FF’s Carmela wing are lambs to the slaughter
LAST week, just under half the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party told The Irish Times they would consider Sinn Féin as a coalition partner after the next general election.
Not one mentioned that Sinn Féin is still directed by a paramilitary body, still less that the party has never atoned for a campaign of murder that continued to 1994, although civil rights had been conceded by 1974.
Although I have been an atheist most of my life,
I have no doubt that Christianity is the source of my sense of right and wrong.
Accordingly, with every bone in my body, I believe that bringing Sinn Féin into our government would corrupt our democracy.
That is why I believe Micheál Martin’s determination to deprive Sinn Féin of government was the most important act of moral authority in my lifetime — and caused SF to struggle in opposition.
So when Martin talks cryptically about “evolving” policies, I am fairly sure he expects SF to do most of the evolving in relation to Northern Ireland.
What is sickest about his political opponents is their degraded deep antagonism to his moral antipathy to Sinn Féin.
Here they have much in common with Carmela Soprano, the conflicted wife of Tony Soprano.
Like Carmela, while not getting their own hands dirty, they want any goodies going from consorting with those who consort with political criminals.
So this week I am playing the same role as Dr Krakower, the Jewish psychiatrist who gives Carmela a reality check.
Carmela: He’s a good man, a good father.
Dr Krakower: You tell me he’s a depressed criminal, prone to anger, serially unfaithful. Is that your definition of a good man?
Carmela: All I did was make sure he’s got clean clothes in his closet and dinner on his table.
Dr Krakower: “Enabler” would be a more accurate job description for what you do than “accomplice”?
At least Carmela got some material benefits from her Faustian pact with Tony Soprano. But the FF Carmelas will only get a plastic marker saying: “Died from personal ambition and toxic nationalism.”
Nothing points up the nihilism of the FF Carmelas more than their weird willingness to give up real power in the present for playing second fiddle to Sinn Féin in the future.
Right now, FF has far more power than it will ever see as a junior partner with Sinn Féin. It holds the top position of Taoiseach and the powerful portfolios of Health, Housing and Education. Why are FF Carmelas willing to give up four birds in the hand for a piggish terminal poke from SF?
The answer is they are suffering from the same death wish that first surfaced in 1970 and nearly finished FF. That death wish is caused by tribal nationalism that has nothing in common with Wolfe Tone or Seamus Mallon’s republicanism.
This sickness can be sourced to Haugheyite rhetorical rubbish about a united Ireland that is as shallow as the recent Red C poll in which 70pc said “yes” when asked if they would “like” a united Ireland.
This is what I call the Mars Bar question, where context is all: “Would you like a Mars Bar? Yes. Would you like a Mars Bar laced with cyanide? No.”
Would you like a united Ireland with Sinn Féin rampant in the south and continually provoking trouble in the North? No.
The recent rise of Shinnerism in FF started with senior party figures like Jim O’Callaghan, Barry Cowen and Billy Kelleher ramping up rhetoric on a united Ireland. Last September, O’Callaghan told us re- unification is the “biggest issue” after Covid and Brexit.
So much for those without a roof over their heads or private sector workers without adequate pension provision.
Last week, the feeble FF Carmelas gave us a foretaste of their future flabbiness in government with Sinn Féin by staying silent while that party’s grandees gloated and patronised them.
Senator Lynn Boylan told Claire Byrne on Friday that Fianna Fáil had “woken up to reality”. But even before the Carmelas’ surrender, Eoin Ó Broin had sensed their supine willingness to turn themselves into a satin footstool for Sinn Féin.
He loftily told the
Sunday Independent he was open to the possibility of a left-led government, given what he correctly called Fianna Fáil’s “ideological promiscuity”.
Translated, that means Fianna Fáil Carmelas have no policy separate from Sinn Féin’s.
More to the point, he said this “would have to include a programme of government we have never seen before in the history of the State”.
What exactly does that mean in terms of practical economics?
It means Fianna Fáil will have to support Sinn Féin’s tax-and-spend brand of Venezuelan economics.
Sinn Féin in power will spend like hell, tax the guts out of anyone above €50k a year and stir Northern Ireland to a frenzy.
Incredibly, the FF Carmelas, a cabal that showed no loyalty to their successful leader, think they can go to bed with a party of disciplined Tony Sopranos and rise whistling next day.
In reality, the Carmelas will have to suck up being shoved around the place — sometimes literally — by Sinn Féin, whose militaristic culture leads to physical and media intimidation.
Remember the irate entourage that sullenly hung around RTÉ studios after Miriam O’Callaghan’s scorching interview with Martin McGuinness?
Remember Christine O’Mahony, visited at her home late at night by a convicted criminal?
Remember, as late as last week, Leas-Ceann Comhairle Catherine Connolly being accosted by Sinn Féin TDs following a disagreement about Dáil procedure?
To personal intimidation Sinn Féin adds constant media bullying and abuse. Last December, The Irish Times exposed an abusive Facebook group followed by 16,000 Sinn Féin supporters.
Posts referred to Labour’s Joan Burton as a “c**t” and an “ugly b***h”, and one said they would like to “throw her out of a plane with no life jacket”.
Last week, Relatives For Justice, a campaign group promoted by Sinn Féin, announced they were making a complaint to RTÉ News about Tommie Gorman’s perfectly balanced report on the events of Ormeau Road.
Adding up all that, let me make three firm predictions, which, for the sake of my country, I hope will be flung in my face in the future.
First, common sense says that when a lying lion lies down with a gullible lamb, only the lion leaves. Accordingly, I predict SF will finish off FF for good.
Second, a Sinn Féin government given cover by compliant FF Carmelas, faced with a national debt of €270bn and a post-Covid bill of €50bn, will not cut back on its spending pledges of €20bn, but will tax the productive, destroy our economy and, most certain of all, will blame FF.
Finally, Sinn Féin will keep whipping up trouble in Northern Ireland, opening cans of poisonous worms that might well wriggle to our side of the Border.
All of which will create a generation of demented young people, at the mercy of leaders without morals.
We end with Dr Krakower’s final words to Carmela. “One thing you can never say: that you haven’t been told.”
‘Right now, Fianna Fáil has more power than it will ever see as a junior partner with Sinn Féin’