3 December, 2025 - By Micheál MacEoin
The election of Independent candidate Catherine Connolly as President of Ireland on 24 October both opens up space for left-wing and socialist ideas and is indicative of some underlying shifts in Irish politics.
The 68-year-old former barrister and Labour Party politician might seem a more unlikely figurehead than New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, but there are some similarities. Both started with negligible support and chances and went on to outstrip the establishment candidates.
In Connolly’s case, she defeated Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys, a particularly poor and uncharismatic candidate who was on record defending fox-hunting as a rural pursuit and who ran a negative and graceless campaign. One former Fine Gael minister suggested that, for want of a positive programme, his party should “smear the bejaysus” out of Connolly. Its attempt to do so largely backfired.
Unlike Mamdani, whose focus was on domestic cost-of-living issues such as childcare, grocery prices and rents, Connolly’s campaign was marked by her outspoken support for the Palestinians and suspicion of NATO. She was also clear in her support for Irish reunification and made a point of visiting Belfast during the campaign.
This partly reflects Connolly’s political priorities as a candidate, as well as Irish popular opinion which has been strongly critical of Israel’s war on Gaza and supports the maintenance of “neutrality”, i.e. non-membership of formal international military alliances. It is also symptomatic of how Connolly’s outspoken predecessor, Labour’s Michael D Higgins, used the office of President to comment on global affairs.
Some of Connolly’s wider politics and political acquaintances are questionable, at best. Although condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Connolly has also described NATO’s attitude toward Russia as “warmongering”. She attracted criticism for a 2018 trip to Syria with former MEPs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly. Connolly denies that she supported the Assad regime, which she described during the campaign as a “dictatorship” which “committed countless atrocities and human rights abuses, all of which I have criticised”.
When Fianna Fáil’s candidate Jim Gavin withdrew — after it emerged that he had failed to pay back €3,300 to a former tenant — the scene was set, however, for a straight left-right polarisation between Connolly and Humphreys.
Spectrum
Connolly was backed by a spectrum of left-wing and centre-left parties, from People Before Profit and the Socialist Party on the far-left (as well as the Stalinists in the Communist Party and the Workers’ Party), through to the Social Democrats, Labour, the Green Party and, finally, Sinn Féin.
This unity around a left-wing candidate was the product of agitation from People Before Profit and others. Sinn Féin came under particular pressure and backed Connolly when it was clear she could win and that running their own candidate would be a highly risky move.
Connolly won, too, because she was backed by an enthusiastic grassroots campaign, given organisational weight by the existing left but inspiring wider involvement, including through self-organised groups of artists and Irish-speakers, as well as through attractive social media messaging.
The call to back Connolly has had interesting political effects and indicates one potential realignment in Irish politics.
Although the Presidential election has different dynamics to elections to the Dáil, the election shows that unity of parties broadly to the left can, through mutual support and transfers, unseat candidates of the two main establishment parties.
How “left” this alliance is can be criticised and there is definitely an element of political calculation and opportunism from some of the players.
After 2020, the Green Party propped up a coalition of the two main parties. At the 2024 general election the party retained only one of their twelve seats. Similarly, the Labour Party has historically been a prop for the centre-right Fine Gael.
Now, sensing a leftward shift among some sections of the electorate, both the Greens and Labour backed Connolly. Labour leader Ivana Bacik has even gone so far as to describe the party recently in a speech as “Connollyite Republican” in the tradition of James Connolly, name-check Mamdani and criticising the attacks on accommodation centres for asylum seekers
Tensions
In both cases, this has led to tensions. The Green Party lost a former TD and an ex-Senator in October due to its decision to back Connolly. Right-wing Labour TD Alan Kelly, too, publicly backed Humphreys in the Presidential campaign.
The Connolly campaign clearly created opportunities for co-operation on the left and the involvement of new layers of people in political campaigning.
A measure of its ongoing success will be the extent to which this campaigning can continue and be turned outwards, towards campaigns for housing, support for strikes, solidarity with asylum seekers and migrants and opposition to the growing racism in Irish society.
It will also be necessary for socialists to go beyond a broadly-defined “left”, raising the banner of democratic working-class socialist politics.
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