GIVEN THE KIND of commentary that has surrounded one Conor McGregor for the last week, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Irish presidential election is next month rather than nearly two years away.
The MMA fighter, who has not fought in over two years, has positioned himself in the national spotlight in the wake of November’s riot in Dublin, which followed the stabbing of three children and a carer on Parnell Square.
Specifically, McGregor has made several statements about migration, many of which he has later deleted. In one, he wrote about “multiple bus loads of people, and from the footage all adult males, are sworn in.” On the night of riots, he posted: “Do not let any Irish property be took over unannounced. Evaporate said property. It’s a war.” This tweet was also deleted.
Somewhere between then and now, McGregor got it into his head that he might like to take his political platform even further. He has spent the last few days on Twitter teasing a potential run for Áras an Uachtaráin.
McGregor began this week with a tweet calling out three possible competitors for the presidency, writing: “Potential competition if I run. Gerry (Adams), 78. Bertie (Ahern). 75. Enda (Kenny), 74. Each with unbreakable ties to their individual parties politics.”
Later in the same tweet, McGregor painted himself as the sane choice, saying: “Or me, 35. Young, active, passionate, fresh skin in the game. I listen. I support. I adapt. I have no affiliation/bias/favoritism [sic] toward any party. They would genuinely be held to account regarding the current sway of public feeling.”
To sweeten the deal, McGregor even promised, apparently, to put “it all” (unspecified) to a weekly vote (something that the President can, of course, absolutely not do).
“I’d even put it all to vote,” he said. “There’d be votes every week to make sure. I can fund.” The final addendum suggests that McGregor is either much richer than we think, or he’s unaware that every referendum we have costs somewhere in the region of €20 million, which means his direct democracy plan would run him roughly of €1.04 billion every year for the seven years of his presidency. It’ll take more than an exhibition match with Logan Paul to pull that one off.
Still, at least he left that tweet up.
Right now, a little less than two years out, the early signs for McGregor’s presidency are far from favourable. In an IrelandThinks poll conducted last week, only 8% of respondents said that they would vote for McGregor if he ran for public office. An overwhelming 89% said that they would not.
Dead in the water, right? Not really. In 2018, Peter Casey transformed himself from a relatively anonymous former Dragon’s Den investor polling at 1% to Michael D’s fiercest challenger. Pivoting his campaign into a single-minded focus on complaining about Travellers, Casey exploded in the polls, captured much of the media’s attention and finished on 23.3% with 342,727 first preference votes. The media will need no such invitation to give all the help they can to McGregor who, like Donald Trump, would guarantee views, clicks and shares on every article, debate and television show that concerns him.
McGregor has apparently done his research on how he might be nominated, explaining the process at length to Elon Musk – one of his most shameless fanboys. One of the two ways to get your name on the ballot is to win the nomination of 20 Oireachtas members. A report by the Irish Sun published on Friday revealed that not a single Independent TD or Senator is currently prepared to back him, while party-affiliated TDs will be whipped to support their own party’s candidate.
I’d fancy my chances Elon, 100%. I’d need to be nominated either by: at least 20 members of the Oireachtas; or at least four local authorities (AKA county councils) to run.
— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) December 5, 2023
▪ Most (26) local authorities are county councils.
▪ There are also 3 city councils (Dublin, Galway, and… https://t.co/wB4cNil7F9
Without the support of any Oireachtas members, it’s likely that McGregor would see his route to a nomination choked out (something with which he has had painful experience in the past).
For those who shudder at the thought of a McGregor presidency, this may be of less comfort than it first seems. Ireland will have a general election before its next presidential election, and dismissing the rise of a more populist, reactionary, anti-immigration parliamentary faction is something that many of our European neighbours have done at their peril.
The true saving grace for anyone who dreads the idea of Ireland being turned into one big blood-spattered Octagon is that there is surely no way someone like McGregor would give up the freedom of the life he has now, the money, the glamour, seemingly devoid of consequences, in order to become… a civil servant. But then again, we’ve all been thinking the same thing about Donald Trump for eight years.
Of course, a key difference between the American presidency and the Irish presidency is that the Irish president is much more about vibes than it is about, well, actually doing anything. If your intention is to exert some direct influence over Irish society, President of Ireland is pretty much the worst job you could pick. Taxi drivers, hairdressers, digital-only media columnists all have far more freedom in expressing their world view and much more free time in which to put their philosophies into some sort of practice.
Nevertheless, the advent of McGregor as a galvanising political figure should be eye-opening for those who would rather see the country spared the kind of Big Man leadership that has taken hold in other democracies across the last few years, with Trump the most obvious example. There is nothing inherent to Ireland that means we are immune to electing an absurd president, absurd councillors or absurd TDs.
While it would be ideal to keep politics and MMA as separate as possible, one principle holds true for both. In order to beat your opponent, you have to be better than they are. That is something to keep in mind for anyone who would rather not see McGregor billy-strutting into the Áras in October 2025.
For the time being, we must take Conor McGregor seriously. Hard as that may be.
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