Sir, – Mary Lou McDonald writes that Fintan O'Toole's proposal that Sinn Féin temporarily abandon abstentionism is based on flawed mathematics and wishful thinking ("Fintan O'Toole wrong to say SF can block hard Brexit", Opinion & Analysis, August 7th). She argues that her party's seven votes cannot stop Brexit and are not needed to prevent a hard Brexit.
She may be right. But what is incontrovertible is that over the past six months votes in the House of Commons on motions which were intended to be helpful to Ireland and to the people whom Sinn Féin claims to represent were lost by less than seven votes.
The history of Brexit, when it comes to be written, will not be kind to Sinn Féin, nor indeed to the DUP. Both parties have failed miserably. – Yours, etc,
PAT O’BRIEN,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6 .
Sir, – Mary Lou McDonald makes the laughable claim that Sinn Féin “has played a central role in building the political consensus, North and South” in relation to Brexit and has “worked to find common ground with our political opponents” on the issue.
In fact, her party’s very first response to the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum was to call for a border poll on a united Ireland. Was this call designed to seek “common ground” with the majority in Northern Ireland who are implacably opposed to any such proposal?
If the first response of the unionist parties to the 2016 referendum had been to call for a referendum in the Republic on whether we should leave the EU and rejoin the United Kingdom, would she have viewed this as an effort to find “common ground”?
I’m sure she would have denounced it as a deliberate provocation, calculated to abuse a gravely serious national issue for petty political point-scoring. Which is exactly what the entire Sinn Féin approach to Brexit has been from the very beginning.
She preaches that the solution to the Brexit crisis is “unity”. Well, no organisation has done more to forestall Irish unity over the last 40 years than her own party, together with its fellow-travellers in the IRA.
In the 1980s and 1990s, as John Hume, Garret FitzGerald, Albert Reynolds and others sought “common ground”, the IRA bombed and murdered the very people whom they sought it with.
And since 2016, it has been Enda Kenny, Leo Varadkar, Micheál Martin and others who have sought to find common ground with moderate opinion in Northern Ireland and in London, with Sinn Féin sitting it out as hurlers on the abstentionist ditch.
This strategy is certain to generate raucous applause at a Sinn Féin ardfheis, but is unlikely to impress many voters, a lesson which they seem singularly unwilling to learn even after a recent string of disastrous election results. – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.
Sir, – Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald strongly criticises Fintan O’Toole, accusing him of political wishful thinking because he dares suggest that Sinn Féin’s abstaining Westminster MPs should resign their seats to trigger byelections that would result in the election of participating anti-Brexit MPs.
She then went on to claim that the only feasible current political plan was to plan for Irish unity.
Bearing in mind that Sinn Féin shared power with the DUP for almost a decade before collapsing the North’s power-sharing institutions, it would be reasonable and justifiable to accuse her of the worst form of political wishful thinking.
If Sinn Féin cannot persuade the DUP to join with Sinn Féin and the other Northern Ireland parties to restore power-sharing to unite Northern Ireland itself, how does she realistically expect to unite Ireland? – Yours, etc,
JOHN
CUSHNAHAN,
(Former leader Alliance
Party and former
Fine Gael MEP),
Lisnagry,
Co Limerick.
Sir, – A minor concession on the backstop might have salvaged Theresa May’s deal. It may not yet be too late to step back from the brink. It is to our Taoiseach and Tánaiste that we should be appealing for courageous initiatives rather than asking for silly contortions from Sinn Féin. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN WOODS,
Foxrock,
Dublin 18.