Michelle may well be a rising star, but will she be given chance to shine at Stormont?
Stormont’s Health Minister is tipped to replace Martin McGuinness, but it’s academic if powersharing isn’t restored, writes Eilis O’Hanlon
Spare a thought for Sinn Fein MLA Conor Murphy. There he was, sitting at home in South Down, probably thinking that he had the leadership of the party at Stormont in the bag following the announcement by former Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness that he would not be standing again due to ill health.
Suddenly, he opens the newspapers to discover that Michelle O’Neill is actually favourite to take over.
Finance Minister Mairtin O’Muilleoir might have been considered an outside threat, but surely not someone who was only just starting in primary school when Conor Murphy was in jail for possession of explosives?
That’s not really how it works, of course. If the MLA for Mid Ulster is indeed the chosen one, then Murphy, as a privileged member of the inner circle, may well have been fully informed about the reasons why she’s been hand-picked to head up the next phase of the struggle. It’s the rest of us who are kept out of the loop.
We’ll be told no more about this coronation than we were after previous switcheroos within SF, when ministers were dropped and replaced in the party’s political version of crop rotation. The republican gods move in mysterious ways, their
If she gets the nod, she will join a growing club of female leaders including the Prime Minister
O’Neill deserves a chance to prove herself ... she’s said to be friendly and easy to work with
wonders to perform.
Whatever the reason, it’s a surprise rise to prominence by O’Neill. A former and effective Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, she’s been in charge of Health since last May when the Assembly resumed with promises that this time it would last, but was not being tipped until recently as leadership material.
Yet it was she who stood up to announce in Stormont that the party would not be nominating a new Deputy First Minister, thereby forcing another election. Her prominent role that day did not go unnoticed.
Should she get the nod, the striking thing about SF’s new overlord will be that she’s actually an overlady, joining a growing club of female leaders alongside the Prime Minister, the Northern Irish and Scottish First Ministers, and Alliance Party leader, amongst others.
Crucially, O’Neill is said to have the backing of Gerry Adams, though with his penchant for putting his foot in it, that could be a double-edged sword.
Some might even ask why, if he wants women to play a more prominent role in SF, Adams doesn’t just step down and let the more sure-footed Mary Lou McDonald take over in the Dail.
Mary Lou and O’Neill both represent a different generation, with no ties to the violence of the past.
Neither woman has ever wavered from indulgent support for the republican movement, but it will certainly be harder for diehard unionists to use the memory of IRA atrocities against them than it was with Martin McGuinness, who was steeped in IRA trappings and unapologetic about it.
A woman like O’Neill, who was only 20 years old when the Belfast Agreement was signed, is a different kettle of fish from someone who was there in person, carrying a gun, on Bloody Sunday.
Or indeed from someone who witnessed her own father being shot and wounded by the IRA.
The age difference between O’Neill and Arlene Foster is only six years, but it feels more than that. The First Minister is very much an old school Ulster politician. For O’Neill’s generation, the Troubles are increasingly a folk memory rather than a lived reality.
Folk memories can be dangerous, breeding a sentimentality about the past far removed from the ugly truth; but then, having leaders who lived through those years is hardly free of political hazards either. We’ve had a bellyful of the latter sort. Let’s see what a younger generation has to offer.
This weekend, O’Neill was down in Dublin for Sinn Fein’s Uniting Ireland event at the Mansion House. There, she could be found calling on all sections of society to begin a debate on Irish unification — whether they want to or not, presumably. Because it’s hardly a priority for most people on either side of the border right now.
Their concerns are economic, not constitutional.
Significantly, she was again handed the plum role of giving the final speech, declaring that “there is a place for everyone in the new Ireland that we are building”, and promising that “a new and united Ireland will deliver full democracy to the people of the whole island”.
What did all that waffle mean? Precious little, if truth be told. There’s no point inviting others to join a national debate if what’s on offer has already been decided. For SF, a united Ireland is not even up for discussion; it’s a matter of faith, and real progress will only happen when unity has been achieved.
Fantasising about a future wonderland in no way answers the needs that people have in the here and now.
Parroting on about “full democracy” sounds equally hollow when her own ascension to the iron throne of Sinn Fein at Stormont, if that is what’s about to happen, will take place under North Korean levels of secrecy.
This is not how changes to the leadership come about in normal political parties. Usually there are candidates. They have different ideas about the best way forward. They set out their stalls. The party openly makes a choice. In SF, there’s never a cigarette paper’s width of difference between them. Strategy is decided elsewhere. The leader’s only job, to implement it.
Even those who support SF have to admit that’s a bit odd. Especially when Michelle O’Neill herself declared of the party’s decision to force another election that “the people must now have their say”.
Shouldn’t the party’s MLAs get the same say in who leads them at Stormont?
Nonetheless, O’Neill deserves a chance to prove herself. She’s said to be friendly and approachable and easy to work with, which can’t hurt, and critics have called long enough for a changing of the guard in Northern Irish politics. It would be churlish to complain when it finally happens.
Changes also have their own effects, which are often unforeseen and unintended. That she represents a different generation inevitably shifts power to that generation. What they do with it will be fascinating to watch — all assuming that they get the chance.
If a powersharing executive cannot be restored after the election on March 2, and a long period of direct rule beckons, then it will be an entirely academic question to ask what difference having a new SF leader at Stormont will make, or what relationship she might forge with the First Minister. Michelle O’Neill may just have been headhunted for a job that isn’t going to exist anymore.