Mick Clifford: Sinn Féin needs to stick with core values regardless of which way the wind blows
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Just before Christmas 2022, a young female political reporter in the national press was savaged on social media. Her crime was to report the news, which in this case involved the existence of a Sinn Féin-affiliated Facebook page on which some contributors had left racist comments.
The reporter got the pile-on treatment that was the lot of anybody perceived to have been critical of Sinn Féin. She was abused in every imaginable way, which was nothing too unusual at the time, particularly for journalists or political opponents.
The party claimed this frequent avalanche of abuse from what was referred to as Shinnerbots had nothing to do with Sinn Féin. The abuse, however, appeared co-ordinated.
One way or the other, the attack on this young woman was something of a watershed in the party’s recent evolution. Thereafter, the abuse lightened and sometimes didn’t appear at all. Somebody, somewhere decided it was not a good look for a party preparing for government to have affiliated dark forces abusing all and sundry online.
That was just one pitstop along the road Sinn Féin had embarked on following the 2020 general election. Its surprising success at the polls, including the realisation it had left maybe a dozen seats behind, convinced the party the next general election would see it over the line.
Two weeks before the incident described above, an Ipsos/MRBI poll had the party at 35%. The only way was up and into government at the next chance. The phrase “in government, Sinn Féin would…” became omnipresent in public utterances.
Behind the scenes, brainy boys and girls mapped out the road from radical protest to power. Out with the old, in with the newish. Bring on change, but not too much. They knew this country and particularly the economy is governed from the centre.
They knew the successful economic model was delicately, some might say precariously, balanced. They knew despite the rhetoric, the public, or more specifically the electorate, didn’t want transformational change. That would have involved reworking the delicately balanced economy and Sinn Féin had no intention of presenting a hostage to fortune in that respect.
Sure, society was and is appalled at the housing crisis and young people in particular are disproportionately impacted. Absolutely, it was and is the case the health service does not function as it should in a proper democracy. But the changes would involve trying an alternative approach to housing and applying more energy to the health problems, not transforming government and society.
So the party set about smoothing its path to office. Issues like opposition to the Special Criminal Court were softened. The past had to be dealt with in other ways also.
In March 2022, 52,000 public statements from the preceding decades were erased. This was due to “updating the website”. Cynics posited it was an Orwellian attempt to erase a past in which the party had espoused the kind of extreme views that would have middle Ireland choking on their cornflakes.
More than anything, Sinn Fein’s economic compass was adjusted. There was no more talk of raising the corporate tax rate. A wealth tax was quietly dropped by dispatching it to a future commission. A sop to abandoning this basic tenet of a centre-left party was to propose a “solidarity” tax for those earning over €140,000, which would impact on a very small cohort of the electorate.
The money man, Pearse Doherty, broke bread with bankers and stockbrokers, who in turn accepted this was a man they could do business with. As time went on and the differences between Sinn Féin and the Government narrowed on big issues, the focus switched to just offering a different version of the incumbents, who were portrayed as “out of touch” and lacking in managerial competence more than anything else.
The project of hurrying the party along from protest to confident, competent alternative government was sucking diesel. Some in the party’s traditional heartlands may have felt abandoned but the prospect of power was, well, all-powerful.
Then they got unlucky. The Government didn’t fall. There was no national election for over four years. There is only so long you can keep up the performative anger without sounding like you’re on autopilot.
In the wake of the economic crash in 2008 — when the country did veer close to economic collapse — Eamon Gilmore in opposition was angry morning, noon and night. But he only had to wait a few years to get into office. Mary Lou McDonald would have bitten your hand off for an election two or even three years out from the last one.
They got unlucky with the challenges that arose in accommodating asylum seekers. Sinn Féin has been far more impacted by this issue than any other party. Back at their former base, some began to point out Sinn Féin was now adopting poses similar to the hated FFG, which of course they were because they had to on an issue like immigration if they wanted to govern in a modern European state.
Their leader began to lose her mojo. Last December, McDonald made two major mistakes. Following the Dublin riots, she went on the attack when a shaken public was looking for reassurance the body politic was united against violent fringe actors.
Then she promised Sinn Féin would bring down the average price of houses in Dublin to €300,000. Anybody who had bought a house in recent years or was close to acquiring one was left wondering whether the Shinners were going to bring on negative equity. Others wondered if the party was reverting to the magic money tree of old.
Momentum slackened and some confusion set in. Wherefore change now? From flip to flop? So it went with asylum seekers, climate change, the recent referendums, hate crime legislation.
Sinn Féin had moved from being a rallying point for those who felt they were outside the system to queuing up for their turn in charge within the system. But they had run out of road.
That’s where the local and European elections found them, dazed and confused. The party’s share of the vote in the locals was just under 12% and they failed to get a candidate elected in Midlands North West, where two were on the ticket.
They now have a short time in which to go away and dream it all up again. Next time around, they might start by realising, as Bertie Ahern observed last week, that change is a word, not a policy. And then perhaps the party will decide if it has core values it wants to stick by irrespective of whichever way the wind blows.