Everyone is expecting the SDLP to split as it attempts to merge with Fianna Fáil but a split in Fianna Fáil has come as a surprise.
Last week, Éamon Ó Cuív TD and Senator Mark Daly announced that Independent Omagh councillor Sorcha McAnespy – formerly of Sinn Féin – will be Fianna Fáil’s first candidate in Northern Ireland, at council elections next year.
Fianna Fáil promptly begged to differ, issuing a statement that no such thing had been decided. Waters were then muddied over who had said what to whom at a party convention.
The matter ended with party leader Micheál Martin sending letters to Ó Cuív and Daly, with stiff wording implied but not divulged.
Whatever its provenance, the McAnespy announcement was no slip of the tongue. Daly, describing himself as McAnespy’s “director of elections”, hosted a launch event attended by Ó Cuív in Omagh, complete with Fianna Fáil-branded posters and leaflets. Given the symbolic momentousness of the occasion, the party leadership should have been present. Instead, it was not even informed.
A freelance attempt was apparently being made to set the tone of Fianna Fáil’s northward expansion, before the project is permanently associated with swallowing up the SDLP.
Two wings
Roughly speaking, the SDLP comprises two wings: conservative nationalists who are a natural fit with Fianna Fáil and social democrats who are a natural fit with Irish Labour. Resolving this red-green divide is expected to dominate the settling-in period of any merger.
Launching with a former Sinn Féin councillor instead gives the project a greener initial hue, and first impressions count.
McAnespy is in some ways an adroit choice of convert. She was a Sinn Féin councillor from 2011 to 2016, after the party recognised the PSNI, giving her impeccable peace-process credentials. She quit Sinn Féin after a local selection row but told the media she had “no beef” with the party’s leadership or policies, so she has burned no bridges with the republican constituency.
Her eventual reason for departing adds an unintentional note of comedy, however. A mother of three, McAnespy struggled to live on her councillor’s allowance of £14,000 (€15,800) a year, yet faced constant demands for donations to party funds, culminating in being told to make donations at council meetings.
She is almost certainly the first person to join Fianna Fáil in the hope of seeing less of that behaviour.
Sinn Féin has trawled the world for economists prepared to whittle down Northern Ireland's official £10bn subvention
Daly’s involvement in the McAnespy farce looks like another punchline. The Senator’s interest in a united Ireland might best be described as that of the committed enthusiast. In July, he published a report in conjunction with a German economist claiming Northern Ireland would require no subsidy if extraneous UK costs were stripped out.
To reach this remarkable conclusion, he assumed London would continue paying all unfunded pensions after unification, while Northern Ireland would be absolved of all debts and incur no depreciation, implying a united Ireland would be beyond the laws of both Westminster and physics. He then accused the Irish Government of suppressing this due to Brexit.
Natural partner
Sinn Féin has trawled the world for economists prepared to whittle down Northern Ireland’s official £10 billion subvention, but halving the figure is generally considered sufficient for republican purposes. Northern Ireland needs to be portrayed as unviable but still affordable – a basket case, yet light enough a basket to carry. Daly’s failure to understand this has been seen as almost adorable by nationalist and unionist alike.
Ó Cuív’s presence at the Omagh launch sends a more serious signal. The Galway West TD has been a long-term advocate of coalition with Sinn Féin in the Republic. In 2012, after resigning as Fianna Fáil deputy leader, he described Sinn Féin as his party’s natural partner in the Dáil.
If he was simply applying this view on an all-Ireland basis, backing McAnespy would make sense. But that is not exactly the message Ó Cuív is felt to have sent north of the Border, at least until now.
He has become known in Northern Ireland for an interest in self-described “justice campaigns” for dissident republicans. While always stating he abhors violence and is merely “observing” legal proceedings, Ó Cuív has attended hearings and events that Northern Ireland politicians – including from Sinn Féin – have not felt obliged to attend.
In 2014, UUP leader Mike Nesbitt called him “beneath contempt” for saying prison conditions and the dissident murder of a prison officer were “cause and effect”. Ó Cuív had condemned the murder. In December last year, he faced questions in the Republic after a letter he drafted was submitted in support of a dissident republican suspect at Dublin’s Special Criminal Court. He said he did not realise the letter would be presented in court.
If Ó Cuív believes the way to compete with a hardline party in Northern Ireland is to outflank it on the right then he would be not so much the heir to Dev as an heir to Paisley – and we have had quite enough of those already.