Centre Right Duds: Can Ruth Dudley Edwards Stop Making Catherine Connolly Cool

One of the smoothest cakewalks in recent Irish political history is unfolding as we speak with Galway socialist Catherine Connolly running rhetorical rings around centrist contender Heather Humphreys in the penultimate days of Áras ’25. 

Unfazed by mutterings about dissident republican sympathies, a soft spot for Putin, or nostalgic solidarity with Assad’s Damascus, Comrade Connolly is shrugging off such charges like Connacht snow in spring. Connolly now looks set to claim the presidency on an openly politicised platform, much to the despair of centrist dads and a ruling uniparty that only lately slammed the door in poor Maria Steen’s face.

The beneficiary of a genuinely grassroots campaign, an Irish left at an generational peak and the sheer unbridled dysfunction of FF/FG politicos who saw their transfer strategy implode thanks to the Jim Gavin, with Connolly’s ascent comes the last gasping whimpers from anti-republican quarters, in the form Ruth Dudley Edwards.

Equating Connolly’s near-certain triumph with the rise of Hugo Chevaz on the Corrib, most of RDE’s commentary is closer to Pluto than the truth. Referring to a Connolly’s installment as Ireland’s ‘most shameful decision yet” (the Repeal of the 8th and selection of Jedward as our Eurovision entry must have passed her by), RDE prattles on about the presidential hopeful’s support for Palestine, Assad and Irish neutrality as disqualifiers for the role. 

RDE even goes on to laud the Taoiseach for throwing in his lot with Fine Gael in the hopes of stopping the left capturing the Áras squarely blaming the ‘woke youth’ of Ireland for siding with Connolly over an Orange-tinted Humphreys.

Typically her tone is that of an English political commentator passing judgment on “those Irish” rather than a writer embedded in Irish society. That stance blinds her to the fact that many in Ireland are not “caught up in a student demonstration” but have visceral concerns about among other things Irish neutrality, language revival and the little issue of a rogue nuclear armed Levantine state tarmacing the Palestinian nation as the West stands by.

The fact of the matter is that as with her Troubles-era reporting Irish political life is more complex than the Ascendency-era worldview of RDE would allow. Not just your woke pink haired cousin is voting for Connolly but a broad-based snapshot of Irish society and not solely because she is one of two remaining candidates.

The truth is that Connolly commands the political high-ground that would otherwise belong to the populist right and RDE and Fine Gael HQ don’t realise it. Connolly’s positions on Gaza, NATO, social justice and neutrality etc are not eccentricities but deeply resonant with significant swathes of Irish public sentiment.

Connolly has it all, Gaelgoir bona fides, soft republicanism, anti-NATO talking points, a moral defence of Irish neutrality, Palestine and understanding that denouncing tyranny in Damascus and Moscow matters precious little when Belfast remains under non-Irish jurisdiction.

Instead of attacking Connolly at her weakest point, support for mass migration, Fine Gael attempted to repeat the anti-Corbyn campaign waged by the Tory press not comprehending that the Irish public doesn’t play to that tune. 

What’s emerging is less a socialist surge than a referendum on the stale managerial centrism that’s governed Ireland since the crash. In truth, Áras ’25 may be remembered less for Connolly’s victory than for what it reveals: that the ideological monopoly of Ireland’s centrist bloc has finally cracked. 

Whether Connolly turns out to be Ireland’s answer to Pol Pot as RDE insinuates but the electorate seem poised to gamble on conviction over competence, a sign that politics here, at long last, is alive again.