Sarah Harte: Why dismissing Conor McGregor’s presidential dreams is a mistake — and a warning

Last week, Donald Trump’s favourite Irish person, notorious 36-year-old UFC fighter Conor McGregor, announced on Instagram that he intended to run. This is the crazy world we live in. 

Joshing aside, the recent spectacle of blowhard Conor McGregor in the White House purporting to speak for the people of Ireland was stomach-churning. Posing in the Oval Office won’t change the fact McGregor was found liable in a civil case for the assault of Nikita Hand, although he is appealing the verdict.

Conor McGregor can’t nominate himself to run for President. No matter how he is courted in America, the process of running for president is not straightforward. A potential candidate must get the backing of four local authorities or 20 Oireachtas members to be nominated. How likely is that? It’s possible but improbable. 

Assuming he cleared that hurdle, he would have to win a majority of the vote. The coalition parties are moving to block Conor McGregor’s attempt to gain a nomination by introducing their candidates into the field, making it more challenging for independents to succeed in the council route.

McGregor is a profoundly ignorant man in how he conducts himself, including punching an elderly man and driving around on the night he assaulted Nikita Hand “trying to get something going” with a partner and four children at home. Who can forget Dee Devlin’s shipwrecked face when she emerged from court with her partner?

However, it’s ill-advised, as the American Democrats have done, to exist in an echo chamber and assume that a far-right buffoon with populist policies could never appeal to voters disenchanted with mainstream politics. If America proves anything, it’s never say never.

The Trumpian vote demonstrated that lack of opportunity and relative poverty make for strange times. When people feel they can achieve a reasonable standard of living, advance modestly, and dream of their children doing better than they did, which is what we all hope for, then democracy thrives.

In the 1990s, presidents were young and popular, people trusted each other, and we didn’t have to prove everything we said. Naturally, the seeds of what would go wrong were already being planted, not least the deregulation of the financial system, which led to a crash that changed the world. 

The point is that we felt we could be anyone and anything was possible.

That no longer feels conceivable as many people struggle and to quote Captain Boyle in Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, “Th' whole worl's in a terrible state o' chassis." There’s something about O’Casey’s work that feels current. O’Casey wrote about the chasm between the official republican rhetoric of the time and the reality of life for normal people.

When people struggle to find homes or access essential services, such as finding school places for their children with special needs and battling to keep their heads above water, we risk political disruption.

No recent White House audiences or interviews with Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of health (the less said about them, the better) will ever change the fact that McGregor is, despite his athletic prowess, a clown.

However, if he was cleverer and with less baggage, somebody as shallow and cartoonish as Conor McGregor could attract support as a potential presidential candidate. A loud-mouthed, provocative bogeyman peddling an anti-immigration, anti-government line. An Irish version of JD Vance who, despite his apparent failings and multiple contradictions, emerged from poverty and is clever.

In 2018, wealthy right-wing Donegal businessman Peter Casey won nearly a quarter of the vote after running on an anti-Traveller platform with strong rural support. 

Casey is a curious character in that he later volunteered a large property for housing Ukrainian war refugees, something that did not go down well with right-wing groups online who accused him baselessly of "human trafficking". He won his subsequent defamation case. 

However, his 2018 success proved there are rich seams out there waiting to be mined. He is preparing to run again on a put Ireland first campaign. Sound familiar?

Meanwhile, dismissing McGregor is tempting from where I am standing, but others may not see things like that.

Witness the outrage and shock when Gerry Hutch nearly got elected to the Dáil. I watched the election coverage all day, and nobody appeared to see it coming except Bertie Ahern, who, to paraphrase the late Charles Haughey, is one of the cutest of them all. 

He didn’t engage in the handwringing. He said: “Gerry Hutch has been around as long as I have been. I won’t get into morals or ethics, but Hutch has indirectly been kind to the Dublin Central community.

Whether we like it or not, he is respected by people, which explains his 3,000 votes. 

"It’s not just younger people who voted for him; older people I know voted for him. We can all say the self-righteous things we want, but the reaction is what it is.” 

Indeed. I’m sure the former Taoiseach understands that crises or perceived crises provoke a departure from democracy or at least provoke people into voting for populists. Bertie may run for president, although he has not officially thrown his hat in the ring.

Reality check needed for politicians

Some of our politicians need a reality check because, unbelievably, the Dáil speaking rights row rumbles on. Sinn Féin whip Pádraig Mac Lochlainn said: “We have to stand our ground.” 

As I have written before, ill-advised in-house procedural shenanigans like these lead normal people to vote against highly paid elites squabbling about something that matters little to them, even if that means voting for a disruptive loser.

This is precisely why America is saddled with Trump and ‘hillybilly’ Maga loyalist J D Vance. They did not come from a vacuum and attracted, amongst others, working-class voters in dire economic straits who felt cut loose by the establishment. 

Their modus operandi, like McGregor’s, is to attract controversy, spread baseless rumours, and spew anti-system bile, although they are both infinite times smarter than McGregor.

Victor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, coined the phrase “Control the controllable”. He meant that life is what we make it. Reworking his phrase, we can control the president's nomination procedure. 

But there are other things we can’t ultimately control unless we take notice because it’s like an underground river you can’t see. The damp rises through the ground until suddenly, too late, you realise your feet are sodden.

Criticism of boorish Conor McGregor is justified, but disparaging some of the people who would vote for him is a bad strategy. Hillary Clinton made a catastrophic mistake in a 2016 campaign speech when she described Trump supporters as “deplorables”. 

Joe Biden compounded it last year when he appeared to demonise Trump supporters as “garbage”, even if that is not what he meant. Look to America and realise we have been warned.