In the last few weeks, there has been much publicity concerning internal disputes and disciplinary processes in Sinn Féin. Now that we are in an election run-up, some consider that these controversies are sure to damage the party’s prospects on election day. But the cause of a major decline in support for the party is longer and deeper than these recent problems. After the 2020 election, Sinn Féin was preparing for the role of leading party in the next government. Buoyed up by the results of that election, it began a campaign that took its voter-share dominance for granted.
It began to interact with financial, commercial and professional business organisations. Meetings were sought with the major legal and accountancy practices. TDs were directed to wear jackets, collars and ties. The aura of a government-in-waiting was assiduously cultivated, with opinion poll ratings consistently hovering around 30 per cent.
But suddenly the bubble burst. In the European Parliament elections this June, Sinn Féin secured 11 per cent of the first-preference vote compared with 20 per cent each for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. In the local elections held the same day, it again secured only 11 per cent of the first-preference vote, with FF and FG each getting 23 per cent.
What had happened? Not the recent scandals. Something deeper happened to the party’s public perception and support base. The departure of Leo Varadkar may have been one factor. Likewise, the party’s wobbly and ineffectual support for the ill-fated Yes side in the family and care referendums in March, despite its difficulties with the wording and its promise (or threat?) to rerun the vote, damaged its credibility.
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Add to these factors the failure of the party to capitalise on the Government’s mishandling at Irish and Europe level of the refugee/immigration issue (which is a matter of real concern to the Sinn Féin voting base, as distinct from party ideologues). Now you have some insight into the possible factors in the slump in Sinn Féin support.
On the issues of housing and health, where the current Coalition is vulnerable, Sinn Féin just isn’t scoring points – let alone knock-out blows. Its housing policy proposals, which end with the State owning an ever-increasing proportion of Irish houses as ground landlords, with diminished rights of home occupiers to dispose of their homes, smacks of thinly disguised far-left socialism. These proposals reflect the ideology of the leftists in Belfast rather than addressing the actual aspirations of Irish people to own outright their own homes.
There is still an open political battleground on matters such as childcare services, disability services, GP services and hospital services. No party has as yet managed to stake out the high ground on such matters in the minds of the public. And all of these issues could be game changers between now and polling day in late November.
My own take on Sinn Féin’s apparent blowout is that the public are increasingly sceptical of the party’s core agenda. It aspires to establish a 32-county socialist republic. And when it says socialist, it means far-left socialist. Its connections and sympathies with Farc, the Colombian Marxists, the Cuban government, ETA, the Basque Marxists and other world revolutionary movements as well as its far-left fellow Left group members in the European Parliament, all speak of a movement out of tune with the centre ground of Irish politics and thinking.
Post Brexit, most voters in the Republic want Northern institutions to bed down rather than polarise the North with a Border poll for which there still is no likelihood of a majority for a decade at least. Rekindling smouldering constitutional and sectarian questions in Northern Ireland at this point is counterproductive; slow and steady reconciliation and positive mutual engagement in the North is what is needed by both parts of the island.
It is now four years since Colm Keena’s admirable exposition in these pages of the true nature of Sinn Féin. That fine piece of journalism needs constant rereading. The facts have not changed. The Army Council still exists. Sadly, none of our broadcast media has the courage to deal with the realities uncovered by Keena. Sinn Féin is not a conventional political party; it is a tightly controlled revolutionary movement still in the grip of a very small group, many of whom were active in the IRA’s campaign of violence.
It brooks no open dissent. It controls its TDs, Senators, councillors, MLAs and abstentionist MPs with a vice-like grip. Its elected public representatives take policy and instruction unquestioningly from its Coiste Seasta and ardchomhairle. They are all liable to arbitrary deselection by the unelected party centre. TDs and councillors are notified of their political fates by back-room messages – not by voters. Their leaders are not really leaders but more like glove puppets for unseen controllers.
Sinn Féin’s recent controversies and cover-ups are but the symptoms of its underlying reality – not the cause of their decline. Nor the real reasons to be wary.