Those byelections were all about bragging rights. Even Social Democrats would say the chances of replicating the feat of two seats in a single constituency as in Dublin Central in a general election are zero. Still, they provided an excellent primer on the transformative effect of transfers in the PR-STV (proportional representation – single transferable vote) system and a useful snapshot of the battle between the political left/centre and hard right. In short, the right lost both, due to the power of transfers. For anyone wondering how they are taking defeat, the answer is, not well. Dr Marcus de Brun, who is facing Medical Council allegations of professional misconduct, posted that he was “utterly convinced that the only solution for Ireland is a military coup d’etat”. Sending his “commiserations” to Independent Ireland in Galway West, Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín said it was “incredible that FG won a byelection with the help of Labour, an ‘opposition party’”. “Well done to Independent Ireland Noel Thomas who, in the end, sadly became a victim of the voting system,” wrote radio host Niall Boylan to his 83,000 followers on Twitter/X. It was almost as if Tóibín, whose own candidates fell well short, had never heard of tactical voting or couldn’t have known that much of Helen Ogbu’s big transfers bundle had come from independents and small parties like his own. As for Boylan – an Independent Ireland party candidate for Dublin who made it to the 19th count in the 2024 European Parliament election – his Sunday message was unsettling. When a public figure with his deep knowledge of the system casually calls it into question, warning flags go up. We’ve seen this elsewhere. Our system is called proportional representation for a reason. Anyone is entitled to question it, but influential figures have a duty to explain it. Many worried people about the political centre left – let’s call them nuanced liberals – believe the best way to counter the hard/far right is to listen more, with more empathy and understanding. The rationale is that the holders of such views feel disrespected and patronised, and a failure to address this has driven them into the arms of Brexit, Trump, Farage and the home-grown tendency. But it’s a thorny path. Parts of the far-right mindset could be glimpsed in the Irish People party’s slavishly Maga posters and in Derek Blighe’s comment over a Helen Ogbu poster, brazenly telling an elected representative she should go back to her homeland; and in veteran criminal Gerard Hutch’s stream of consciousness about immigrants while being interviewed by Cllr Gavin Pepper. Bertie Ahern’s offensive comments on a doorstep revealed as much about the canvasee’s views as Ahern’s whispery canvassing style. [ Byelections showed increasingly fractured politics with dangerous consensus on one issueOpens in new window ]So at a time when polls suggest immigration concerns are subsiding, these byelections were arguably the anti-immigration movement’s big moment. Noel Thomas had the strong man energy to seize it. A Fianna Fáil councillor for 10 years until declaring “the inn is full” in sight of the smouldering arson of a proposed refugee shelter before Christmas 2023, he was welcomed into Independent Ireland. Last year he was in the news over his attendance at meetings of the Oughterard “community council co-op” of the so-called Irish Republican Brotherhood, an organisation that has declared itself the legitimate government of the State, with ministers, local councils, a court system, a 1916-aligned time zone and a theory that citizens are not subject to laws they do not consent to. Undeterred, Independent Ireland adopted Thomas as its byelection candidate. As his vote went nip-and-tuck with Fine Gael’s Kyne over the weekend, it was hardly condescending to wonder which part of Thomas’s record his impressive 10,007 number 1 voters found so attractive. It was hardly disrespectful to wonder why Boylan chose to turn what could have been a teaching moment into an indictment of the “voting system”. All may protest indignantly that they are at different points on the right-wing spectrum and/or are just standing by their people, but others are entitled to be concerned about where they plan to take the country. [ Sinn Féin’s struggles suggest uneasy left-wing alliance may be crumblingOpens in new window ]In a moment that echoed many on the Trump/Brexit/Reform trail, a Dublin Central voter told the Financial Times she planned to vote for Hutch, while “cheerfully” admitting that Hutch “hadn’t a clue about policies – but he’d put the cat among the pigeons”. The notion of a leader of an organised crime family who spends much of his time in Lanzarote, is under Spanish investigation for money laundering and could be the richest TD in Leinster House (by his own reckoning) if elected by the working classes of Dublin Central would have been shrugged off as satire only a few years ago. Despite – or maybe because of – his refusal to explain his policies in an RTÉ debate, he came fourth with more than 11 per cent of the vote, 2,817 – or 4,466 after transfers. Both he and Cllr Malachy Steenson, an organiser of large anti-immigration protests in Dublin, took 20 per cent of the vote between them and both have promised to run in the next general election, prompting suggestions of a hard-right seat for the taking. Steenson can hardly utter Hutch’s name – blaming the media, with some justification, for turning Hutch into a celebrity – yet nearly 70 per cent of Steenson’s non-transferable vote went to the veteran criminal. Another teaching moment about transfers. The real winners of this campaign are not just the new TDs, but all the candidates, canvassers and volunteers who kept listening with empathy and understanding while holding on to their political and personal integrity. In an age of super-confident, Trumpian misinformation and provocation, they truly stood by the people.