Never have WB Yeats’ words sounded more appropriate: all is changed, changed utterly
The electoral rise of Sinn Fein brings Irish unity to the fore, but where is the evidence that the current unionist leadership has anything other than a confusing, divided message to offer, asks Ed Curran
Ireland is the latest recipient of a political pandemic which has swept across the Western world. The origins of this virus can be traced to the proprietor of Trump Tower on New York’s Fifth Avenue. He carried it to the White House in Washington after he had infected a majority of the American electorate, surprising even himself by winning the last US presidential election.
Since then the same virus, which feeds on populist politics and uproots long-standing traditional voting behaviour, has proved uncontrollable. It has spread across several European states. Most notably, the UK has felt its full impact, first in the Brexit referendum in 2016 and, just recently, in a general election which witnessed tens of thousands of Labour Party supporters forsaking life-long voting habits to put Boris Johnson in Downing Street.
Now the virus has reached Ireland’s shores, shattering a century-old tradition of support for two established parties in Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, instead offering Sinn Fein an unprecedented opportunity to take the reins of power.
The beneficiaries of this pandemic hold very different views, from Donald Trump to Boris Johnson and now Mary Lou McDonald, but they have one striking similarity: all have won on the frustration of ordinary voters fed up with established political norms, prepared to reject old allegiances and willing to risk an alternative approach.
The lesson is the same everywhere — from the depressed northern cities of England, to the rust-belt of Trump’s heartlands, to the youthful Irish electorate who voted for Sinn Fein. The days of predictable politics have gone. Politicians can afford no longer to take their party faithful for granted.
That lesson was even learnt in Northern Ireland in December when the same Sinn Fein as is now being feted paid a heavy electoral price — as did Democratic Unionists — for failing to deliver joined-up government at Stormont. If voters want change, more of them than ever before appear willing to reject the status quo, even in this little corner of the world.
Soon after his efforts in Belfast to persuade Sinn Fein and the DUP to restore power-sharing at Stormont, Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney appeared on RTE’s Prime Time. He found himself facing the opening salvoes of Sinn Fein’s criticism that he and the outgoing governing coalition had failed the Republic’s electorate over the past decade.
Eventually, Coveney could keep his cool no longer.
He pointed angrily towards the Sinn Fein spokesman, Pearse Doherty, and said: “Your party has no credibility. Nobody wants to be in government with you.”
Coveney’s rejection of Sinn
Fein underlined the duplicity of politics on this island.
In other words, what he considered as good enough for Northern Ireland was anathema to himself, as it has been to successive governments in the Republic and to its mainstream media.
The results of the Irish election put that duplicity to the test as never before. Unionists can only watch from a distance as the TDs in the Dail struggle with their consciences and try to accept a political reality which Northern Ireland has had to live with for two decades.
Bringing Sinn Fein in from the cold will not be easy. Coming to terms with some of the party’s wilder, Leftist views, never mind its obsession with remembering a violent past, may even prove impossible, as has been the experience of Stormont on many occasions.
However, like it or not, the politics of Ireland is now shaken to its core. W B Yeats’s words, penned after the Easter Rising, have renewed meaning: all is changed utterly in the Republic’s politics.
The future direction is anybody’s guess. For good or ill? For richer or poorer? For ups or downs? So many questions. Certainly, a new order of some kind, even if no one knows what that may turn out to be.
Should the unionists of Northern Ireland be unduly concerned? Of course they should — and are. They have more first-hand experience than anyone else of dealing with Sinn Fein, not only at Stormont but in council chambers.
The Good Friday Agreement may have brought peace but it has not brought true political stability for Northern Ireland, nor does this seem likely in the Republic, given the difficulty in finding any consensus between Sinn Fein and other parties.
In 2020 the harsh truth is that Northern Ireland is dominated by unionists and republicans who have virtually nothing in common and, from time to time, have to be dragged out of their respective trenches, as has happened recently, to meet even the basic requirements of governance.
Now, the southern electorate has added its own wake-up call, voting in its tens of thousands for a party that has its roots in terror on this island and its present in a style of hard-Left politics that makes even Jeremy Corbyn look like a Tory.
None of this north-south scenario is a recipe for constitutional or economic stability, but whether we accept it or not, this is the future.
Could Sinn Fein surprise everyone by showing it is not rooted in violent republicanism, nor as unrealistically Leftwing as its manifesto suggests? The experience of Northern Ireland over the past 20 years suggests otherwise.
Sinn Fein has clung unashamedly to its old IRA allegiances, engaged in jobs for the boys for former volunteers, airbrushed from memory the worst republican excesses and marked the past conflict at every opportunity.
On the evidence to date the omens are not good, though the sight of Sinn Fein leaders Michelle O’Neill and Gerry Kelly promoting a police recruitment campaign is a major step in the right direction.
The hope must be that the young voters in the Republic were only attracted to Sinn Fein as a radical alternative to the conservative politics of the two governing parties and not because of its revolutionary and violent origins.
If Fianna Fail, or any party, were to form a new coalition with Sinn Fein, it must surely extract major assurances from Mary Lou McDonald that she is leaving all such paramilitary vestiges irreversibly behind her and truly charting a new way forward. A coalition government in Dublin in which one party engages in Brit-bashing at every opportunity, as Sinn
❝ Predictable politics have gone. Politicians can afford no longer to take their faithful for granted
Fein has done incessantly at Stormont, is a recipe for Anglo-Irish instability and a denial of the third strand of the Good Friday Agreement, which was supposed to promote better and closer co-operation between Great Britain and Ireland, north and south.
Whichever shade of green Sinn Fein is about to display in its new position of prominence will have a huge bearing on unionism in the months and years ahead.
It is certainly no time for unionist complacency, as the issues of a border poll, of Brexit and of Northern Ireland’s economic dependency on the British Treasury remain centre stage and are likely to be so for the foreseeable future.
Yet, despite so many challenges, unionism remains deeply divided. The DUP sticks to its traditional roots and the other main unionist party has languished for years in its shadow.
There is little or no meeting of minds on how the various unionist voices see Northern Ireland beyond its upcoming centenary and little certainty that the place will be celebrating a second centenary in 2121 as part of the UK.
Sinn Fein has become a powerful all-Ireland voice, seeking to govern in Dublin as well as Belfast. Convincing people that the Union remains a better option than Irish unity is now a more formidable challenge than ever, but where is the evidence that the current leadership of the unionist parties has other than a confusing, divided message to offer?
The signs are that Sinn Fein will raise the stakes on Irish unity. In government, the party might even begin to convince more British politicians to build on the Brexit border down the Irish Sea, or to think twice about the fact that Northern Ireland’s annual subsidy from London is comparable to the estimated £11bn which the UK contributed to Brussels.
Sinn Fein’s success has raised the spectre of a very green flag fluttering over politics on this island and spells a long and testing time ahead for unionism. However, Sinn Fein is also facing a level of scrutiny from the southern public, politicians and the media, from which it will be hard for its leadership to escape. The calls are growing louder and louder to distance the party from the worst excesses of old-fashioned republicanism.
If it were to do so, relations at Stormont and across this island would be greatly enhanced. Perhaps, if there is any silver lining in the Irish election results, or comfort for unionists up north, another wind of change is possible.
A cast-iron assurance is needed from any new government in Dublin involving Sinn Fein that the past is past and that Gerry Adams and the trappings of his era have really gone away, once and for all.
❝ Calls grow louder to distance Sinn Fein from republicanism’s worst old-fashioned excesses