Ecosocialist MP Paul Murphy on Catherine Connolly’s historic presidential election victory in Ireland
Catherine Connolly won a resounding victory in Ireland’s presidential election, with the largest percentage and largest total vote of any presidential candidate in history. It is also the first time the left has won a majority of votes in a national election in Ireland. Connolly did this while up against the political and media establishment, and with a strong left platform that included opposing Israel’s genocide and aspirations for a more just and equal society.
Isaac Nellist, from LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal, spoke to Irish ecosocialist activist Paul Murphy about why Connolly’s campaign was so successful. Murphy is a member of People Before Profit and a Teachta Dála (member of the lower house of the Irish Parliament, Dáil Éireann) for the party in Dublin South-West. People Before Profit (PBP) played a big part in the Connolly campaign. Murphy was previously a Socialist Party Member of the European Parliament for Dublin. He has been active in several campaigns including against water charges, against racism, for refugee rights, solidarity with Palestine and against the re-armament of Europe and NATO expansion.
Connolly's campaign was incredibly successful and a historic victory for the left. What was the political context for the campaign?
The backdrop is important, and gives context as to why Connolly’s victory is so important.
To be clear at the outset, the Presidential position in Ireland is largely ceremonial. It is a position of giving speeches and a particular constitutional role as the final signature of legislation — but you do not have discretion to say “I disagree with this neoliberal legislation I am not going to sign it”. The president has limited power to reject legislation only if it is not constitutional. But the importance of the victory does not come from the position itself but rather the context that it came in.
In Ireland, historically, we have had two centre right parties of the political establishment: Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. For the entire history of the Irish state they have ruled Ireland. In the 1980s they had close to 80% of the vote between them before a slow secular decline, which was massively accelerated by the economic crisis. Because of that, from 2016 they had a confidence and supply arrangement and since 2020 they have ruled in coalition. They have had almost identical positions on nearly every question but have always presented themselves as opponents. The traditional political establishment is losing their grip on things here, but by coming together they were able to stop the change that many people wanted to see.
Another important context is that the pendulum in Ireland, like in most countries, was generally swinging leftward from 2014 onwards in the aftermath of the crisis, with major social movements. In particular the successful campaign against water charges — an attempt to impose charging for water, commodification and privatisation of water — was a huge mass movement, with 73% of people refusing to pay, repeated mass demonstrations and grassroots organising. We then went on to win a series of important victories on issues of oppression. We won on abortion rights, overturning the constitutional ban on any form of abortion and winning, effectively, the right to choose, with some limitations which we are still pushing against. But relative to most countries and relative to where we came from, as a country dominated by the Catholic Church, it was a big victory. We also won marriage equality, the first country to do so by referendum.
So, there was a definite swing to the left, both behind rising socialist left forces such as PBP, for which I am a TD, and largely behind Sinn Féin as the main expression of that. But over the past few years that pendulum has swung back to the right with the decline of social movements and energy to the left, the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment and anti-immigrant protests, and the emergence of a far right. The far right in Ireland does not have an organised parliamentary expression, but it does have some openly fascist local councillors elected. It also has some sympathy and voices in parliament from some small right populist forces.
For that reason things have become much more complicated. In 2020 we thought there was a chance to defeat Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and elect a left government, but by 2024 heads were down and there was a local election in which the left got a very poor result, in particular for Sinn Féin, who played into the anti-immigrant sentiment and declined as a consequence. PBP-Solidarity, the radical left alliance in the Dáil Éireann, went from five seats to three — not a disaster but a setback. That reflected the general mood.
In general things have been difficult for the left, with the exception of a mass ongoing movement on Palestine. This presidential election was the first time we have seen an electoral expression of that. It is also the first time the left have won a majority of votes: we have had previous left-wing presidents, but never elected on more than 50%, whereas Catherine got more than 63% on first preference. She also won the biggest number of total votes, the biggest percentage of votes and the biggest margin of victory for any presidential candidate ever.
So, in a sense, seemingly out of nowhere, we have a big electoral victory for the left, which raises people’s sights and gives people hope that we could have a left government and we could have major social movements again on a range of issues.
What were some of the key issues that the campaign focused on?
If you go on Connolly’s website you will not find a list of policies, it is not that sort of election. But you will find a list of values and key issues. Some of the key ones include neutrality and anti-militarism. There is a big attempt to undermine what is left of Ireland’s traditional military neutrality and line up with Western imperialism to get Ireland close to joining NATO. Neutrality was the key issue, bigger than any others.
Gaza and the Irish government’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza was also a key issue. The Irish government’s complicity is less than that of the British, United States and, presumably, the Australian government — there is no active support in terms of sending support or weapons to Israel. But we are still complicit in allowing weapons to fly through our airspace and refusing to take action to impose sanctions on Israel. Until recently, the Central Bank of Ireland was the space where Israeli war bonds were authorised to be sold across the European Union and were openly declared to be raising money to use in the genocide. The political establishment and political candidates say they are totally appalled at what is happening, but they are against any meaningful action, because it will cause them trouble with US imperialism.
The third issue is the housing crisis. There is an immense crisis that has been deepening and deepening for close to 15 years now. Back in 2016 we had less than 5000 people in emergency accommodation, so homeless, but now it is well over 16,000 people. It has more than tripled in nine years. Rents have tripled in 10 years as prices have soared, and there are people getting enormously rich from this, big corporate landlords and big developers, who, fundamentally Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael represent. So, while it is not a traditional presidential issue, Connolly spoke about housing, the failures of the government and, fundamentally, putting the right of people to have a home before the right of corporations and landlords to profit.
Other issues included disability justice. There has been a movement on disability justice and the main candidate of the establishment, Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys, was previously a minister and had tried to implement a form of disability payments that would have introduced I, Daniel Blake style assessments of capacity to work to put pressure on people to go back to work or face payment cuts. In general disability has emerged as a very big political issue, including in the 2024 elections.
The other big issue is that of the Irish language. There is a revival of interest in and enthusiasm for the Irish language and it really took off as an issue in the campaign. People who speak Irish are often portrayed as if they look down on the rest of us for not speaking Irish — the majority of people do not speak Irish fluently. But that was not Connolly’s approach at all; what was interesting is that Connolly learnt Irish in her forties and now speaks it fluently and Irish will be the working language of the presidency. There was a big protest during the election of 20–30,000 people demanding Irish language rights both north and south of the border.
But fundamentally it is about Ireland’s position in the world. Are we just going to become part of the Global North, part of the imperialist core, or does our tradition of being colonised, of British imperialism and our struggle against it have a value. I was at loads of events with Connolly and she spoke really interestingly about it. If you read degrowth literature there is a lot of reference to Indigenous people and cultures having a fundamentally different understanding of nature than Western capitalist society. Connolly was effectively making the same point about the Irish language, that there is not a false dichotomy between humanity and nature in the language, and understanding and speaking the language gives you an insight into the problems that we have. It was interesting because it is a point that might seem to be a bit obscure but it really resonated with people.
The other context to that is that if you drive through any hard-pressed working class community now, you will see Irish tricolours flying, unfortunately as an expression of anti-immigrant sentiment. This is mostly part of a conscious campaign of a small number of far-right agitators, but also some people who have fallen into that trap. That is very new. Traditionally, if you saw a tricolour it was not an expression of the far right, it was either representing the republican movement or it was related to sport. Whereas now there is an attempt by the far right to take our flag and use it how the St George’s cross is used in England or the Australian flag is used — as an expression of a narrow vision of what it is to be Irish, that is to be white-Irish, not to be traveller (which is an ethnic minority in Ireland), not to be a person of colour and not to be an immigrant. So, the Irish language revival is part of the contestation of that, which is to say no, there is a different vision of what it is to be Irish, which is to be in solidarity with Palestine, to be in opposition with imperialism and to be welcoming and open.
While there was no far-right candidate on the ballot paper — they tried to get a populist right figure up but missed out — issues of racism and immigration played less of a central, explicit role in the campaign, but it was still there in the background. Connolly was very explicit, there is a slogan saying “Ireland is full”, to which Catherine responded by unambiguously saying “Ireland is not full”. The political establishment has been leaning into this far-right rhetoric, even more so since the election. It is incredible that we have a candidate elected on a clear anti-racist platform and the response has been to ramp up the rhetoric about immigration in an attempt to divert attention away from the government and toward the most vulnerable people in our society, asylum seekers.
The campaign was broadly supported by the left and many independent activists. What impact did this have on the campaign and how will it be built on?
This is one of the most important aspects of the campaign in terms of the ramifications for the future.
To situate Connolly politically, for those who do not know her, she would describe herself as a socialist, but would not describe herself as a revolutionary socialist or a Marxist. On the political spectrum in Ireland she would sit somewhere between the radical left PBP and the Social Democrats, who are a marginally left split from the Labour Party.
Commentators at the start of the campaign were saying that Connolly’s politics aligned more closely with PBP than anyone else, which is true. In opinion polls and elections PBP gets about 3%, but you have to win at least 50% to win a presidential election. So it was an attempt to talk her down. It also meant that with the prospect of a joint left candidate, she would not necessarily be the top choice of those to our right.
PBP have been pushing for the left to stand together since 2020. There is an historic issue in Ireland of left or progressive parties going into coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The Labour Party has multiple times gained support in opposition and then gone into a coalition government, usually with Fine Gael. The Green Party has done that twice in its existence, both times being wiped out after a term in government. We have always called for parties to rule out a coalition with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael and to commit to a left government. We have a preferential voting system so we advocate transferring preferences among left parties.
In general the other parties were not interested because they wanted to leave their options open to potentially go into coalition government. In particular Sinn Fein, who are the biggest party of the opposition by a longshot — generally polling about 20% — were not very interested.
The 2024 election proved very difficult for them, as Fianna Fail and Fine Gael were clearly going back into coalition together, so Sinn Fein could not present themselves as a realistic alternative government option. So, in the final couple of days, they said people should preference PBP and the Social Democrats.
After that election, which was disappointing for the left, within Sinn Fein there was a process of reflection. There was an interesting article by an internal figure who raised the idea of being part of a broader, progressive left platform. This is an example of a small cog of revolutionary socialists turning much bigger wheels, but the wheels needed to be open to being turned, and in this case Sinn Fein was.
We decided early that Connolly would be the strongest candidate. There were meetings of all the left and progressive parties for about six months discussing the presidential election and potential plans. Those meetings were useful to have but were not ultimately going very far. PBP and the Social Democrats decided to support Connolly. To nominate someone for president you need 20 TDs or Senators to sign a nomination form, between those two parties we had very close to 20 and some supportive independents. We proposed to the other parties to support Connolly and she went public about her campaign.
This put pressure on the other parties to come behind Connolly. Labour came on board, despite some bad blood with Connolly who was a former Labour Party member. The Green Party came on board too. Sinn Fein took their time and were considering running their own candidate, but saw the groundswell of support behind Connolly and came on board.
After the election every party is eager to claim they were the ones who made the difference, but the truth is every party played an important role. Sinn Fein coming on board, even late, was important, they are the biggest opposition party and brought resources, knowhow in terms of that scale of a campaign, and knowledge about how to deal with smear campaigns. It was a mixture of negotiations at the top and pressure from below to get the parties on board. Lots of independents also got involved.
The political and media establishment were strongly opposed to Connolly. There is a quote in an article you wrote from Irish political commentator Ivan Yates that they tried to “smear the bejaysus out of her”. What can you tell us about this push back from the establishment?
Initially the strategy from the establishment was to ignore her. She was the only declared candidate who had enough nominations to be in the race and did not receive much coverage initially. But fairly quickly the smear campaign took off. It was pretty incredible and unrelenting. Every day front page newspapers were trying to make Catherine look bad.
It was interesting and I think the establishment made a mistake here, because the president is not a position that is ultimately that powerful, yet they threw everything at it. The danger for them is that they have undermined themselves, they have undermined the credibility of large sections of the media and their ability to do the same again in the next general election will be diminished. That does not mean they will not try, and it will have an impact.
One of the reasons the smears had less of an impact was the limited power of the presidency. They claimed that if she won Ireland would lose lots of jobs, US multinationals would pull out, etc. This did not have much teeth for two reasons. First, our current president is someone who also comes from a left of Labour Party tradition and has been very outspoken on Gaza, housing and neutrality — and the sun has not fallen down. Second, people know the presidency is not that important. People get to vote on the basis of values and what they want to see, without having to worry about the fearmongering implications.
The smears really escalated when it was clear she was a front runner. The quote from Ivan Yates that you mentioned, which in 20 years time will be famous in Ireland, has entered the political lexicon. What was significant about it was that Yates is a former Fine Gael TD; it was not his assessment of what they were doing but his advice for what they should do. He said if he was advising Fine Gael he would “smear the bejaysus out of her”. He encouraged them to label her a Russian asset, a provo [member of the Provisional IRA] and many other things. We were able to use this to expose what was going on.
There was an early engagement between myself and the media at a press event that went viral. A journalist from the biggest circulating newspaper in Ireland was caught up with a blatant lie in their article. The lie was that “video evidence showed that when [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky addressed parliament, Catherine Connolly did not applaud”. They could have checked the video evidence, which clearly shows that she did. I did not [applaud], but that is not the point. They did not back down on this blatant lie. This, and the Yates quote, ended up working in our favour. What is ironic is there is a new controversy around Yates, which is that he was on the payroll of Fianna Fail, who had hired him to train their candidate in the election.
All sorts of smears were thrown at Connolly, but the main line of smears was that she was not to be trusted in terms of this state and was not in line with our “allies”. [Fine Gael’s Heather] Humphreys, the main establishment candidate, refused point blank to criticise the US for its arming, funding and support of Israel’s genocide. The idea was that Connolly was going to undermine our standing with our Western imperialist allies. She criticised France, Britain and the US, saying she did not trust them, which the media went into a frenzy over.
Through all of this, Catherine did not budge an inch. The media could not understand it because pretty much all parties, when confronted with a supposed scandal, they backtrack and apologise. Even [former British Labour leader] Jeremy Corbyn, when presented with an artificial scandal around antisemitism, retreated and gave them more. But they just keep going, it does not work to retreat. Connolly did not give an inch on anything, she just repeated her points.
She criticised the re-armament of Europe, and said there are parallels with Germany in the run-up to World War II. She was then accused of comparing the current German government to the Nazis, which she had not done; she was just making a point about how dangerous re-armament is for the world.
She was presented as soft on [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and somehow not opposed to the invasion of Ukraine. In every debate, Humphreys would say “I’ve never heard you condemn Putin’s invasion of Ukraine”, and Connolly would say: “No, no, I have, I am on record condemning it.” She was asked about this in interview after interview having to repeat this.
The media scrutinised a visit Connolly had made to Syria, and accused her of being soft on [former Syria dictator Bashar al-]Assad, despite being on record opposing Assad. The trip was simply to visit Palestinian refugee camps.
They made a big deal of Connolly employing someone who had been in a radical republican group and convicted and serving prison time for an attempted robbery of guns. They tried to make out that this was a security risk in the parliament. However, Connolly had done everything correctly, and was never told this person was a security risk or anything like that. Some politicians would have thrown the woman under the bus and condemned her, but she did not. She stuck to her guns and said, “we have a criminal justice system, she served her time and I believe in people being rehabilitated, what is the problem here? This person is an upstanding citizen and is contributing to society, how dare you drag her name through the mud.”
It was powerful. People began to describe Connolly as authentic. She always said what she thought and did not give in. The final smear was a US/Trump style attack ad targeting Connolly’s previous work as a barrister for banks in repossession of people’s homes. They tried to make a big deal out of this, but in the Irish legal system you cannot refuse work on the basis of politics. It was deeply cynical because Fine Gael and Fianna Fail were involved in the policy which led to people’s homes being repossessed, while Connolly voted seven times for a ban on evictions, which Humphreys voted against. That was a voter suppression tactic, not an attempt to win people over to their candidate. It was about turning away working class voters. But this backfired for them because it came after the “smear the bejaysus” comment.
There were loads more smears than that, but these were some key ones. The press officer for the campaign said it was just non-stop. A former journalist who supported the campaign said journalists were getting 40 texts a day from Fine Gael with attack lines against Connolly. It was non-stop. But it did not work at all.
How would you compare Connolly's win with another high profile left victory, that of Zohran Mamdani in the New York City Mayoral election?
I think it is part of the same international process.
At a PBP national meeting I motivated that we should get stuck into this presidential campaign, and it was not automatic that we would do that because of the nature of the position. One of the main arguments I made is that in general the political pendulum is swinging to the right — and generally that is still the case, we should not fool ourselves because of Connolly and Mamdani — but there is the emergence of powerful counter currents to that.
People see, with horror, the way the world is going, and that the arguments of the far right in terms of immigrants, but also in terms of climate, are being taken up by the political establishment and being normalised. The whole world is absolutely abandoning any commitment to avoiding ecological catastrophe. The whole political establishment is involved in disgusting scapegoating of the most vulnerable people, attacks on trans people, refugees, etc. There is something awful happening that people can sense and that is propelling a layer of people to the left in reaction to that.
The three international examples I gave at the time, about six months ago, were Zohran, the success of Die Linke [in Germany] on the basis of taking a hard line against the far right and the energy around Your Party in Britain, which is now also energy around the Green Party in Britain. Now you can definitely add Connolly to the mix of that international picture of a counter current — I think it is real. I do not think we should mistake it as the overall pendulum swinging back to the left, because I do not think that is the case, but there are big counter currents that the left can connect to, ride, have victories and hopefully build substantial left organisations from.
From a distance, the scale and the number of people involved in the Mamdani campaign was obviously much higher, even taking into account population differences. Connolly’s campaign was a movement, she described it as a movement and not about herself, and 60,000 people volunteered and about half of those got involved. It is not normal to have a ground campaign in a presidential election, it is normally all in the media, but we had serious canvassing operations across the country, with all the left organisations involved and new people coming in. But it was not on the scale of movement that we have seen in New York. Some of that is the nature of the campaign, if this was a campaign for a left government it would have been a different picture, with higher stakes and more to be won.
It seems to be the same here as it is in the case of Die Linke and in Britain, that the dynamic force behind Connolly demographically is a similar group of people, which is relatively young, disproportionately women, and disproportionately downwardly mobile college educated young people. The media were shocked that we packed out a venue for a “get out to vote” rally with a load of great musicians in the final week of the campaign. Tickets sold out in an hour and we could have packed a venue ten times that size. It was kind of unprecedented in Irish politics. The crowd was overwhelmingly that demographic, people who are disproportionately involved and appalled at what is happening.
There is a big positive, but there is also a challenge to us. Our traditional base as the radical left is in the most hard-pressed, most deprived working class communities. While Connolly won in those areas in a massive way, there was not the same energy and volunteers as there were among young renters, who, do not get me wrong, are a vitally important group. But there is a gap opening up there which is a challenge to us. There were high rates of spoiled votes, which was linked to a campaign by the far right. There is a challenge to bridge that gap, to fight the fight to keep the base in those hard-pressed working class communities. These communities were the core of the campaign against the water charges, a very powerful group of people.
We do not want to just become the parties on the left of the downwardly mobile young people, although inevitably they will make up a big chunk of the active core at this stage — which is a good thing, people are being radicalised, pushed to the left in horror at what is happening. But there is a certain challenge there around what issues you campaign on and how you relate to people.
The main lesson is hope. A point I made at the first rally is that Connolly gives you hope. It is a bleak world. For those of us who are ecosocialists it is horrific; we have a world that is sliding deeper and deeper into barbarism, marked by the rise of the far right and anti-immigrant sentiment, war and genocide and ecological catastrophe. For those of us who know, it is getting worse and worse and worse. And then, someone comes along and gives you a bit of hope, and we should take hope from this. It is not over yet, we have not definitely lost yet.
The rise of anti-immigrant sentiment has happened very quickly in Ireland and it is depressing. Good working-class people have gone down terrible pipelines, pushed by the likes of Elon Musk. But this result gives you hope that the majority of people do not agree with that, and do not like where the world is heading. That is a basic point I have made again and again.
There are many lessons of the campaign: the importance of movements, Connolly reflecting and being part of the movement (she likely would not have won without the movement for Gaza, which meant that the smear attacks did not work), the left coming together. But the most important thing is that people agree about what they would like to see. They agree about housing, about disability justice, Irish language, neutrality and Gaza. In their hearts most people agree, broadly speaking, with the values of the left.
This does not mean that divide and rule and scaremongering do not work, but the majority of people do not like the way society and our world is going and there is a lot to work with and the potential to win victories.
What are the next steps for the left in Ireland?
The main thing we have been saying, which gets a huge resonance from people, is that this movement does not stop now. For Connolly, this is all about trying to create a dynamic of unity on the left that could pose the possibility of getting rid of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. There is a strategy here and that does not stop now.
I spoke at one of the final rallies the night before the election in Galway, where Connolly is from and the campaign was massive, and that point got a huge resonance. People have this energy and sense of being able to achieve something and they do not want that to go away. They also know that winning the presidency is good but does not really change people’s lives. There is a huge energy and interest for people in this.
PBP organised a meeting titled “What’s Next for the Left” last week and held it in a venue that fits 250–300 people, the sort of venue that with an important issue and a lot of work we can usually fill. But again, we put it online and all the tickets were gone within an hour. The thirst of people to discuss what is next and find a way forward is really profound.
So far, within the left, PBP has been unique in immediately after the election releasing a press statement about what we think should happen next. That is not an ultimatum, we want to have a dialogue with others on the left, but we need to find a way forward together. Effectively there are two parts to that from our perspective. One is, in the here and now, we cannot wait until the next election, we have to try and work together, mobilise people to win things now for people.
The four key areas we have identified are: defensive neutrality, Gaza, the housing crisis and cost of living. There is a key piece of legislation they are trying to put through to get rid of defensive neutrality before the end of the year. On Gaza, we need to end Ireland’s complicity and take meaningful action against Israel. On the housing crisis, there is a longstanding coalition with the trade unions, but it has been kind of moribund and not a lot has happened.
The housing crisis is particularly important because the far right have managed, with the assistance of the government, to make it about immigration, which it is not about at all. It is about profiteering of landlords and developers and not investing and building public housing basically. So, we need to mobilise people on that.
Then there is the cost of living crisis, which became a bigger issue during the election because the budget came in the middle of the election. The budget actively made people poorer: on average people were 2.5% poorer in terms of disposable income and the lowest 10% will be 4.5% poorer.
We have ideas about united front campaigns on these issues using the dynamic of unity to try and mobilise people and give them confidence. People voted for these values; now we need to mobilise for those values in their local communities and nationally.
The second element is the question of elections and posing the possibility of a left government. There are parts of the left that emphasise one or the other of those. I think you really have to do both. If you just emphasise the left government element, you make the same mistake as Sinn Fein in 2020 and 2024. You demobilise people, create a vacuum for the far right to step into and lose political momentum. You have to mobilise people in the here and now and give them a sense of their own power.
But it would also be a mistake just to say "mobilise people now”. People are engaged in the campaign because they want to see fundamental change, and they see that change as coming through a change in government. So, you need to relate to that and point a way forward, even understanding that the next general election is likely to be four years away.
So, in relation to that, we are immediately beginning the process of having bilateral discussions with the other parties and trying to move towards establishing a liaison committee of the left parties, where we can tease things out over a period of time. We are putting forward the idea of a major assembly of the left, of parties and non-party people, to discuss these things in a non-binding way. We do not want people to feel like they will be invited to the room and then out-voted — we are different parties with our own democratic structures and rights, but let us at least have this discussion together.
Connolly was a TD, so there will be a by-election for one seat in her area. It would be great to see if we can have a unified challenge in that campaign. Could we have one candidate supported by the left? Or, at the very least, can we have transfer [preference] pacts between different parties and candidates of the left. That would be a step forward if we can achieve that.
Then looking toward the next general election, can we have a coordinated challenge of the left, which would likely find its expression in transfer pacts on the basis of a commitment to broad left principles and a commitment not to vote for Fianna Fail and Fine Gael to be Taoiseach (prime minister) and to vote for a left candidate to be Taoiseach.
To be clear, all of that comes with complications from our perspective, particularly as revolutionary socialists. The truth is that a government led by Sinn Fein, involving Social Democrats, Labour and the Green Party, is unlikely to be a government that challenges capitalism in a decisive way. It is a government that capitalism would not be happy with and would be scared of. But these are parties that are not making a commitment to challenge capitalism. But we think it would represent a certain turning of the page of politics and put class politics on the agenda in a more definite way.
The idea that we can get rid of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, that we can have a left government, is something that is raising people’s hopes, getting people into action and mobilising people. We want to be connected to that and say to people that, fundamentally, to resolve the housing, ecological and cost-of-living crisis we need to actually challenge the economic system itself. We need a government that is willing to mobilise people from below to overcome the opposition of the capitalist class and the state, and have a fundamental ecosocialist transformation of society.
So for us, as PBP, we would not be entering into a government and taking ministerial positions if we feel it is going to let people down and that does not commit to that ecosocialist program. So, you may have a situation where, if this goes well, we have an election of a left government, and we vote for a Sinn Fein candidate for Taoiseach, as we have done in the past two elections, but without taking up ministerial positions. Insofar as they implement the agreed broad left principles, we vote for every progressive reform, but we reserve the right to mobilise people from below against the government if they break any of those promises, and to vote against the government if they implement austerity measures, anti-immigrant measures or anything like that.
So, this is not without complications, but in a choice of standing aside from the process or jumping in head first and trying to lead this process, we want to be part of this dynamic while maintaining our political independence and our own ideas, using it in a mass way to say this is why we need fundamental change in our society.
I was in Greece when Syriza was elected. So, we know a left government in and of itself does not resolve people's problems. It came under massive pressure from the Troika [European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund] and then completely capitulated. We are trying to build a broad movement for a left government, but within that trying to make the argument for fundamental socialist change.