Special report: Sinn Féin was the big winner in election 2020 and surge can continue

Before the country fell into the grasp of Covid-19, the election was one dominated by a mood for change.

The rise of Sinn Féin was undoubtedly the story of the election and what was remarkable was how many seats Mary Lou McDonald and her team left behind them, because of overly-cautious vote management.

They returned with 25% of the vote and 37 seats, one behind Fianna Fáil and two ahead of Leo Varadkar’s Fine Gael but had their huge surpluses of votes in many constituencies gone to running mates instead of other parties, Sinn Féin would now be heading up the Government with 46 or 47 seats.

Also in this special report:

• 10 TDs making a name for themselves in the current Dáil
• Labour fails to reap reward of hard graft
• It ain't easy being Green at a time of internal strife

To illustrate the extent of the Sinn Féin surge, nine of the top ten poll-toppers nationally belong to the party, some with a double quota.

Dublin Bay North’s Denise Mitchell was the most popular politician in Ireland, winning 21,344 first preference votes — the quota was just 11,935. Four years earlier, she got 5,039 first preference votes.

Thomas Gould topped the poll in Cork North Central with 13,811 votes, well clear of the quota of 10,356.

His 2020 vote again roughly quadrupled from the 3,773 votes he got in 2016.

Of the 48 new TDs to arrive into the 33rd Dáil, Sinn Féin, with 17, had the most first-timers and some of those had lost council seats just eight months previously.

The truth is nobody saw the Sinn Féin wave coming, not even Sinn Féin. Just weeks before polling, scarred by the mauling at the locals and European elections, the party was axing candidates from their tickets.

Nevertheless, its message of change was a powerful one and Sinn Féin made the running in the early part of the campaign by arguing for the pension age not to be increased.

It forced the other parties to change their stance, which allowed it to set, and often own, the agenda.

The perceived shutting out of Ms McDonald from the main leaders’ debate, only for RTÉ to back down and include her, handed further momentum to the party.

For Leo Varadkar and Fine Gael, the message for change was a difficult one to combat and with housing and health obvious weak points, the room to fight the battle was limited.

Matters were not helped by a disastrously stale campaign which was too focused on the economy and Brexit at a time when the public mood was elsewhere.

As dramatic as the surge for Mary Lou McDonald and Sinn Féin was, so was the underperformance by Fianna Fail which had been touted to win between 55 and 60 seats.

FOR Micheál Martin, the 2020 campaign was a disaster.

“We would have preferred a better result. Without question, that created tensions and concerns and that I understand,” he told me last week in an interview.

With three now mid-sized parties vying for power, the road to government was complicated.

Sinn Féin cried foul that the old establishment sought to deny it the change people had demanded but the truth was Ms McDonald could not rally enough support behind them to form a government.

With two of the three big blocks needed to form a government, it became clear that the only viable option was a coalition between the two old enemies, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, along with the Greens.

After 140 days of tortuous negotiations, a programme for government was agreed and endorsed by the three parties, allowing the Dáil to be convened on Saturday, June 27, to allow Mr Martin to become the first of  two rotating Taoisigh — he’ll be followed by Leo Varadkar.

During the interregnum, Fine Gael had managed to restore its lost standing through the pandemic.

Mr Varadkar and Simon Harris may not have managed everything well but they certainly were able to appear effective on the communications when a frightened nation needed reassurance.

It is fair to say a lot of that momentum was lost on the changeover of government and two ministerial resignations in seven weeks did little to instil confidence in Mr Martin’s shaky coalition.

As Mr Martin said to me in our interview, the opening period was certainly “tumultuous” and challenging.

Mr Varadkar for his part found it difficult to adjust to life as Tánaiste and was rightly accused of seeking to play opposition from within.

The unseemly row with the chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan in October, over calls to enter into a prolonged period of lockdown, and mishandling of issues like the mother and baby homes report led to much internal acrimony.

Fianna Fáil TD John McGuinness at a meeting of his parliamentary party congratulated the Cabinet on shooting themselves in the foot on a weekly basis.

Several poor poll ratings for Fianna Fáil only increased the pressure on Mr Martin’s leadership and the manoeuvrings of contenders like Jim O’Callaghan have been closely watched.

Fine Gael’s poll ratings held up above 30% but have slipped back since Christmas.

All the while, Sinn Féin, now the lead party of opposition, has at various stages polled as the most popular party in the country.

What has been fascinating to watch has been the squaring up of Fine Gael to Sinn Féin with both parties seemingly content to bypass Fianna Fáil altogether.

Fine Gael is confident it can own that right-of-centre space comfortably with little or no opposition for that section of society.

Sinn Féin is confident that it can lead the left-wing challenge and is happy to trade blows with Mr Varadkar on the need for change.

For Fianna Fáil, it has sought to present itself as the centrist party acting as a bulwark against the two extremes on either of its flanks.

So far, people remain unconvinced and the party remains squeezed and firmly in third place in terms of popular support.

The big change in 2020 was that unlike previous elections where Sinn Féin
support expressed in polls did not materialise on election day, last year the party delivered on its promise.

The belief must be there that it can not only deliver the same result again but better it.

Given the two wallops it got from the voters in 2016 and 2020, Fine Gael as a party will not relish the prospect of another run in Government and will need to rebuild.

Looking ahead, in truth it is hard to see past a Sinn Féin-Fianna Fáil coalition after the next election and based on how things stand now, it would not be a Fianna Fáil led coalition but rather a Sinn Féin dominated administration.

Taoiseach Mary Lou anyone?

After a rocky start under Mary Lou, Sinn Féin moved from the fringes to the centre

For Mary Lou McDonald, her tenure as leader of Sinn Féin has seen both highs and lows.

An unsteady start and the disastrous set of elections in 2019, both European and local level, saw her position as leader openly questioned.

In a party not noted for its leakiness, some of her TDs called into question her judgement, her reshuffle decisions and her stances on policy issues.

Without question, General Election 2020 one year ago was Ms McDonald’s high point as leader so far.

Not even the decision of one of her General Election candidates going on holidays ahead of polling day could dent their unexpected rise.

Winning 37 seats and 25% of the vote brought Sinn Fein from the fringes of Irish politics to centre stage.

Her attempts to form a left-wing Government of change went nowhere and it could be argued she never wanted it to go anywhere, preferring to secure the position as the lead opposition party.

But as the country fell into the grips of Covid-19, Ms McDonald herself fell victim to the virus.

She said her experience of being ill with Covid-19 “floored” her and that she had “never been as sick”.

Ms McDonald described her symptoms.

“Every part of me hurt. It hurt to open my eyes. My eye sockets ached. All of my nerve endings were hypersensitised,” she said.

It required “real effort” for her to be able to sustain a conversation while she was ill. “I’ve never experienced anything like it,” she said.

On her return, Ms McDonald’s Dáil performances were noticeably flatter compared to her bombastic performances previously.

Aside from her recovery, her party has been vilified for their presence at the funeral of republican Bobby Storey, particularly attending to what amounted to a political rally in a graveyard when Mr Storey’s remains were not present while Covid restrictions were in place.

Storey was considered the head of intelligence of the IRA for a period from the mid-1990s, being named as such under parliamentary privilege.

Security sources linked him to several major incidents, including the £26m Northern Bank robbery in 2004.

The fallout from the funeral and the presence of Sinn Féin’s top brass did significant damage to relations with the DUP’s Arlene Foster.

Such poisonous relations have played into the failure of the Northern Executive to consider aligning its health policy in dealing with Covid-19 with Dublin, despite the late Ian Paisley’s willingness to do so during the 2001 foot and mouth crisis.

Further controversy would ensue when Ms McDonald’s choice as chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Brian Stanley, tweeted that the IRA ambush at Narrow Water, near Newry, in 1979, and the Kilmichael Ambush in 1920 were: "2 IRA operations that taught d elite of the British army and the establishment the cost of occupying Ireland. Pity they were such slow learners."

Stanley later said the tweet he sent about the Provisional IRA bombing at Narrow Water was insensitive and caused hurt and anger, and he was "truly sorry" for that.

Referring to a second tweet, sent when Leo Varadkar was elected as Fine Gael leader in 2017, Stanley said the point he was trying to make was that it is great but let's also try to advance workers' rights and those of people on low incomes.

Stanley had tweeted: "Yippee 4 d tory. it's Leo. U can do what u like in bed but don't look 4 a pay rise the next morning."

He said he accepted that he did not articulate that point in a very good way and that the tweet was open to different interpretations.

A week later, the Sinn Féin chair of the public petitions committee was forced to adjourn its first official meeting after members called on him to explain comments about the IRA and party discipline.

Tipperary TD Martin Browne told Tipp FM that apologies “should stop” when asked about IRA killings during the Troubles and Sinn Féin’s approach to their remembrance.

On his controversial radio interview, Fine Gael TD Brendan Griffin has asked Mr Browne to explain the comments which he said had caused “hurt” and “upset”.

Last week’s Business Post’s Red C poll showed Sinn Féin on 27%, down from a record high of 30% in November.

With the Government showing a remarkable ability to shoot itself in the foot, despite its own self-inflicted own goals, Sinn Féin and Ms McDonald remain in rude health and show no real signs of losing the public support it attracted last year.