THERE’S a pent-up energy and expectation in the Sinn Féin ranks, coupled with a justifiable sense of frustration. The former applies mostly to the party’s southern contingent, while the latter was most evident among those who travelled from the north to Dublin’s RDS for Saturday’s ard fheis.
Apart from the usual stuff, what unites the party in both jurisdictions is a desire to be in government. In the Republic, it’s a waiting game. Opinion polls have consistently put Sinn Féin on course to be the Dáil’s largest party and leading the next government – but the next election isn’t schedule until March 2025.
The situation in the north is well documented – Michelle O’Neill is Stormont’s first minister designate but her appointment is being blocked by the DUP’s boycott of the institutions, ostensibly over the protocol, though many – including the Sinn Féin deputy leader – suspect Sir Jeffrey Donaldson’s party is reluctant to face up to the reality of May’s election result.
The upshot of this situation is that northern politics, for decades the driving force in so much of republican ideology, has increasingly taken a back seat. This has been the direction of travel within Sinn Féin for some time, accelerated when Gerry Adams stepped down as party president five years ago. But it has been exaggerated by the recent inertia north of the border, which has robbed the party’s Stormont team of much of its dynamism.
A resolution to the Irish language and abortion issues, legislatively at least, leaves only legacy left to agitate over, while Ireland’s Future leads the unity debate. Thus Michelle O’Neill, Conor Murphy and colleagues are left to bemoan the absence of an executive and highlight its consequences in the midst of cost of living crisis that leaves people at the mercy of a detached Tory government. Beyond those issues, however, there’s not a lot left to say, especially as the prospect of an election in the immediate future diminishes.
On paper this should present problems for Sinn Féin in terms of keeping its base engaged but that is to discount the inadvertent role of the DUP. While Sinn Féin bit is tongue, unionism’s biggest party did much of the heavy lifting in May’s assembly campaign, its self-inflicted shambles and hackneyed messaging reinforcing the nationalist, and middle ground, electorates’ belief about the DUP’s reactionary default position. More of the same in any fresh election campaign would most likely deliver the same result – and some.
The situation in the south is very different in character but it’s as certain as these things can be in politics that Sinn Féin will be part of the next post-election Dublin government and that Mary Lou McDonald is likely to be the first female taoiseach.
Like the DUP, the Republic’s establishment parties do little to help their own cause, overseeing crises in housing and health that are increasingly driving younger voters to seek solutions outside the status quo.
It would appear Sinn Féin simply needs to keep its ship steady to eventually fulfil its aim of governing across 32 counties – another symbolic landmark that will stick in the DUP’s craw. Perhaps deliberately therefore there was little contentious about this ard fheis – no big announcements and a relatively flimsy clár that proposed no significant policy shifts.
Sanitised Sinn Féin isn’t as newsworthy as it once was but that makes all the more electable.
