties being forced to continue their embarrassing relationship they were still in government.
That night in the Sandhouse Hotel it was far left politics we were discussing, the kind of politics Simon Harris in Ballyshannon this week, ten minutes from Rossnowlagh, was warning the people of Ireland about. “This country is not far left,” he said, imploring anyone still listening to him to vote for Heather Humphreys.
In Rossnowlagh last Christmas we understood the state of the left. Like Paul Galvin said, “A shit situation is a shit situation, no matter what way you look at it. But if you call it that, you can actually make some fun out of it.” We retained hope.
We thought this year’s presidential election might bring a chance of redemption, maybe even a win. We talked about whom we’d like to see as president and kept coming back to Catherine Connolly. We talked about others we’d be happy with, some whose politics we didn’t identify with as much but who may have been more electable, but that group of us, pints in hand and tough year behind us, wanted to see Catherine get a shot. For her thoughtful and intellectual, consistent and coherent republicanism, she was number one.
Just less than a year later, part of you still wonders, is someone like Simon Harris right? Does “middle Ireland” always win? Is this a “centrist country”?
Can Catherine Connolly do it?
¶ Ryan Grim from Drop Site was over in Ireland this summer and we met up in Dublin and Donegal for dinners and chats. He decided to add a couple days to his trip and suggested a meetup in Dublin for the people who read both our sites. It ended up a great evening. Sometimes these things come together.
Catherine Connolly had just announced her presidential candidacy and had already faced the mainstream media at Leinster House. Their questions that day gave an idea of how they’d cover her campaign. (They were the questions you’ve heard asked – and answered – over and over.) The feeling that day of her launch, among the people who think they guide public opinion, was that she wouldn’t challenge. The Irish Independent criticised how she spoke – too softly, apparently.
She spoke at our event the day after. While a group of us had dinner in Carluccio’s beforehand, my friend and colleague Paulie Doyle headed over to the pub he shares a surname with early to see how the place was looking. Jeez, he texted me, people are starting to fill the place. And right enough they were. They kept coming. Before answering her first question Catherine said,“This is the first time I’ve been in a sauna with all my clothes on. A communal sauna at that.” The place was rammed.
Some humility: the people who packed that room, who turned it into a sauna, weren’t there to see The Ditch. Catherine, Ryan and Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed were the draws.
We don’t interview politicians at The Ditch. The odd time we do things like this, and when it’s Paulie asking the questions, he puts work into what he asks. It shows respect to the person he’s interviewing. Catherine sat alongside and talked with Ryan and Abubaker for about an hour. Her answers returned that respect to everyone in the room.
There were pauses and admissions she would need to think before speaking. Her opponent Heather Humphreys, like most in both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, can just about learn lines – I’m pro business; I’m middle of the road; I support rural pursuits – and recite them regardless of what she’s asked. Answering questions rather than giving recitations requires the kind of care and thought Catherine showed that evening.
I was texting Ryan the other night. Drop Site had published some highlights of the evening on YouTube, the video titled “WATCH: Ryan, Abubaker Interview RADICAL LEFT Next Irish President.” We joked about the facetious headline. That said there’s been a quiet radicalism to Connolly’s campaign. It’s a radicalism of thinking about what you’re going to say, about your politics and ideology, as well as deciding who you’re going to speak to and on whose terms.
The mainstream media don’t like it. On Saturday Mary Regan, who early in the campaign defended her right to publish falsehoods about whether Catherine clapped for Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Dáil, had a story titled “Despite weeks of questions, facts about Catherine Connolly’s Syria trip remain thin on the ground.” Weeks of questions. Journalists at the “Irish” Daily Mail continue to cry about Connolly’s refusal to speak to them. “This is how it starts,” said executive editor John Lee on X.
I hope it is how it starts. It’s all so satisfying.
¶ I came home to Ballyshannon to vote this week. Today I did a bit of work in the family home in the morning while Mum was at a ciorcal comhrá. When she was done we went to vote.
We were wearing the CONNOLLY for PRESIDENT sweaters I’d bought a few weeks back – politics aside they’re quite pretty – and the trip to the polling station, a primary school straddling the border, was different to the ones I took for those bad elections last year. This is what expectation feels like.
I’ve written about how growing up Mum used to tell me no one she voted for ever won. I’ve inherited that losing tradition: thank you Michael D Higgins (twice a first preference) and Martin Kenny (once a third preference) for being the only politicians for whom I’ve voted to get elected. If you’re from Donegal and you’re on the (far) left you don’t expect to win. And it's rare to have an attractive green sweater to advertise your choice.
We went for brunch in Humble in Bundoran afterwards. (I recommend the brioche French toast, vanilla cream cheese with maple syrup, nice wee combination). We sat there, sweaters on, we’re here, who’s like us. You don’t get to feel like that much on the left.
I’ll not be premature – things I accept: the presidency is a ceremonial position; the left hasn’t committed to future coalitions; electoral politics won’t save us. Right now I don’t care. We can talk about all that next week.
I grew up a Manchester United fan. I remember getting up on a Sunday morning in 1996 to watch taped Match of the Day highlights of the final day of the season, that 3-0 win against Middlesbrough that delivered the first title win I got to celebrate. Last week I picked up Anthony Quinn’s sort-of Kevin Keegan biography and I now recognise that Keegan’s Newcastle United were the good guys of that race.
No more than Catherine Connolly, who hasn’t compromised her politics for the mainstream media’s idea of the mythological middle Ireland, Keegan’s entertainers didn’t compromise their football. They didn’t win though. Against a mainstream media and their weeks of questions, our ruling parties and their thoughtless, abortive campaigns, there’s a chance of a win tomorrow.
And no more than Keegan – “I'll tell you, honestly, I will love it if we beat them. Love it.”
