Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European ...

214 Twenty-First Century Populism
core vote might be uneasy with a more overtly populist party. Similarly,
while FG under its new leader Enda Kenny has adopted more populist communication
strategies, full of ‘tough’ rhetoric on crime, negative campaigning
and comments on the risks posed by immigration to ‘Celtic and
Christian’ Ireland (Molony, 2007), the party is far too closely identified with
the Establishment to be able to adopt a fully populist discourse.
In fact, the greatest market for a populist party might not be in the cities
of Ireland, but in rural areas, particularly those of the West where Clann na
Talmhan was successful in the 1940s. In these parts of the country, Labour,
SF and the Greens have made little headway (apart from those areas bordering
with Northern Ireland in the case of SF) and disgruntled voters have
instead turned to local, often single-issue, Independent candidates. One of
the many reasons for this is that Mass attendance is significantly higher in
rural Ireland than in urban areas and the policies of SF, Labour and the
Greens − more so than those of FF and FG − conflict with the teachings of
the Church. It is important to remember, amidst all the talk of ‘the new
Ireland’, that while the passing of divorce in 1995 was a milestone for secularization,
49 per cent of the electorate, and more outside Dublin, voted
against it. Nor should we overlook the growing marginalization of the farming
community within the Irish economy and society in general at a time
when this sector faces competition from the new countries of the EU and
the loss of the lucrative subsidies of the Common Agricultural Policy. Given
all this, there may well be space for a new conservative populist party offering
a nostalgic vision of ‘old clean-living Catholic Ireland’, juxtaposed with
the materialistic and immoral new multicultural one foisted upon the country
by a self-interested, Dublin-based liberal economic and political elite, its
media and the European Union. Thus, while the victory in the 1999
European Parliament election of the Catholic conservative candidate Dana
Rosemary Scallon in the Connacht-Ulster constituency may have seemed
like a blip, all kinds of everything could yet happen across the western half
of the country if a new, well-organized populist party with a charismatic
leader were to mobilize on a similar platform.
Conclusion
In his chapter in this volume, Gianfranco Pasquino concludes that, ultimately,
the most important condition for the rise of populism is ‘the presence
of a leader willing and able to exploit existing social conditions of
anxiety and availability’. While Pasquino’s comment may seem, at first sight,
somewhat tautological, the situation is in fact that simple. If the structural
conditions do not exist, populist agency cannot be successful. However,
those conditions can also exist in the absence of a populist party. Thus,
while no populist party akin to those on the continent has emerged in
twenty-first century Ireland, this does not mean that it will not do so in the