The rise of Sinn Fein can’t be blamed entirely on Brexit chaos

If SF does well at the polls, fault will lie with those who offered no credible alternative, writes Eilis O’Hanlon

DESPITE the superficial drama of the first TV debate between the two men who would be Taoiseach, the second election week was again dominated by Sinn Fein.

Mary Lou McDonald doesn’t even seem to be trying that hard to set the agenda. It’s just happening. Whether it translates into votes at the ballot box remains to be seen, because the party’s had these surges before, and transfer toxicity means it doesn’t always lead to seats; there’s also a lot of undecideds about, keeping their powder dry.

Republicans must still be kicking themselves for not running more candidates.

The easy time being had by SF, whose uncosted promises have not even begun to be put to the test, puzzles many observers, who wonder if young people really know what they’re flirting with.

They may well not. Younger voters in America are said to be increasingly attracted to the siren song of socialism, and for the same reason, which is that they have no memory of, and apparently no curiosity for learning about, the dark heart of the cause to which they’re flocking.

The same thing could lie behind the vogue for SF. How can anyone fear what they haven’t experienced directly?

Even that doesn’t really explain it, though. It’s only in those aged over 55 that support for SF starts to slide away significantly. The appeal of a party still linked inextricably to the IRA seems to be increasing even among those who do remember the Troubles.

Could it be Brexit then? The rearguard action against the damage that Britain’s exit from the EU could cause the country has certainly stoked a mood of toxic nationalism in recent months, to the point where the row over the RIC commemoration had all the nuance of a rally for the hunger strikers in West Belfast.

If the election pans out as all the evidence currently suggests, the Taoiseach will have plenty of leisure to repent his decision to play the Brit-bashing game which SF had perfected for years. Last week, the withdrawal agreement finally went through the UK Parliament and was signed into law by the Queen. All Leo Varadkar’s bluster couldn’t stop Brexit happening. All it did was boost his rivals, and it’s too late to counter the rising tide by saying that the next stage of Brexit needs a steady hand. It needed a steady hand when it was still playing out, not now that it’s over.

It’s not just that toxic nationalism has been made respectable, but that Varadkar’s Government ceded far too much ground to SF in terms of how the debate around Brexit was conducted. Many voters have obviously concluded: if I’m having a slap-up meal, I may as well go for the full-fat, rather than diet, option.

All the same, it could be that a SF surge would’ve been impossible to avoid anyway.

Consider the omens. Brexit won. Donald Trump won. The populists won for a while in Italy, and may soon win again. France is in flames due to mass protests against the government, buoyed by anger from everyone from rural and blue-collar voters to middle-class Parisian professionals. People everywhere are seething with discontent.

How many times do centrist politicians need to get a warning before heeding it? It was naive to think Ireland would escape forever.

Families who’ve been faced with 40pc increases in rents are unhappy. Farmers are unhappy. Young people are unhappy. Older voters are worried about their pensions. Leo Varadkar tried hard last week to appear more empathetic, suppressing the smirk as best he could, and furrowing his brow as if he understood the travails of the ordinary man on the street — but there’s no actual evidence that he detects, in his bones, the undercurrents out there.

And since there are no Trumps or Farages here, and no real right wing to speak of, then it was always likely that the discontent would express itself through the only real populists that Ireland has — and that’s republicans.

To be blunt, who else is there to pick up a protest vote? The hard left is off the charts bonkers. The Greens are still too flaky. Independents are too disparate and unreliable.

If you want change in Ireland, there’s not much to choose from, so plenty of voters have concluded that it has to be SF, whatever their concerns. To stop that happening, the party’s opponents need to articulate why it’s such a terrible idea to hand SF the levers of power, and reminding them about a brutal IRA campaign clearly isn’t cutting through to those minded to give republicans a chance.

If anything, they’re inclined to dismiss evidence that SF gets its orders from shadowy cabals of smugglers and kneecappers in the North as some kind of kooky conspiracy theory put about by the party’s enemies, it being one of the weird features of the modern left that a smear is now defined as any story which makes your side look bad, even if it’s true.

It might be more effective to shine a spotlight on SF’s woeful record in government in Stormont. Mary Lou can’t blame the Tories for everything wrong in the North. But that likely wouldn’t work either, because, even if you could show that SF remain the incompetent, venal liars they always were, it comes back to the same question: who else is there?

If anyone is to blame, it’s FG and FF for not picking up the existential dissatisfaction in the air. Was Peter Casey’s showing in the Presidential election not warning enough?

It would be easy to rattle off 1,001 reasons not to vote for SF, but it would be a struggle to muster up more than a handful of positive arguments why anyone should vote FG or FF with any enthusiasm, and isn’t that the bigger problem?

The main two parties need to be renewed, re-energised. Instead they look tired, stale, complacent. There’s no vision.

That’s why, if SF do end up gaining the biggest fillip in support this election, blame will lie with those who offered no alternative, not those who, having no alternative, asked themselves whether SF could possibly be any worse than the alternatives. They could be worse, a lot worse, but the dreadful truth is it may only be after they’ve been given the chance to prove it that the mistake becomes apparent.

Either that, or there’s the best-case scenario, which is that they just turn out to be the new Labour Party, providing a fig leaf of radicalism to the usual suspects in one coalition after another whilst their erstwhile supporters stand on the sidelines and jeer them for having sold out.

‘If you want change, who else is there to pick up the protest vote?’