Editorial: Irish voters reject the woke politics of their leaders and of Sinn Fein

​The defeat of two referendums in the Republic has significance outside Ireland.

The votes seemed obscure, and got little attention before they took place on Friday, but have been utterly defeated. It is a setback for ‘woke’ thinking, for Sinn Fein – which has cynically exploited ultra liberal notions to advance its republican agenda – and for Irish leaders, who have acquiesced in such politics.

The attempts to mend the Irish constitution were minor – they were to widen the definition of a family and to remove the idea of caring being the domain of women.

Many people, including unionists, who have been critical of the extent to which the Republic of Ireland was founded around its Catholicism might have welcomed such reform as a move away from a religiously sectarian outlook on the world. But the extent to which Sinn Fein has hijacked liberal politics has opened many people’s eyes to the possibility that a decline in the influence of the Catholic Church might in fact exacerbate Irish nationalism rather than reduce it, as almost a new identity. It is secular Ireland that is embracing ‘ooh ah up the Ra’.

Ireland was slow to adopt liberal reforms to matters such as same-sex relations and abortion, as indeed Northern Ireland was slower than the rest of the UK. But those issues have been settled on both sides of the border. It might be that in the case of terminations public opinion, after the initial euphoria, will become more hostile to terminations, as it has done in America.

But there in Ireland, here in NI, and elsewhere voters are turning against politicians for example who won’t say that women do not have male genitalia, or deny that women’s sport needs protection from biological men who call themselves women.

These referenda results should be a warning to elite leaders who think they know best on moral, ethical and social issues.