Gavan Reilly: Irish dither as rivals make haste
Has he even paused for breath yet? Have you? It’s not yet four months since US president Donald Trump was sworn in for the second time.
He isn’t even a tenth of the way through his term yet, and even original assumptions about becoming a lame duck in his latter tenure may not hold if he can engineer the circumstances to run for office for a fourth time.
Historians will judge whether he was a good or bad president, but few would remove him from a shortlist of the most consequential figures of the century.
Trump is undoubtedly demolishing convention, and flirting with autocracy, in his appetite for executive orders and circumvention of the other branches of government.
But it works; objectively he has been getting things done (or, at the very least, made statements so outlandish that previous conventions are revisited).
One consequence of this is that his acolytes and sympathisers around the world will likely replicate his appetite for immediate change elsewhere.
Would-be leaders in the UK, France, Brazil and beyond will note how his political capital has been spent in his honeymoon period — and may do their utmost to follow in his footsteps.
As an example: should the opinion polls hold firm, there is a genuine chance of Nigel Farage becoming the UK prime minister before the end of this decade.
While in America it takes 11 weeks for a new president to take office, in the UK it takes about 11 hours.
The very day after the election, therefore, Farage might radically and meaningfully rewrite Britain’s relationship with Europe, with the wider world — and indeed with us.
Now imagine the same reforming zeal, whether populist or moderate, mercantile or protectionist, in the world’s other most influential polities.
Imagine the Rally National winning the French presidency; imagine populist conservatives in Canada and Australia; imagine a nationalist challenger to the right of Narendra Modi in India; imagine a hardline evolution of Georgia Meloni in Italy.
Imagine, even, continued fracturing within German politics and the eventual success of the eurosceptic AfD.
The point is that we should expect immediate tumult, and radical shortterm change, as the new normal among our biggest partners.
This presents a twofold challenge for Ireland.
Firstly, it means previous norms and niceties cannot be taken for granted; the ‘cultural reset’ offered by Keir Starmer might be jettisoned overnight, effectively suspending cross-channel cooperation and turning the UK into an aggressive business rival on our doorstep.
A change of culture in France or Germany might immediately paralyse Europe in its response to Trump, Putin or any other geopolitical bogeyman of the future.
Ireland is already stretched trying to maintain good relations with Washington, London and Brussels at the same time; we might simply find it impossible to stay on good terms with all at once.
The second challenge is our ability to respond to the next urgent crisis, whatever it may be.
Trump’s love of tariffs was hardly a secret before his election, yet it took the Irish government almost three months to receive advice from the ESRI about their impact here.
We were merely blessed that Trump gave so much of a lead-in time before the eventual announcement, and was beaten into a pause by the bond markets.
The next time a protectionist populist pulls a similar move, trying to punish Irish exports in favour of domestic produce in the UK/France/ Germany/India/Brazil — delete or add as appropriate — we may not have such time to prepare ourselves.
Taoiseach Micheal Martin (C-L) and U.S. President Donald Trump speak to journalists ahead of meetings in the Oval Office at the White House on March 12, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Pic: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
All of that is without considering the paralysis we might face domestically after each general election.
Whether the next Irish government offers more of the same or a genuine realignment, a months-long impasse while a coalition deal is drafted and ratified will no longer cut the mustard.
Our political systems may differ, but our partners and rivals will start arriving at the dance fully dressed.
We would do well to figure out how to copy them.
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