Irish lawmaker Clare Daly, a strong supporter of China, loses her European Parliament seat

Clare Daly, the rabble-rousing Irish lawmaker who became one of the Chinese government's staunchest defenders in the European Parliament, has lost her seat after a prolonged election count in Dublin.

Daly, an independent MEP since 2019 and affiliated with the parliament's Left Group, was eliminated on the 17th count in the capital constituency.

Having polled poorly ahead of the pan-European election, Daly failed to gain enough vote transfers in Ireland's complicated proportional representation system, which allows votes cast for one candidate to be transferred to a subsequent choice when they are eliminated.

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The results came despite Daly's large online presence and backing from a range of big names.

Along with political bedfellow MEP Mick Wallace, Daly was backed in the European election by celebrities including Hollywood star Susan Sarandon and the Eurythmics singer Annie Lennox. Daly had garnered a substantial following on TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter, bolstered by her unyielding support for Palestinians in Gaza.

- Clare Daly (@ClareDalyMEP) June 11, 2024

Wallace, a former property developer and vineyard owner known for his trademark pink shirts and unkempt grey hair, still has a chance of picking up the fourth seat in the Ireland South constituency, with counting there set to stretch into a fourth day on Wednesday.

The pair's steadfastly anti-Nato, anti-American views were made for TikTok, the Chinese-owned short video social network, where they chalked up millions of views.

Their fame soared following the outbreak of war in the Middle East following the Hamas attack on October 7, after they became among the most vocal lawmakers critical of the support the US and some European government gave Israel.

But Daly, the Newbridge-born daughter of a senior Irish military official, had become equally notorious for her dalliances with authoritarian states, which were eventually covered in forensic detail by Irish media.

Research published by Politico showed she was the fifth of 705 MEPs in terms of voting against resolutions critical of Russia in the five years since 2019, with a single vote against out of 16.

An analysis of voting records from 2019 by the Czech Association for International Affairs last month found that Independents4Change - a party housing only Daly and Wallace - voted against China-critical resolutions 86 per cent of the time.

Daly was a frequent guest on Chinese state media. Last year, in a report about the bountiful cotton harvest in the Western Chinese region of Xinjiang, Daly told Xinhua that the accusations of human rights abuses there were "complete and utter nonsense".

"The Uygur population is growing, so if it is, you are very bad at genocide when the population you are supposed to be targeting [is] growing and actually getting bigger," Daly said.

The South China Morning Post has sought an interview with Daly on numerous occasions but she has repeatedly declined.

Daly addressing pro-Palestinian protesters at a National Demonstration for Palestine rally in Hyde Park in London on April 27. Photo: In Pictures via Getty Images alt=Daly addressing pro-Palestinian protesters at a National Demonstration for Palestine rally in Hyde Park in London on April 27. Photo: In Pictures via Getty Images>

Daly threw her support behind China's 12-point position paper for peace in Ukraine, issued in February 2023, even as most MEPs dismissed it.

"I think the proposal was helpful, but people need to get behind it. The problem is that Europe is still continuing to provide arms for Ukraine," Daly said in an interview with the Chinese state tabloid Global Times.

"They're still increasing and escalating the rhetoric and the hostility, which is growing all the time. When these things happen, it can get to a place where it's very hard to claw back."

She thought Europe was to blame for worsening ties with Beijing: "Relations are bad. It's not China's fault, I think China is doing what it can do. But the door isn't open enough," she said in the same interview.

As the count was under way in Dublin, it appeared that the biggest beneficiary of Daly's elimination was Niall Boylan, a far-right radio celebrity who secured 5,000 vote transfers.

Boylan also ran on an anti-establishment ticket, but his views on China appear to be different to Daly's. Around the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Boylan took to X to question Beijing's official death count.

"Just looking through the sad and tragic amount of deaths from #Covid19 in Italy & Spain and I'm finding more difficult as the days go by to believe China only had 3,300 deaths," he wrote in March 2020.

"I find it equally surreal that they are back in business today with no increases in cases and deaths."

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2024. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.