Get ready for ‘British vote’ surge in Ireland

Post-Brexit the number of UK nationals in Ireland could grow rapidly and their influence is already being felt, writes Conor Skehan

DEMOGRAPHY is destiny — a phrase usually used to explain how the age or number of a population influences everything from economics to political allegiance. Less frequently demography can refer to the values and culture of a distinct group in society.

It is not uncommon to hear the term ‘the Irish vote’ used in discussions about American politics. Could we see similar blocks of voters emerge in Ireland — if people of similar national backgrounds began to vote as blocks?

Most people assume that this might refer to a ‘Polish vote’ here, if our current largest national group (212,515 in 2016) was mobilised around a specific issue or party.

Another, more intriguing, possibility may exist — emerging abruptly from below the demographic horizon. Imagine if the numbers of our second largest nationality (103,113) suddenly grew? Post-Brexit this number of UK nationals could expand, very rapidly.

This is not as unlikely as it first appears. Over the six months to the end of June 2019, 78,744 first-time Irish passports were issued to people living in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is important to note that this number refers only to passports and not to residency or citizenship. British applications for citizenship only rose from 568 in 2016 to 1,213 in 2018.

Nonetheless, it is a fact that British citizens may vote at Dail elections, European elections and local elections — though after the recent DeSouza judgment, which seems to highlight wide discrepancies between legislation and practice, perhaps we should take none of this for granted.

Since the Brexit vote there has been a slow, but steady, migration of British business to Ireland — to date over 100 firms, especially those in the financial and related professional services sector. Many of these are individually modest in scale but, significantly, involve more senior staff and professionals [the UK is the biggest net source of professionals moving to Ireland.]

As Brexit is confirmed it is likely that the number and scale of these moves will increase, as new arrangements consolidate, requiring more support and staff. It is also plausible that this number will be further increased as a wide range of sectors of business, services and academia avail of opportunities for ambitious British people to have access to a market of 515m Europeans — with a GDP of €20tn.

After Brexit, Ireland [along with Malta] will be the EU’s only English-speaking common law member state. This will amplify our attractiveness as a European base for international businesses from the Anglophone and common law parts of the world.

The US and India are just two of the countries in this category — which have a combined population of over 1.6bn people and a combined GDP of more than $22tn. These are markets that Britain’s huge banking and financial services sector will desperately want to continue to service in Europe and where better a place to do this than from Ireland?

Seen from this perspective, there is an inevitability of increasing residency and voting by people from Britain in Ireland. What might this be like?

The change would have two consequences — the first would be an increase in numbers of British people living in Ireland, the second would be the change in the pattern of where they live.

Until now, British people have quite distinctive patterns of settlement when they move here. Most New Irish tend to live in urbanised areas, but 50pc of British people choose to live in rural areas. This may change significantly where a significant number of financial professionals move to Ireland and concentrate around the locations of these new jobs — mostly in the Dublin area. What would be the political and media influence of a substantial block of well-off and well-connected British voters concentrated in Dublin?

The same could be said about Ireland’s Indian community of over 40,000. At the risk of excessive generalisation, it can be argued that India produces people with an interest in politics almost as fierce as the Irish. Sometimes in politics a small energetic group can punch well above its weight.

How might these factors affect the future fortunes of Irish political parties — especially in the context of Ireland’s other great demographic upheaval, the urbanisation of our population?

At the foundation of the State — when our main political parties were founded — less than a third of us was urban; now two thirds of us are, and over 50pc of us live in Leinster.

It’s easy to forget that it usually requires an overall swing of less than 5pc to change a government. With an electorate of about 3.3m and a typical turnout of around 2m, this means that around 100,000 voters usually change the government.

A coordinated vote by some or all of our largest New Irish voters clearly has the ability to change the government.

The effects could occur at, or between, either of two ends of a spectrum of possibilities.

At best? Watch out for major political parties beginning to try to please (or not offend) these large groups.

At worst? Watch out for less scrupulous foreign political actors hoping to mobilise compatriots voting in Ireland.

Either way, the future will be different. Urbanisation and the New Irish are changing us and our values more rapidly than many realise. The future is formed by changes in values, much more than it is by changing technologies or major events.

The future emerges by how our values make us respond to these changes.

In any of these scenarios the question will arise about what defines us: where we’re from or where we are now?

Populists try to cultivate differences to ferment anger and emotion to propel themselves into office. But they are not the whole story. Differences can also be a source of strength because they offer a wider range of talents and perspectives. Differences are also the engine of prosperity and entrepreneurship because ‘new entrants’ often prosper because they can notice new opportunities.

The Great Seal and the coins of the United States contain the Latin phrase ‘E pluribus unum’ — which translates as ‘Out of Many, One’ to capture that nation’s early ambition and generosity to welcome people from many backgrounds and countries, so that they could build a new country, together.

After announcing that he is gay, Leo Varadkar said: “It’s not something that defines me, I’m not a half-Indian politician, or a doctor politician or a gay politician for that matter. It’s just part of who I am.”

Perhaps we’ll grow to think of ourselves in the same way — being defined as the people who live together on the island of Ireland — perhaps on the whole island — not just as ‘the Irish’.

Understood like this, all of us, each in our own unique way, can move forward together, each sharing the best of ourselves for the good of us all.

E pluribus unum.

‘Differences are the engine of prosperity’