Ireland’s anti-Varadkar rebellion is just getting started

Leo Varadkar

Leo Varadkar’s flirtation with open borders has awoken the sleeping beast of Irish nationalism. A nursing home in Co Dublin which was being considered for housing for asylum seekers has this week been destroyed in a suspected arson attack. Hundreds of people have thundered through the streets of the capital in recent months, brandishing Irish flags and chanting “get them out” about the government as part of an anti-immigration protest.

The public has grown tired of the state’s ever-more porous borders and inadequate public services. This has mostly manifested as peaceful, local demonstrations against the housing of asylum seekers in small rural towns and deprived urban areas.

But Monday’s demonstration took on a more nativistic, muscular tone. One seldom sees streams of Irish tricolour flags outside of an international sports fixture – and the anger of those waving them was palpable.

There was an air of sedition. Protestors lambasted the government for “taking the Queen’s shilling”, an old term for Republican apostates. Sinn Fein, the traditional home of bellicose Irish nationalism which is nevertheless supportive of mass immigration, were called “traitors”. And the unprecedented number of asylum seekers arriving into the country in recent years – up nearly 200 per cent from 2019 to 2022 – was repeatedly cast as an “invasion”.

“There’s thousands of patriots here today to oppose this new plantation”, one protester said.

“And if the people of Ireland don’t stand up and stop this invasion, Ireland will be gone forever…Cromwell himself would blush about what’s happening in this country.”

That many Irish people are now framing their fight against mass immigration in existential terms is a significant departure from the comparably pedestrian issues of housing, services and GDP, which have dominated Irish politics over the past 30 years. But that this is being spoken of in the language of anti-colonial struggle is a development which should alarm Mr Vardkar’s government.

Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, nationalism has become a largely innocuous force in Ireland. But over the past year, there has been spate of more than a dozen arson attacks on migrant facilities, and venues wrongly thought to be housing migrants, with no arrests made. This is a fringe but potentially combustible new form of political violence in Ireland – aimed at the government’s immigration policy, which it seems unable to get a handle on.

There are also mainstream political revolts afoot. More than a third of people in Ireland say they would now consider voting for a party or candidate with strong anti-immigrant views, according to a recent poll. This is a first for Irish politics and could sway next year’s election.

The Irish government often says the mass influx of asylum seekers cannot be helped. Ministers are wont to remind the Irish people of their need to fulfil Ireland’s “international obligations”. This has stoked anti-EU sentiment, with the Irish government regularly described by immigration sceptics as “puppets” for Brussels. This further lends itself to the sense of Ireland being under the cosh of a new empire – one that is aloof from the concerns of ordinary people.

In Britain, vast post-war migrations into the country were often justified by a misplaced sense of guilt over the legacy of the Empire. Brits were told they owed a duty of care towards their former subjects. Sceptics could be dismissed as hypocrites in their selfish dereliction of this obligation.

But Irish history is different. Many Irish people view their nation as a historically oppressed underdog, which won its freedom after a bloody and bitter struggle. This story – immortalised in the canon of Irish songs, literature and films – can tug on the heart strings of even the most sober Irish people.

It is a potent genie to let out of the bottle. But the Irish government’s cocksure loosening of the state’s borders – widely perceived to be at the behest of the EU – is breathing new life into Irish nationalism. People are beginning to ask questions that have been set aside for some years. What does it mean to be Irish? The more nebulous the government’s criteria for “Irishness” becomes, the more the Irish people’s definition is likely to contract.

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