"Revolution at the polls": Ireland on the road to unification?

Voters are ungrateful. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar was a successful head of government.

He acted smartly when it came to relations with the government in London, Brexit, and he won over the EU countries.

At the same time, he carried out social modernization: in 2018, the majority of Irish people voted for the legalization of abortion.

One of the last taboos of the Catholic-dominated past has fallen.

And the gay prime minister with a Pakistani father seemed to embody modern Ireland – open to the world and with faith in the economy.

But Leo Varadkar made a decisive mistake: he successfully overcame the foreign policy challenges, but realized too late what was really bothering the voters.

And these are housing prices and the work of social services, and above all the state of healthcare.

The Irish economy is booming and has recovered from the difficult years following the banking collapse of 2010. But for the most part, normal Irish people still have nothing.

These are problems similar to those in other European countries.

Parts of the population feel that they have no share in economic success, that there is no fair distribution, that the global elites are just greedy profiteers of the system.

Many employees are dissatisfied with their situation.

So there are jobs in Dublin, but not affordable housing.

And the years of drastic austerity policies made big holes in the social network.

Voters' anger was felt by both of the country's traditional parties, Varadkar's Fine Gael and the opposition Fianna Fail.

Gnijev is directed against the system in which the two parties have been adding power to each other for decades, without ideological or political differences being discernible between them.

And the voters want real alternatives, they want to start something with their votes.

What is most surprising is that, after decades spent in political exile, Sinn Féin managed to overcome its past.

A party that has always seemed to be associated with the violence of the Irish Revolutionary Army (IRA) can once again be voted for.

For many older Irish people it is still taboo, but young voters who are looking for "different" politics do not have that problem.

Sinn Féin took first place on Sunday with almost 25 percent, followed by Fianna Fáil (22 percent) and Fine Gael (21).

The leader of the winning party, Mary Lou McDonald, called it a revolution at the polls.

She managed to make Sinn Féin a party that counts as a moderate left-wing political force.

Thus, for the first time in the last few decades, the supremacy of the two big parties was broken.

The time of the simple majority is over. A multi-party system is emerging, which forces the formation of complicated coalitions.

And in this respect, Ireland is more similar to other European countries.

If the "big" have now subsided to just over 20 percent, then Ireland will experience the same political divisions as we had in Spain, Italy or Germany.

Thus, forming a government in Dublin will be a difficult task.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail do not want to work with Sinn Féin.

Will the consequence be an eternal grand coalition with a weak majority?

In that case, the voter's punishment could be even harsher next time.

The unexpected rise of the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein is a sign that Ireland is moving towards unification.

After London made it clear in the wake of Brexit that it has less and less interest in the future of its northern regions, what seemed impossible can now be imagined.

Because, if Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland want to live in a common economic space according to EU rules in the future, then the connection with Great Britain will begin to weaken, and the arguments for political unity will strengthen.

This should not happen quickly, but must be a slow political process.

Both sides know that the wounds from the years of violence have not yet healed.

As long as the generation lives whose youth was marked by bombings, political assassinations and brutal street fighting, it can only be a very gradual rapprochement.

And in Dublin, no one wants to get too close to economically weak Belfast.

But Brexit and the result of the last elections in the Republic have led the country on a course of unification.

The irony of fate is that it was the British Prime Minister who made that path possible when he agreed to withdrawing the border in the Irish Sea because he wanted a "hard Brexit".

Ireland, Europe's exemplary cadet, is moving into a very vibrant future.