Youth vote

Leo Varadkar, the Irish Prime Minister, meets a young supporter in Ennis, Co Clare, as he campaigns before today’s general election. His Fine Gael party was trailing in the polls.

Sinn Fein is expected to do well in today’s Irish elections. One poll shows it ahead of all the other parties, yet it is only fielding 42 candidates so won’t form a government. Nevertheless, this surge in popularity is a real shock to the system. Sinn Fein might be relatively new to political influence in the republic, but its reputation as the political wing of the murderous IRA is global and it is hard to believe Irish citizens would even consider voting for them.

This is why the centre-right has to have the right policies, because populist momentum can easily swing to the Left. The Taoiseach Leo Varadkar dined out on the Brexit negotiations, portraying himself as the indispensable European leader at the expense of the supposedly reckless UK. He was the toast of the EU. But the moment it was clear Brexit was going to happen, his significance diminished and foreign policy theatre could no longer disguise the troubles back home. Healthcare is a mess in Ireland; housing is in serious crisis. Homelessness has increased by 60 per cent since the last government was formed.

The crisis was encapsulated by the hideous story of a homeless man whose tent was cleared away by a council machine with a mechanical arm: passersby only realised he was inside the tent when they heard his screams. Parties of the centreright cannot afford to lose their heart or their head, to be distracted by global posturing when there are such essential and serious problems to be fixed on one’s doorstep. Here in the UK, getting a good Brexit deal is paramount but what matters as much as Brexit itself is what the Tories actually do with it. The best way to keep Labour at bay is to create wealth and spread opportunity.