For every successful candidate that is hoisted onto the shoulders of their supporters at a count centre, there are many more who don’t make the cut – Ciáran Cuffe was one of those people last June.
So, what is it like to be the candidate who is on the losing side? The sense of coming close, but still missing out?
Eloquent as ever, former TD and MEP Cuffe described it as being similar to a death in the family; an experience that is akin to knowing that a family member is going to pass on, it’s a matter of not knowing exactly when.
“It doesn’t necessarily happen in one foul swoop, but you pinch yourself and move on. As I often say to people, you don’t go into politics for a certain life or an easy life.”
Cuffe was eliminated on count 18 in last year’s European elections; his transfers got Labour MEP Aodhán Ó Ríordáin over the line, helping Labour secure their first European seat since 2009 in the process (and putting an end to the dark horse candidacy of Independent Ireland’s Niall Boylan).
Waiting 18 counts to find out your fate is a form of torture that only the Irish electoral system can provide, but one year later, Cuffe is back in the frame.
Despite not holding elected office, Cuffe has secured a prestigious position as co-chair of the European Greens.
Serving alongside Greek politician Vula Tsetsi, Cuffe has been tasked with helping develop and work with Green parties right across Europe, from London to Ljubljana.
Carving a slot out of a Thursday afternoon to speak to us, Cuffe talked shop about his new high-ranking job, the realities of being a smaller party in government, and co-operation among Ireland’s opposition parties.
Explaining his new job as co-chair of the European Greens, Cuffe said, “the European Green Party is the umbrella body that helps green parties develop around Europe. In the European Parliament, we have The Greens, which is focused on legislation, whereas the European Greens help the member parties in the EU and beyond, like in the UK, Switzerland and Norway.”
Cuffe said it is his job to help green parties whenever they face elections and advise on what strategies work best.
“Between me and my colleague, Vula Tsetsi, we speak at the different party conferences across Europe; for example, I was up at the Green conference in Germany just before their elections, was up to Denmark to speak at the SF (GreenLeft) conference, and I’ll be in Madrid in a few weeks to speak with the Spanish Greens.”
Next on Cuffe’s dance card: autumn elections in Norway and the Netherlands and guiding those parties to success; early opinion polls for October’s snap election in the Netherlands have PVDA-Groenlinks, a joint list of the Dutch Labour and Green Party, polling in first place.
2019 was a watershed moment for the green movement as a whole; in the European Parliament elections, the Greens came in 4th place in the European-wide vote, their best-ever result, with 74 seats to boast.
Between 2019 and 2024, green parties were in government in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Scotland, and of course, Ireland.
It wasn’t just the Irish Greens who struggled at the polls in recent times; the German Green party went from a record 118 seats in the 2021 election to 85 in February’s general election, and in last June’s European elections, the Greens went from 74 seats down to 53.
The question was posed to Cuffe – is the Green cycle of going into government, implementing minor changes and then swapped out for other progressive parties just the natural lifecycle of a green party?
“We should see ourselves as a party of permanent governance, but it’s hard; in our two periods in government in Ireland, we lost out big time. Ironically, in our first time in government, the narrative was the Greens had too little power in government, and the second time, the narrative was we had too much power!”
“It’s not unique to the Greens; small parties across Europe tend to lose out after periods in government,” he noted.
Cuffe served as a TD for Dún Laoghaire between 2002 and 2011, a councillor for the North Inner City from 2014 to 2019 and an MEP for all of Dublin from 2019 to 2024; if anyone has had a front-row seat to the Greens’ yo-yo status, it’s him.
On the Greens’ time in government, he said, “government is tough, and it’s particularly tough for small parties where you have to focus on the day-to-day government decision making and maybe not enough time thinking about developing the party and the electoral attraction.”
Cuffe argued that there was a “patriotic duty” for the Greens to go into government following the 2020 general election, as there was a need for a stable governing majority to be cobbled together following the results of the general election in early 2020.
Not that voters took that into account.
2024’s general election was especially bruising for the Greens; seats they won in 2020, such as Dublin Central, Dublin Fingal, Dublin Rathdown and Dublin Bay South all swung to Labour and the Social Democrats.
With that in mind, we posed the question to Cuffe – does it annoy the Greens that other parties come in and run with their ideas? Is it not frustrating to see five years of hard work disregarded so blatantly at the ballot box?
“I’m always delighted when other parties embrace the issues we are campaigning for. The big legacy of this period of government is that climate action is now seen as an imperative by every major political party in Ireland; that wasn’t easy to achieve!”
“Every party wants to invest in climate action; we can argue to a greater or lesser extent, but we all recognise the need to tackle climate change,” and pointed to the reduction in public transport fares as a legacy of the Greens’ time in government.
Cuffe has echoed what has been missing in Irish progressive spaces – there is a need for more co-operation.
The likes of Roderic O’Gorman, Cian O’Callaghan, Mary Lou McDonald, Paul Murphy and Ivana Bacik have all spoken about the need for co-operation between Ireland’s progressive forces over the last year or so (albeit, in different contexts).
The question of progressive co-operation has been the white whale of Irish politics for generations now, and Cuffe said there is “huge scope” for co-operation among the centre-left.
“I would put the Greens, Labour and the Social Democrats in there; I’d like to include Sinn Féin in there, but sometimes I scratch my head. Some days, they’re in the far-left corner; other days, they are madly populist. It will take a while to get clarity on where Sinn Féin are aligned, but certainly, co-operation between centre-left parties is hugely important in the years ahead with the rise of the far-right.”
Losing re-election last year gave Cuffe what he called “breathing space” and gave him a sense of perspective.
“Losing my seat allowed me to spend more time in Ireland with my friends and family. There are real positives to discovering life after a hectic period in international politics, in the same way as in 2011 when I lost my seat.”
“I’ve lost my seat twice, and each time, I wasn’t overly optimistic about being re-elected – certainly not in 2011 – and this time I was disappointed. But you pick yourself up and move on.”
And move on he did.