This week’s reshuffle of Sinn Féin ministers on the Northern Ireland Executive completes the party’s reconfiguration north and south of the Border in the wake of last November’s general election.
There had been speculation following that result, which saw it lose one out of every five of the votes it had received in 2020, that a more radical reshaping of Sinn Féin’s front bench in the Dáil was being considered. That proved not to be the case, with key spokespeople in areas such as finance, housing and health remaining in place.
The more substantial changes in Northern Ireland are a consequence of the decision to send party heavyweight Conor Murphy south to contest a seat in the Seanad, which he duly won at the weekend. His departure from Stormont sees Caoimhe Archibald replacing him as economy minister. Former infrastructure minister John O’Dowd fills Archibald’s old brief of minister of finance, while his old job will be filled by Liz Kimmins
Sinn Féin holds the key financial positions in the Executive, largely due to the DUP’s reluctance to take them on. However, it remains debatable whether the power-sharing administration is capable of implement meaningful policy changes on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland.
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The strategy of moving political representatives southward (but rarely northward) has not always been successful. Former MP and MLA Elisha McCallion was forced to resign her Seanad seat in 2020 following a controversy over UK government funding during the pandemic. The scandal over former Belfast lord mayor and Sinn Féin Seanad leader Niall Ó Donnghaile’s inappropriate behaviour damaged the party in the run-up to the general election.
Murphy is a more senior figure than McCallion or Ó Donnghaile, and his move, though it may not be unrelated to a recent health scare, signals that, along with more aggressive opposition on issues such as the Occupied Territories Bill, Sinn Féin will maintain its emphasis on Irish unity, even if that looks more distant now than when Mary Lou McDonald predicted a border poll by 2030.
The back to basics strategy of doubling down on opposition alongside its own core values should help to reassure party members and consolidate Sinn Féin’s electoral base. It is less clear that it will address the conundrum that confronted it at the last election: how to arrive at the point where it can credibly present itself as the leader of an alternative government. To achieve that, the party will need to broaden its own electoral appeal while pursuing a closer alignment with other opposition parties, in particular Labour, the Social Democrats and the Greens. That could require a reconsideration at some stage of the party’s traditional policies on issues such as carbon tax, which could in turn alienate some of its own base. It is a far from simple task.
