Is there trouble ahead for Mary-Lou McDonald?
Is SinnFe in leader-in-waiting Mary Lou McDonald’ s row with the Tao is each in the D ail this week a portent of difficult times ahead for the party when Gerry Adams finally steps down? Ma lac hi O’ Do her ty and Andrew Lynch read the run es
There must be a lot of people who would like one day to be the leader of Sinn Fein. It is, after all, a huge political party with the prospects of taking power on both sides of the border.
And the leader is touching 70 and already intimating that he will soon stand down, though not before he has put his stamp on the party for another decade.
Part of that stamp, it is widely assumed, will be the choice of new leader. The dogs on the street and the cats on the mats believe they know who that will be. It will be Mary Lou McDonald.
McDonald is a real credit to the party in that she is a vigorous parliamentary performer. She has also stuck loyally at the side of her leader, Gerry Adams, even through the darkest periods, as when he was challenged in the Dail for describing those who interrogated Mairia Cahill, a rape victim, as “decent people”.
Ms McDonald might have been expected more widely to have rested her sympathies primarily with the victim, but she grasps the first essential of political survival; you defend the party.
Brutus didn’t knife Caesar until he had backings and a leader in waiting has even less reason to finish off the incumbent, the one who will ultimately crown her if she is patient.
Designated successors have a bad record, however. Gordon Brown did not last long after Blair.
Peter Robinson waited years for Paisley to vacate the leadership of the DUP and then moved against him with only a few years of good health to spare.
Hillary Clinton was the candidate of right for the Democratic party, but the electorate did not fancy being taken for granted.
So, who wants to be leader of Sinn Fein when Adams goes?
Nobody, apparently, other than Mary Lou McDonald, the anointed one.
Of course, a contender does not declare an ambition until it is safe to do so.
But if Conor Murphy and Martina Anderson and Mairtin O Muilleoir and John O’Dowd and Michelle O’Neill don’t want a whack at the top job, then they are very strange politicians.
As things go, they presumably live with the understanding that the job is taken.
The Sinn Fein MLAs in Stormont appear to have similarly assented happily to Michelle O’Neill being made the northern leader over their heads, without a vote.
But that may prove to be easier to endure while Stormont is in cold storage. Perhaps one of the advantages for Sinn Fein of not putting their MLAs and ministers back to work is that the strains that might arise from leaders being ordained rather than elected would begin to show.
And how much more would they show in the post-Gerry era with Ms McDonald in place to block the ambitions of party talent — if they have any — and to lead a party that straddles the border and has separate political projects on either side of it?
Can ambition be relied on to subserve itself to the leadership when that leader isn’t Gerry Adams?
Adams leads the party now as someone with clout north and south. He has earned his standing in the south but done it the painful way, his weaknesses being exposed and scoffed at and his uncanny resilience surviving every attack.
And McDonald has had a presence in the north, attending negotiations with governments during past crises, so she may be able to shape up for a while as someone with a grasp of the issues.
And though it might be intensely annoying for unionists to be lectured by her when she is in the top job, that may well be something she would take pleasure in anyway.
But how would the local MLAs take it? Would they not be inclined to feel that they were better qualified to engage with the DUP on the big issues ahead, like Shared Future, dealing with the past and locally rooted crises as yet unforeseen? The danger for Sinn Fein in the coming years is that it will be partitioned, that having to function in two different jurisdictions will make it appear to be two different parties. And this would be a peculiar irony for a party that exists to oppose partition.
And if a candidate emerged who was not so supine and docile as they all currently appear, who did want to pitch for the leadership, would she, or he, not be accused by the leadership of exposing it to precisely that danger.
A northerner who wanted Gerry’s job would be slapped down and accused of splitting the party and jeopardising the all-Ireland project.
So what is an ambitious politician to do within Sinn Fein?
For now, if there are any hopefuls, they are keeping their heads down.
They are very strange politicians if they intend continuing to do that.