The two-women strategy will win SF a lot of votes

THOSE booms and creaks heard in Stormont last week was the tectonic plates of Irish politics shifting after Michelle O’Neill became leader of Sinn Féin in the Assembly. And after the earth moved in Belfast, Mary Lou McDonald’s elevation to be the next president of Sinn Féin in Dublin appears inevitable.

Two women leaders with no blood on their hands who are totems in contemporary Irish republicanism would have been a management consultant’s solution to end Sinn Féin’s stagnation in the opinion polls.

It is also confirmation that the grizzled Provo warlords accept they are the reason why voters are reluctant to vote for Sinn Féin.

And the new female leadership changes everything: Sinn Féin expects to attract the vast majority of left-wing votes, in the North and the South.

For a start, the Labour Party in Dublin and the SDLP in Belfast will be horrified at the prospect of a softer-focus Sinn Féin leaving them irrelevant.

Then Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will be in serious competition to woo them as junior partners after deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said that Sinn Féin would be open to a ‘secondary role’ in government.

That means the Shinners will be a junior partner, despite swearing last year they would only consider going into government as the dominant party. Yes, things have changed, changed utterly.

It poses a big question for Enda Kenny and his rivals for the Fine Gael leadership: do they like being in government more than they hate Sinn Féin?

The question answers itself: of course Fine Gael would choose government with Sinn Féin before the political chastity of opposition. The Shinner think-tank that gave the green light to the women leaders would probably be more comfortable with Fianna Fáil and its justice spokesman Big Jim O’Callaghan. Although Micheál Martin got rid of the ‘deputy leader’ title, O’Callaghan has been effectively fulfilling the role and has been Martin’s closest ally since he was elected to the Dáil last year. O’Callaghan has also been very suspicious of the British and Brexit and wants to deal with them at arm’s length, a sentiment endorsed publicly by Sinn Féin. Michelle O’Neill, pictured, is a young mother and she also has likeability, a quality shared with Martin McGuinness who won many friends outside Sinn Féin. McDonald is also capable and likeable but her intellectual confidence will add gravitas to her leadership when she takes over from Gerry Adams, probably after an election next year.

Sinn Féin was pleased when Conor Murphy parked his leadership ambitions and stood alongside Michelle O’Neill; it showed that the IRA’s hard men in South Armagh support her.

When Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness flanked her, it gave O’Neill the security of knowing she had the support of the IRA in Belfast and Derry.

And the ageing Sinn Féin/IRA leadership has openly endorsed Mary Lou McDonald.

WHAT about us in the awkward squad? That’s those of us who abhor boorish Donald Trump but enjoy the anguish and disgust the 45th US President provokes in the right-on types who expect to set the tone for public (and private) life and debate.

I’m not even sure if we in the awkward squad are in a dilemma or part of a phenomenon. But I am pretty sure it will all end in tears…or worse.

‘I’M FROM head office, I’m here to help,’ chilling words for any regional manager – and terrifying for the Taoiseach last week when the EU Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs came calling.

Pierre Moscovici looked suitably patrician and the Taoiseach, who runs the EU’s Irish franchise, appeared anxious to please when they met in Dublin.

Kenny did not challenge Moscovici’s message that he and the other EU mandarins would take charge of the negotiations for Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

The least the Taoiseach might have said was that the Irish have far more to lose than anyone else and therefore have an entitlement to be at the forefront of any Brexit negotiations.

After reminding the Taoiseach about who is in charge, Moscovici said there could be no discussions about Customs as long as the UK is a member of the EU.

This was after we had heard that Irish officials in Brussels had been told that an electronic frontier logging North-South freight with Northern Ireland would almost certainly be imposed after Brexit.

And it got worse: Moscovici rejected Finance Minister Michael Noonan’s claim that plans to consolidate taxation across the EU would diminish Ireland’s tax base.

Not at all, the proposal would be good for Ireland, said the Man From Head Office, who went on to warn about the potential instability posed by upcoming elections in the Netherlands, France and Germany.

And he threw in the current scare word, ‘Trump’, and the fears for world trade and security in the wake of the US presidential election.

The Taoiseach’s people have been showing off their invitation to the White House on St Patrick’s Day as further proof that nobody other than Kenny is a credible leader; and that no one other than Kenny is capable of leading the forthcoming negotiations on Brexit.

And then Kenny’s most trusted colleagues says he believes that the Brexit negotiations will take six years.

Will fidgety backbenchers and ambitious ministers join a chant of ‘six more years!’ after the leader’s speech at the Fine Gael annual conference this year?